SpaceX confirmed plans to sell shares of its stock to the public for the first time, according to a securities filing Wednesday outlining the company’s fundamentals.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
The initial public offering (IPO) could make CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, a milestone that underscores the extraordinary wealth the tech industry has amassed over three decades.
SpaceX’s IPO is expected to draw wide investor interest because of the company’s success in rockets and satellite-based internet — two areas where SpaceX has a wide lead over potential competitors. The IPO is expected next month after a marketing period when Musk can try to drum up further interest in the company’s stock.
It would likely be the biggest IPO ever, surpassing the debut of Saudi Aramco. In 2020, the Middle Eastern oil company raised $29.4 billion from investors in its IPO.
The IPO is a test of investors’ appetite for Musk, after years of him trying to balance his business empire with his far-right politics and white-supremacist conspiracy theories. Only a year ago, Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, was the target of nationwide protests at Tesla dealerships due to his chainsaw-wielding tenure as head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Tesla’s business is continuing through a rocky period, with declining revenue, rising capital costs and a dearth of new products.
Musk, though, has maintained a core of devoted fans, and many of them have poured money into Tesla by buying the company’s products and stock over the years. The wealthiest person in the world, Musk had a net worth of $667 billion as of Tuesday, according to Bloomberg News.
And SpaceX has benefited from numerous valuable government contracts with agencies such as NASA and the Defense Department to provide rocket launching services and communications systems.
SpaceX has several major lines of business. It offers a rocket service, which sends satellites, equipment and people into space for a wide array of clients including NASA. Musk says he eventually wants the service to lead in colonizing the Moon and Mars, although he has recently pulled back on his Mars ambition.
An updated version of its Starship megarocket is expected to launch this week, but the business isn’t without dangers: A worker at a SpaceX facility in Texas died last week after falling from scaffolding, according to The Texas Tribune, and Reuters earlier documented hundreds of unreported worker injuries at SpaceX.
The company owns Starlink, the satellite-based internet service that has proved especially popular in rural areas. Starlink, while Musk was in the government last year, reached deals with several governments and foreign telecommunications companies to expand overseas. (The service competes in some places with Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal.)
And SpaceX serves as a home for Musk’s ambitions related to artificial intelligence. SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI startup, xAI, in February, and earlier this month, Musk said he plans to dissolve xAI entirely as a separate company and put SpaceX in charge of all his AI products.
By Musk’s own account, though, xAI is a distant competitor in AI compared to market leaders Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. SpaceX signed a deal this month to sell data center capacity to Anthropic. Earlier this week, Musk lost a courtroom showdown with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after a jury found that Musk waited too long to sue over his claims that OpenAI had strayed too far from its nonprofit origins.
SpaceX also owns X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.
SpaceX would be among the Top 10 most valuable companies in the world by market capitalization if the company succeeds at its goal of a $2 trillion valuation. Tesla’s market capitalization was about $1.3 trillion Wednesday.
The securities filing, known as an S-1, provides an unprecedented look under the hood of a company ahead of an IPO, outlining revenue, capital spending, litigation risks and other factors for potential investors to consider. It was also expected to include a list of SpaceX’s major investors so far.
A big question ahead of the S-1’s release was how much voting power Musk would retain over SpaceX and how the company might utilize different classes of stock to give Musk greater influence even as a minority shareholder.
Leave a Reply