More than 4,000 SpaceX employees are expected to become millionaires after IPO

For thousands of SpaceX employees, this Friday's long-awaited IPO (12) marks the entry into levels of wealth that will change their lives.

It is common for employees at technology companies to be heavily compensated with shares, especially in the early stages of the company. If you're a founder, you may not have a lot of money to pay people, but you can offer shares at a low price in the hopes that one day they will be worth a lot of money.

With SpaceX's projected valuation at $1.77 trillion, about 4,400 current and former employees will become millionaires, according to Hill.com, a San Francisco-based investment platform.

And about 400 of those employees are about to become "centimillionaires," with holdings valued at more than $100 million.

"What's notable about the SpaceX IPO is the wide range of roles for which SpaceX hires," Andrew Benson, CEO of Hill.com, told CNN on Friday.

"When you think about stock compensation, you usually think about management positions, often engineers, members of business development teams, growth teams, marketing, legal, etc. SpaceX is interesting because it has welders, machinists, roles of all kinds that normally wouldn't get stock compensation for their work almost anywhere else."

The company's executives are subject to a "lock-in" period to prevent a sell-off shortly after the IPO. But SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell was confident Friday morning that SpaceX's 22,000 employees are in no rush to sell their shares.

"I am extremely proud that more than half of us purchased additional shares at this opening, totaling nearly $1 billion."

Source: CNN