A mariner put 10% of her paycheck into SpaceX for 2 years, and as it goes public, she is not telling her net worth

Maryellyn Musselman knows something, and she’s not sharing.

A 27-year-old mariner from Chesapeake, Virginia, is one of thousands of current and former SpaceX employees who, on June 12, 2026, will wake up with shares in one of the most anticipated IPOs in stock market history. She knows what the shares are worth. She just is not telling.

Musselman joined SpaceX in 2022 as an engineering officer on a ship that retrieved rocket parts that fell into the ocean off the Florida coast. She saved 10% of her paycheck into equity during her two years at the company, on top of the equity she was granted as part of her compensation. She knew it was a risk, but thought it might pay off and help her to eventually start her own business.


It was a strange bet for a woman in her line of work. “Mariners are not usually stock owners in their companies; they're not always under benefits,” she said to the Wall Street Journal. But she leaned in anyway, held on through the years of secondary sales that many colleagues cashed out through, and kept her cards close to her vest. Now, with SpaceX set to go public in a matter of days, Musselman has declined to say how much her shares are worth today. Her goal, she says, is to have a repair-based business in Chesapeake, Virginia, but just how much runway her SpaceX stake will give her to get there, she’s keeping to herself.

When asked if she plans to sell right away, she said, “I think it will be an 11th-hour decision.”

Not just executives, baristas, welders, and mariners too
Musselman’s silence is understandable. The numbers are staggering, even for folks lower down the org chart.

SpaceX IPO is scheduled for June 12, 2026, with an expected offering price of $135 per share and an estimated total market value of $1.77 trillion. SPCX will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol SPCX. At that number, even a small equity stake accumulated over two years of contributions from paychecks can be a life-changing number.

The Wall Street Journal reported that it is not just desk workers who have been awarded the SpaceX stock over the years, with baristas to welders on the list of people who own shares ahead of the listing. Musselman is one of those folks, a hands-on, non-corporate worker who quietly accrued equity while doing physical, unglamorous work on the water.

What sets people like Musselman apart from colleagues who took profits early and watched the valuation rise without them is the decision to continue investing rather than selling through SpaceX’s periodic secondary sales, which the company has typically offered about twice a year.

The millennial instinct to bet on equity
Musselman’s decision to invest 10% of her paycheck in company stock is part of a larger trend among younger workers. A survey by Schwab Stock Plan Services finds that equity compensation accounts for an average of nearly 30% of employees’ net worth, but for millennials that number jumps to 42%, versus 24% for Gen X and 19% for Baby Boomers.

Some 56% of millennial equity plan participants say equity compensation is a main reason, or one of the main reasons, they are in their current job, compared to 27% of older participants. For Musselman, the bet was more than just financial. It was a calculated gamble on her own future, made from the deck of a salvage vessel off the Florida coast.

The elephant in the room: is SpaceX actually worth this?
The IPO that is about to make Musselman's net worth a secret worth keeping is not without controversy.

Ahead of its listing, Morningstar analysts have pegged SpaceX as “significantly overvalued,” with a valuation of around $780 billion, about 48% below the company’s IPO target valuation. The analysts consider xAI, SpaceX’s AI arm, a “material threat of value destruction” and its economic moat indeterminate.

At its target valuation, SpaceX would trade at 95 times its $18.67 billion 2025 revenue. The losses in the AI division are eating into Starlink’s profits, and SpaceX plans to ramp up AI investments following the division’s public debut, making the company unlikely to be profitable in the near term.

That’s a genuine concern for first-day retail buyers. But for someone like Musselman who got in years ago at a cost basis that's a fraction of the current price, the overvaluation discussion is mostly academic. She’s already on the right side of the trade.

She still hasn't decided when to sell
What makes Musselman's story compelling is not just the money; it's the restraint. At a moment when the financial media is saturated with SpaceX hype, and everyone seems to have an opinion about whether to buy, she is the one who already did the hard part and is now quietly deciding what’s next.

Many of those who own stock in SpaceX have sold off portions of their holdings over the years. Other former employees who spoke with the Wall Street Journal said they sold shares to pay off a spouse’s student loans, buy their parents a summer home, pay for fertility treatments and strike out to start businesses of their own.

Musselman's plan is the last of those. She wants to start a repair-based business. She’s got the vision. Very soon she may have the capital. And as for exactly how much that capital actually amounts to? Well, she is keeping that all to herself for now.