Times Square’s New Year’s Eve Ball Joins SpaceX Takeover of NYC

Even the iconic New Year’s Eve ball is getting involved in the SpaceX IPO celebrations.

The illuminated ball in Times Square has been “transformed” to represent Mars and will be lit up in red and orange colors, according to a Nasdaq spokesperson. At the close of markets, the bell will ascend, rather than descend, which is the New Year’s Eve tradition.

Signs of Wall Street’s exuberance over the the IPO for SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., have popped up all over New York City in recent weeks. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — which had top billing in the listing — erected silver rockets on black pedestals resembling SpaceX’s Starship in its lobby. And its rival Morgan Stanley, which is acting as stabilization agent on the offering, has blanketed the elevators and turnstiles in its Times Square headquarters with SpaceX branding.

Elon Musk’s company made history with its $75 billion IPO on Thursday that instantly made it one of the biggest public companies in the world. It also boosted Musk’s personal fortune to the once-unimaginable figure of almost $1.05 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Read more: SpaceX Shares Jump in First Day Following Record $75 Billion IPO

SpaceX’s opening bell ceremonies at Nasdaq were also a first-of-their-kind affair. Thousands of employees helped ring in the company’s public debut in both Texas and New York, the first time a company has done a dual opening bell ceremony for an IPO, Nasdaq said.

That move was a quirk of the rocket and space company’s decision to dually list its shares on the traditional Nasdaq exchange and the newly launched Nasdaq Texas exchange. While that’s largely been viewed as a symbolic vote of confidence in Texas — where SpaceX is headquartered — some experts have said it could provide the company with legal and tax benefits.

SpaceX prepared celebrations for staffers across its offices. Hourly employees were required to get the green light from their senior leaders to attend and it counted as unpaid time off, according to internal notices seen by Bloomberg News. XAI has hundreds of contractors, many of which work on an hourly contract.

In New York, xAI staffers arrived at the office to a breakfast spread and free SpaceX hats, according to an attendee familiar with the matter. SpaceX’s celebrations in Hawthorne, California begin at 1 p.m. local time, and there are expected to be toasts at company locations during the Nasdaq’s closing ceremony, some of the people said

A representative for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

About 200 employees rang in the listing using rocket-shaped bells in New York, and several thousand additional staffers celebrated at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas, Nasdaq said.

As more and more corporations have moved operations to Texas, exchange operators have followed suit. Banks, asset managers and law firms also employ thousands of staffers in Dallas, spawning the moniker “Y’all Street” for the city.

Dozens of companies have now chosen to cross-list their shares in Texas and New York, though SpaceX was the first to publicly debut in both cities. Nasdaq itself is dually listed on Nasdaq Texas, and the company says such a move allows companies to align with Texas’ business-friendly environment.