EX-SPACEX WELDER’S SHARES HIT $1,046,175 ON IPO DAY

A former SpaceX welder who had never heard of the company watched his stock offer grow into a seven-figure payday.

Juan Hernandez, who now works at Blue Origin, a rocket startup owned by Jeff Bezos, held roughly 6,500 SpaceX shares when the company began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12, 2026. At the first-day closing price of $160.95, his stake was worth $1,046,175, CBS News reported.

Hernandez had never heard of SpaceX before a friend who worked there suggested him for a welding job.

“I thought in my head, I don’t know what SpaceX is, but let’s go,” Hernandez told CBS correspondent Jo Ling Kent.

From a contract job to a stock offer

He said he first saw it as just another gig. “It was just another contract job for me at the time,” he said.

SpaceX hired him in 2015 and offered him stock valued at $10,000, according to his account. His earlier hourly jobs had not come with stock, he said.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t know anything about it then,” he said of the offer.

Hernandez stayed at SpaceX for about a decade before moving to Blue Origin. His welding work included building structures that lifted rockets onto launch pads and infrastructure that held them in place, and he eventually became a supervisor.

The Kansas City Star reported that SpaceX’s prospectus described employee equity as including stock-option grants at hiring and promotion milestones, annual performance awards and an employee stock-purchase plan.

What the payday means to him

“I didn’t know it was gonna be this big, at this point,” he said.

He said employee ownership gives workers a stake in the company and can motivate them to do better. “They will perform a lot better because, I mean, it is, it’s their company as well,” he said.

Elon Musk’s wealth made him the world’s first trillionaire following the offering, CBS said. Musk has since slipped below trillionaire status.

Speaking hypothetically about Musk, Hernandez said, “He’s making all these lives much better and meaningful for their families as well.” He said he would thank Musk for making opportunities possible for ordinary workers such as cooks and electricians.

Hernandez is an immigrant to the United States. He is also teaching his three children about investing, and he described his 16-year-old daughter, who owns shares in Meta and other companies, as “a little entrepreneur herself.”

Despite the windfall, Hernandez said he plans to keep working and pass the lessons he has learned on to his children.