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SpaceX went public on June 12 at $135 a share, the biggest IPO in history at around a $1.75 trillion valuation. Within a few weeks, at least six members of Congress had bought in, and a seventh disclosed this week.
The names from the disclosures: Lisa McClain (R-MI), John James (R-MI), Daniel Meuser (R-PA), William Timmons (R-SC), John McGuire (R-VA), and Gilbert Cisneros (D-CA), with Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) the latest to file. So it's bipartisan, five Republicans and two Democrats.
The part that stands out is the committee overlap. McGuire and Cisneros sit on Armed Services. Timmons chairs an Oversight subcommittee on military and foreign affairs. James sits on Energy and Commerce, which oversees the FCC, and SpaceX runs Starlink. So most of these people sit on committees that touch either defense contracts or the regulator for SpaceX's own business.
To be fair about it, several of these were spouse or family trades, not the member personally, and Cisneros says his portfolio is run by outside advisers. CNBC and the trade-tracking watchdogs looked and found no sign anyone used inside information or broke a rule. The amounts are mostly small too, ranges of $1k to $50k each, with McClain's the big one because a family xAI stake converted into SpaceX.
And here's the ironic part. The stock is already underwater. It popped to about $161 on day one and trades around $113 now, below the $135 IPO price. So for all the attention, it hasn't been a good trade so far.
Still, when six or seven people who help write defense and telecom policy all pile into the same IPO within weeks, it's worth watching regardless of whether it's technically allowed. Is this a real conflict, or just everyone chasing the same hyped IPO?