Ryan Mac, Lauren Hirsch and Maureen Farrell
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker, filed confidentially on Wednesday for an initial public offering, according to two people familiar with the company, setting the stage for what could be one of the largest offerings ever.
The company is committed to debuting in June, and Musk is aiming to raise $US50 billion ($72 billion) to $US75 billion ($108 billion) from going public, said one of the people, who was not authorised to speak publicly on confidential discussions.
SpaceX values itself at more than $US1 trillion and would be one of the most valuable companies to reach the sharemarket, after Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut valued the energy giant at $US1.7 trillion. Aramco ultimately raised more than $US29 billion from its IPO.
A SpaceX offering could signal a wave of enormous IPOs, with artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic also exploring the possibility of going public.
SpaceX’s offering would be a generational moneymaking event for Wall Street, the company’s employees and, of course, Musk, who is already one of the world’s richest men and could become the first trillionaire.
Musk, 54, who also runs electric carmaker Tesla and other companies, did not respond to a request for comment. A SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Bloomberg earlier reported the filing.
SpaceX, which Musk founded in 2002 with the goal of sending people to Mars, has grown into one of the world’s leading space companies. From the beginning, Musk has said SpaceX’s ultimate mission is to make humans a multi-planetary species, ensuring that life would thrive if something happened to Earth.
Since then, SpaceX has launched rockets into space and established a popular satellite internet service, Starlink. The company’s customers include the US government, the Ukrainian military and many others. In the US, it accounts for five of every six launches into space, according to Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology.
In February, Musk merged SpaceX with xAI, his AI company. The SpaceX umbrella now encompasses Starship, a self-landing rocket meant for Mars; Starlink; Grok, xAI’s chatbot; and X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.
Money raised from an IPO would most likely help SpaceX finance its long-term goals of launching artificial intelligence data centres into orbit, creating a colony on the moon and getting humans to Mars. These are unproven endeavours that may take years and billions of dollars to achieve.
If SpaceX’s valuation increases in public trading, he could become the world’s first person with a 13-figure net worth.
SpaceX has also discussed using some of the money raised from an IPO to fund xAI and its working capital, one of the people said, as well as to buy up and expunge the debt that Twitter borrowed when Musk bought the social media company in 2022. Bankers have pushed SpaceX to hold at least $US15 billion to $US20 billion in cash, the person said.
A confidential filing means that the financials of the company are not disclosed until later. In June, Musk posted on social media that he expected SpaceX’s revenue to reach $US15.5 billion in 2025, with about $US1.1 billion of that coming from NASA.
Total revenue would be up from $US7.4 billion in 2023, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. Starlink alone generated $US8 billion in sales in 2024, according to the documents.
An IPO would be a major boon for SpaceX’s executives, employees and investors, some of whom took a risk in supporting Musk’s goals and have waited for more than two decades to cash in on their shares.
Musk also stands to benefit. Much of his $US823 billion net worth, according to Forbes, is from his stake in the rocket company, which stood about 44 per cent in 2022. If SpaceX’s valuation increases in public trading, he could become the world’s first person with a 13-figure net worth.
SpaceX’s main underwriters – expected to include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America – are likely to generate fees in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Musk has shown a distrust of public markets in the past. In 2018, he posted on social media that he had arranged the funding to take Tesla private, even when he hadn’t. When he bought Twitter, he also took it private.
An IPO would require Musk to disclose more information about SpaceX to investors and push him to fulfil his promises about the company. Over the years, he has been overly optimistic on how long it would take to get his rockets to Mars. .
In a recent memo to employees, Musk said orbital data centres would be the cheapest way to satisfy AI computational needs “within two to three years”. He has also talked up a theory of “sustainable abundance”, in which his companies, working with one another, will create AI and robot products that help end poverty, while making human work obsolete.
Money raised from an IPO would most likely help SpaceX finance its long-term goals of launching artificial intelligence data centres into orbit, creating a colony on the moon and getting humans to Mars.
Ross Gerber, an investment manager whose firm is a SpaceX shareholder, said it was a terrible time to go public, citing wars and unpredictable economic conditions. But Musk needs cash to fund expensive projects, including data centres in space and a chip manufacturing plant, and to cover two money “losers” in X and xAI, Gerber said.
“Elon is saying, ‘I have this window to fund all this craziness for a good period of time based on the SpaceX hype’,” Gerber said. “By merging the two losers with one winner, he keeps all the balls in the air. He keeps everything afloat.”
Brett Winton, who is the chief futurist at Ark Invest, an investment management firm that is a SpaceX investor, was more sanguine. Last year, Ark Invest predicted that SpaceX’s value would reach $US2.5 trillion by 2030. Winton said the scale of the IPO was a testament to what SpaceX could achieve.
“The amount is commensurate with the size of the opportunity,” he said.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
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