{"id":748575,"date":"2026-06-16T08:41:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/?p=748575"},"modified":"2026-06-16T08:45:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:45:29","slug":"elon-musks-spacex-ipo-created-instant-millionaires-in-immigrant-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/2026\/06\/elon-musks-spacex-ipo-created-instant-millionaires-in-immigrant-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX IPO Created Instant Millionaires in Immigrant Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_748576\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-748576\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SpaceX-workers-GettyImages-1016927198.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"543\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-748576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SpaceX-workers-GettyImages-1016927198.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SpaceX-workers-GettyImages-1016927198-768x521.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SpaceX-workers-GettyImages-1016927198-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SpaceX-workers-GettyImages-1016927198-696x472.jpg 696w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-748576\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Workers at the Space-X factory gather under the first Dragon Capsule in Hawthorne, CA. (Photo: Jonathan Newton \/ The Washington Post via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A Mexican immigrant who worked for SpaceX since 2015 became an instant millionaire overnight after SpaceX&#8217;s historic <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/2026\/06\/elon-musks-spacex-ipo-created-instant-millionaires-in-immigrant-community\/\" target=\"_blank\">IPO debut<\/a><\/strong>. Former welder Juan Hernandez is among hundreds of immigrants who became instant millionaires after the IPO&#8217;s record-setting debut.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s estimated that 4,400 SpaceX employees are instant millionaires after the IPO debut on June 12.<\/p>\n<p>Among them are cafeteria workers who accepted lower pay in exchange for SpaceX stocks. Hernandez immigrated from Mexico and took a welding contractor job at SpaceX earning $28 per hour in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX gave Hernandez $10,000 worth of stock at the time. Over the years, Hernandez advanced from welding rockets to building the structures that lifted rockets onto the launch pad to being a supervisor. Today, his shares are worth just under $1 million.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was just another contract job for me at the time,&#8221; Hernandez <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizpacreview.com\/2026\/06\/13\/former-spacex-welder-who-immigrated-from-mexico-one-of-4400-millionaires-after-historic-ipo-1645711\/\" target=\"_blank\">told a reporter<\/a><\/strong>. &#8220;A friend that I met at another job ended up in SpaceX, and then he called me. I told him, I don&#8217;t even know what SpaceX is, but let&#8217;s go.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were furious last week about <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@elonmusk<\/a> becoming a trillionaire\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the part they\u2019re ignoring.<\/p>\n<p>Juan Hernandez immigrated from Mexico, worked as a $28\/hour welder at SpaceX, got 6,500 shares, and yesterday became a millionaire, along with\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/F2EBN1IgXR\">pic.twitter.com\/F2EBN1IgXR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tom Leonard (@TomLeonard28) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TomLeonard28\/status\/2066852584195838435?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 16, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t a big deal,&#8221; he said of the $10,000 worth of stocks. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know anything about it then. I didn&#8217;t know it was gonna be this big, at this point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As an immigrant, you know, I was always taught just to work hard, do the best I can at what I do,&#8221; Hernandez said.<\/p>\n<p>Launch engineer Trevor Hise, who joined SpaceX as a college graduate, held over 100,000 SpaceX shares, which are worth $16 million today.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The magnitude of this has been ridiculous,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Former SpaceX engineer J. Andr\u00e9 Lavoie, 63, holds SpaceX shares worth over $28 million. Lavoie plans to use his money to renovate a hotel he purchased.<\/p>\n<p>Hernandez and the others don&#8217;t have the money in hand just yet. They can&#8217;t sell their shares during the lock-up period (usually 90 days to 180 days). The stock price would tumble if they all sold their shares at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX stock opened at $135 on June 12 and surged to $220 in pre-trading on Tuesday, June 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Mexican immigrant who worked for SpaceX since 2015 became an instant millionaire overnight after SpaceX&#8217;s historic IPO debut. Former welder Juan Hernandez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":748581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[9460,7451,4190,2574,19126,11592],"class_list":{"0":"post-748575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-money-finances","8":"tag-elon-musk","9":"tag-immigrants","10":"tag-millionaire","11":"tag-money-and-finances","12":"tag-spacex","13":"tag-stocks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":748582,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748575\/revisions\/748582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrarose.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}