Elon Musk rewrote the IPO playbook in almost every direction for SpaceX. The S&P 500 just reminded him there are rules he cannot rewrite.
S&P Dow Jones Indices confirmed Thursday it is keeping its eligibility rules entirely unchanged, effectively shutting out SpaceX from the world’s most important stock index.
To join the S&P 500, a company must be profitable in its most recent quarter and across its prior four quarters combined. SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025. The S&P was equally clear on exceptions, stating waivers “should not be granted solely based on market capitalization.”
What This Means for Passive Investors and SpaceX
Passive S&P 500 index funds control trillions in assets and would have been forced to buy SpaceX shares automatically had the rules been relaxed. Without index inclusion, that automatic institutional bid simply does not exist, at least for the next twelve months.
Nasdaq moved in the opposite direction, fast-tracking its own rules to allow SpaceX into the Nasdaq 100 shortly after listing. Index funds tracking the Nasdaq 100 will be forced to buy a sizeable portion of publicly available shares when inclusion is confirmed. This will provide a floor of institutional demand that the S&P 500 will not contribute to.
SpaceX does have a path into less prominent benchmarks. S&P confirmed that it will modify the entry rules for its broader Total Market Index and the Dow Jones US Total Stock Market Index. Moreover, FTSE Russell has already made SpaceX eligible for its global equity indexes under fast-entry rules.
The Crypto Impact
For crypto markets, the S&P exclusion adds an interesting wrinkle. SpaceX’s S-1 disclosed 18,712 Bitcoin at a cost basis of $661 million. This means that every buyer of SpaceX stock gets passive Bitcoin exposure whether they want it or not.
With the Nasdaq 100 forced buy coming and the S&P 500 bid absent, the pool of investors gaining that indirect Bitcoin exposure is smaller than it would have been under a fast-track scenario.
With SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic together expected to pull in more than $240 billion by year-end, analysts warn these megacap listings may drain liquidity from tech, AI, and crypto markets and potentially mark a cyclical peak.
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, backed the S&P decision.
“Making exceptions because companies are so large and have been private so long yet are still not profitable didn’t make a great deal of sense,” he said.
The biggest IPO in history will begin trading next Friday, June 12. However, the index that defines Wall Street will not list it for at least a year.