WSJ What’s News - SpaceX Is Now America’s 6th Most Valuable Public Company

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

P.M. Edition for June 12. Shares of SpaceX closed up 19% on their first trading day, giving the company a market cap of more than $2 trillion and making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Plus, China has been importing a lot less oil since the start of the Iran conflict, helping keep a lid on global oil prices–without disrupting its economy. WSJ energy markets reporter Rebecca Feng discusses how China’s doing that, and what happens if the country reverses course. And Iran, the U.S. and mediators agree that a peace deal is close at hand. We hear from Journal Middle East correspondent Benoit Faucon about what points might still be up for debate. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. SpaceX is now America's sixth most valuable company, and that makes Elon Musk officially the world's first trillionaire. Plus, it's a mystery vexing analyst. How has China been able to stop importing millions of barrels of oil since the start of the Iran war? China was able to slash oil imports without visible disruptions to his economy.

Cars are still running on the street. People are still traveling. Toilip paper is still there. You know, how is this possible? It's Friday, June 12. I'm Alex Oslov for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

Today, SpaceX made its long-awaited stock market debut. Shares open trading at $150 around midday, 11% above the IPO price of $135. And the rocket company stock ended the day up 19% at $160. and 95 cents. Its market cap is $2.1 trillion, making it America's sixth the most valuable company just below Amazon. CEO Elon Musk's other company, Tesla, is now number eight. The IPO gripped Wall Street and transfixed investors worldwide, and it was as near a picture-perfect debut as most bankers could imagine, with a pop that was neither too big nor too small.

Speaking from Starbase Texas this morning, Musk said that when he began SpaceX more than 20 years ago, he told people that the company was probably going to fail. It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public for the, with the largest IPO that ever. That record IPO also helped Musk become the world's first. trillionaire. Of course, Musk was already the world's richest person before the IPO. But a trillionaire is a notch above. WSJ's special writer, Theo Francis, explains how Musk got here. Late last summer, we estimated that he was worth just a little more than $400 billion. A few weeks

ago, we checked back, $811 billion. And of course, now he's crossed the trillion dollar threshold. Most of that huge increase since last summer is really about SpaceX. As of today's market close, Musk's net worth was about $1.2 trillion. Teo says that Musk's money is almost all tied up in his companies, like SpaceX and Tesla. He's not only the biggest shareholders in these companies, he's also their leader. If he starts selling, that could drive the share price down. He can borrow against his holdings to some degree, but ultimately his fortunes are tied up with the fortunes of these companies. Speaking of Tesla, it also closed up today, gaining 1.8%. Stocks rose overall, with the Dow leading the gains and finishing points.

7% higher. Today, oil prices are around $85 a barrel. That's certainly higher than before the conflict, but nowhere near the $150 to $200 a barrel that many analysts predicted when the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed. There are two main reasons global oil prices aren't higher. The U.S. is exporting more and China is importing less. To better understand the China side of the equation, energy markets reporter Rebecca Fang joins me.

now from London. Rebecca, this mystery of the 3 million barrels. This is the missing amount of oil that China would normally be importing every day, but now isn't. So how is China able to avoid importing all this oil? That actually is the mystery. So yeah, as you said, like normally China would import around 11 million barrels a day. But in May, the official data is showing that China only imported 7.8 million barrels a day. It seems to us that, China was able to slash oil imports without visible disruptions to his economy. You know, cars are still running on the street. People are still traveling.

Toilip paper is still there. And China is probably the country that prepared a lot for this exact moment. Yeah. How did they do that? It's been stockpiling crude oil for months, if not years, mainly by buying up cheap Russian and Iranian oil. China, for the record, doesn't quite publish. its actual stockpiling, but analysts estimated to be between 1 to 1.4 billion barrels, which is multiple, multiple months of imports.

And then the EVE penetration in China is pretty high. It's over 60% by the most recent estimate. So people are able to just consume less gasoline in general. So China actually relies on coal quite a lot for generating electricity. oil is part of it, but the other is renewable, so wind, solar, you name it. And China has made it almost like a national priority to really heavily develop this renewables industry. Can this decrease in exports last? Like, what will happen if they have to start importing again? This kind of decrease in import will impact the Chinese economy. Eventually, a lot of the Chinese crude oil imports goes into petrochemical factories to produce plastic and all

kinds of other things. So if prices for petrochemical fee stocks go up, then eventually manufacturing will become more expensive. And China relies on manufacturing and exporting manufactured goods. But if China starts importing again, some analysts were saying in the next week or two, others are saying in six months, that would definitely boost oil prices. But one thing I just want to say is it is pretty incredible because China actually has a country, really, really lies 70% of its crude oil on imports. And for China to be able to kind of slash imports this way, it's pretty impressive. That was journal reporter Rebecca Fang.

Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks. Coming up, where a potential Iran-P peace deal stands, and how the Trump administration's immigration policies are spoiling some people's World Cup plans. Those stories and more after the break. Today, a federal judge in Virginia stopped the Trump administration from proceeding with its $1.8 billion, quote, anti-weaponization fund. The government has argued that the issue was moot.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress earlier this month that the administration wasn't moving forward with the fund. But Judge Leon E. Brinkama said there was enough conflicting evidence that she couldn't be sure that the government had truly abandoned it. She gave the government a week to make a written and binding commitment under penalty of perjury to drop the fund. The first World Cup game on U.S. soil is this evening. It's the U.S. versus Paraguay, playing in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. Eastern. And though President Trump has promoted the tournament as a historic opportunity to showcase the, quote, beauty and greatness of America, his immigration policies are facing criticism. More than two dozen players, staff, and officials have had trouble entering the U.S. One case that got a lot of attention was a Somali referee who was questioned for more than 10 hours at the Miami airport. He was then removed from the U.S. And as for the fans, some have said that they spent

thousands of dollars on tickets, flights, and hotels only to be denied visas. Trump officials have defended the disruptions as the price of keeping the country safe. On the war with Iran, the U.S., Iran, and the chief mediator, Pakistan all agreed today that a peace deal to end the war was nearly complete. However, since launching the war, President Trump has said nearly 40 times that the two countries were close to a deal, only for the talks to fall through. Some U.S. and Middle Eastern officials have become skeptical of the repeated claims of breakthroughs. And an initial agreement, if it comes, would only kickstart the hardest part of nuclear negotiations over the coming months. For more on the deal and where it stands, I'm joined now by WSJ Middle East correspondent Benoit Foucahn. Benoit, how did Iran and mediators respond to President Trump yesterday, saying that the deal was already done?

Very surprised. They had not been told that this announcement was coming. That shocked mediators who had not been consulted, but that also sent shockwaves in Iran who pushed back very quickly, not only about the fact there was no deal in their hands because it's not finalized, but also between Trump and the Iranians, but what the deal actually entails. So my understanding was that the basic outlines of the deal have been clear for weeks, right? Like, what are the points of contention still? There's one issue that the Iranians kept on hammering, and that's the U.S. blockade on their ports.

The Iranians won the first gesture. It could be the U.S. blockade being lifted or at least eased. The second one is all this communication, very sort of avid, optimistic communication from the U.S., trigger more mistrust on the Iran side. That's what I was told both by the Iranians and the mediators. And the meditators are basically had to convince the Iranians to just really focus on the exchange that are taking place privately. Do mediateers expect this to really drag on, or do we see an end in sight? Trump has said that there could be a meeting in Europe, he said, that would be attended by JD Vance.

And so what we hear is that there could be potentially meeting Sunday in Geneva between Jade events and Halibath, the parliament speaker and chief negotiator on the Iranian side. But the Iranian media has denied that this was going to take place. That was WSJ Middle East correspondent, Benoit Foukan. Thanks, Benoit. Thank you. And in news from China, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry said today that it had detained Min Zin, a U.S. citizen who is a student activist and journalist on suspicion of espionage and endangering national security. It's another possible point of friction between the U.S. and China coming just weeks after the summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. China didn't give the location or date of Minzin's arrest. And finally, if you're in the SpaceX inner circle, today's IPO was just the start of the party.

Tonight, the journal has learned SpaceX's early employees, executives, and underwriting team will be toasting the IPO at the new J.P. Morgan Chase Heson. headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Now, a closing deal party is a right of passage for IPOs, but this one is pulling out all the stops. It will include a buffet dinner and Tomahawk steak bones branded with J.P. Morgan and SpaceX logos. Specialty cocktail names include The Future is Public, Starship, and Falcon 9 named for a SpaceX rocket. And to top it all off, when the sun goes down, the skyscraper's crown is set to light up a display of rockets launching into the sky. Elon Musk, who is in Texas, is not expected to attend. And that's what's news for this week.

Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap up, What's News and Markets. Then on Sunday, for our latest look at how inflation is affecting the midterms, we talk with voters in Georgia and WSJ's pollsters about the rising cost of health care. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis and Anthony Bansy

with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. I shall Muslim is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor. And I'm Alex Osala. Have a great weekend and thanks for listening.