INDIA PERSPECTIVE

New Delhi reads the IPO through the lens of the locked-out Asian investor and the geopolitical tech rivalry. The Indian financial press covers the deal with trading-floor precision — $75 billion raised, $1.77 trillion valuation, stock moving from $135 to $164, sixth-largest US company — but flags a point Western media barely touch: access. 'Locked out of the IPO,' Asian investors seek workarounds, Japan and Australia the only regional markets offering retail investors direct access; elsewhere, from Seoul to Shanghai, traders fall back on the space supply chain, themed ETFs and Nasdaq 100-tracking funds. The Indian analysis does not hide the skepticism — 'hopes-and-dreams IPO,' a $4.94 billion loss in 2025, Jim Chanos's warning — but the most charged angle lies elsewhere: one headline recalls that 'Iran has added SpaceX and Starlink to its target list in the Middle East,' Tehran believing Musk's technology supported US-Israeli operations in the region. The Indian press also translates the scale of the fortune into a striking regional benchmark: at $1.1 trillion, Musk is now 'richer than Taiwan,' his individual wealth exceeding the GDP of a major technology economy. For India, an emerging space power proud of its ISRO agency and low-cost launches, the event cuts both ways: admiration for the engineering that drove down the cost of reaching orbit, and clear-eyed awareness that a space infrastructure privatized to this degree becomes a geopolitical actor in its own right, target and weapon at once. Coverage also ties the rise in US and Asian indices to the week's twin engines — SpaceX's debut and hopes of a deal ending the war with Iran, which drove oil prices to a two-month low.