Elon Musk's SpaceX is getting ready to break new records on Wall Street — and make one of the world's wealthiest men even wealthier.
The space-launch company filed financial information with regulators to pull off what could be the biggest initial public offering ever in mid-June. Though it did not disclose how much it intends to raise, previous media reports have said SpaceX could raise about $80 billion in its IPO.
That would make it by far the largest IPO in history — much higher than the $29 billion that Saudi Aramco eventually raised after its 2019 offering.
The deal could also value the company at over $1 trillion — making SpaceX one of the most valuable companies in the world, and potentially even worth more than Musk's electric-vehicle company, Tesla.
It would also massively enrich Musk, who's already one of the world's wealthiest people and who could become its first trillionaire. The former adviser to President Trump has a controlling interest in the company, according to the documents.
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SpaceX's IPO is a big AI bellwether
SpaceX's initial public offering has been expected for months. Earlier this year, the company filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to start the process of selling its shares to the public, the Associated Press and others reported in April.
SpaceX's IPO could set off a blockbuster year for Wall Street, which is also anticipating potential IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic, the makers of ChatGPT and Claude, respectively. Such IPOs will put a public value on — and eventually allow ordinary investors to buy into — some of the most powerful private tech companies driving the AI boom.
SpaceX is among them. In addition to making reusable rockets and running its Starlink satellite communications platform, the company last year also merged with Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI.
The document shows that in the first quarter of this year, two of SpaceX's three main businesses lost money. Its rocket launching business lost $662 million according to the document, while it's AI business lost nearly $2.5 billion. Only its satellite communications business, which runs internet service provider Starlink, turned a profit of $1.1 billion. Overall, the company lost $4.2 billion between January and March.
The pros and cons of IPOs for companies – and ordinary investors
IPOs allow public-markets investors, including individual investors, to buy shares in some of the buzziest and high-profile companies. The deals also raise tremendous amounts of money for the companies that are selling these shares, and the private investors who have funded their pre-IPO growth.
Analysts are also hoping that the SpaceX IPO will kickstart a relatively slow market for initial public offerings in the past several years.
But there are some risks for individual investors looking to buy into SpaceX as it goes public. Post-IPO companies tend to see their share prices underperform the broader market.
"Historically speaking … it's pretty jarring how bad it is," says Franco Granda, a research analyst who covers SpaceX for the data firm PitchBook.
He adds that for closely watched companies like SpaceX, which saw its valuation soar under private ownership, going public also means being much more open to scrutiny from financial regulators — and the general public.
"Now they're under much heavier scrutiny, and the [big] valuation sometimes is hard to justify," he says.
SpaceX's public value is closely tied to Elon Musk
Perhaps no company is more closely tied to Elon Musk than SpaceX. Musk founded the company in 2002, with the goal of one day creating a self-sustaining colony on Mars. He single-handedly revolutionized the rocket industry by creating a reusable first-stage that saved huge amounts of money.
SpaceX has gone on to win numerous contracts launching defense satellites, commercial payloads and even astronauts on board its Dragon capsule. It's secured billions in contracts from the Department of Defense and NASA. According to an analysis by the independent firm Brycetech, 85% of all launches last year were aboard SpaceX rockets – putting the private company ahead of even nation states like China and Russia.
Despite this dominance, launching things into space actually accounts for only a small part of SpaceX's revenue, says Tim Farrar, president of TMF associates. By far, the larger part of the company's revenue comes from its satellite internet business through Starlink.
But Farrar thinks even Starlink can't entirely justify a trillion-dollar valuation.
"The valuation is completely dependent on the degree to which people believe in Elon Musk," he said. "It's not dependent on the current business."
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