SpaceX UK retail stock offering oversubscribed, 40% of applicants miss out

SpaceX just pulled off one of the largest IPOs in history, and retail investors in the UK got a front-row seat. The problem: there weren’t enough seats for everyone.

The UK retail offering for SpaceX shares closed on June 10, with nearly 40% of applicants receiving fewer shares than they actually requested. Only investors who applied for up to £2,013 worth of stock received their full allocation. Everyone above that threshold got pro-rated.

The numbers behind the frenzy

UK retail buyers collectively purchased around £270 million in SpaceX shares through the Marex-operated public offer platform, known as POP.

The full IPO consisted of roughly 555.6 million shares priced at $135 each, targeting a raise of approximately $75 billion. At that price, SpaceX is eyeing a valuation somewhere between $1.75 trillion and $1.8 trillion.

Overall demand was staggering. Institutional orders alone came in at two to four times the offering size, translating to over $150 billion in total demand. Some individual institutional investors reportedly placed bids exceeding $10 billion.

Up to 30% of the offering was reserved for retail investors across several European markets, including the UK. Platforms like Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, eToro, and Interactive Investor all provided access to the offering for UK and European retail participants.

The UK retail window opened on June 4 and closed on June 10. SpaceX’s pricing was set for June 11, with trading expected to begin on the Nasdaq on June 12.

Why retail investors piled in

The UK hasn’t seen this kind of scramble for a retail stock allocation since the Royal Mail IPO back in 2013, when the government sold off shares in the postal service and demand similarly overwhelmed supply.

SpaceX operates Starlink, which has become the dominant satellite internet provider globally, and it holds lucrative contracts with NASA and the US Department of Defense. The company has been private for over two decades, meaning retail investors have been locked out for the entire ride from scrappy rocket startup to trillion-dollar behemoth.

The pro-rating mechanism essentially prioritized breadth over depth. The £2,013 full-allocation threshold indicates the applicant pool was dominated by smaller, individual investors putting in modest amounts. SpaceX and its underwriters chose to give full allocations to the largest number of people possible, scaling back only the bigger requests.

What this means for investors

One interesting wrinkle: this entire offering was conducted through traditional equity markets. No tokenized shares, no blockchain-based settlement, no crypto integration of any kind. For a company valued at nearly $1.8 trillion going public in 2026, the absence of any digital asset component is notable.

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