The public gets to own a slice — but the votes that actually steer the company stay with Elon Musk.
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✦ The bottom line
The IPO sells Class A shares (ticker SPCX) — one vote each — on Nasdaq. Elon Musk holds super-voting Class B shares, which keep him in control of the company after the IPO.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Two kinds of stock (dual-class)
Plenty of companies sell ordinary shares to the public while the founder keeps a special class with extra votes. So the public buys a real slice of the profits and the growth — but can't out-vote the founder on who runs the company or how. One company, two tiers of stock: one for the crowd, one for control.
Wall Street calls this
Super-voting shares / founder control
With only Class A, your vote is real but small. On the decisions that matter most — the board, the direction — you're a *passenger*, not a driver. You're backing Musk's judgment more than your own.
There's a pay plan that shows how big this is meant to get. Musk's award vests in 12 tranches tied to market-capitalization milestones, running from $1.065 trillion up to $6.565 trillion — each step worth another $500 billion in value, and each tranche about 0.20% of the company. The filing says the first milestone was already achieved, and Musk was issued about 25 million Class A shares for it. One caution: that $1.065 trillion is a pay-plan milestone — a market-cap target the filing says was hit — not the IPO price, which isn't set yet.
What it takes for Musk to get paid
Mr. Musk's award vests in 12 equal tranches upon the Company achieving market-capitalization milestones ranging from $1.065 trillion to $6.565 trillion, with each milestone reflecting $500 billion in additional valuation. The first valuation milestone was achieved prior to the xAI Merger. The later tranches also require the Company's completion of non-Earth-based data centers capable of delivering 100 terawatts of compute per year.
It tells a beginner two things at once: the company is steering toward trillions in value and literal space-based data centers — and Musk's incentives are enormous and very long-dated, pointed at goals far beyond today.
World-class execution — but control is concentrated, and so is the key-person risk.
Buying Class A means backing Musk's judgment and tying your stake to his presence. The upside is his track record; the catch is you can't change the direction, and the company leans heavily on one person.