Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO plans reveal massive spending: NPR

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is poised to break new records on Wall Street and make one of the world’s richest men even richer.

The space launch company filed financial information with regulators in mid-June in what could be the largest initial public offering in history. The company did not disclose the amount raised, but previous media reports said it was seeking about $80 billion.

That would make it the largest IPO in history, far surpassing the $29 billion Saudi Aramco ultimately raised after going public in 2019.

The deal could value the company at more than $1. This makes SpaceX one of the most valuable companies in the world, potentially even more valuable than Musk’s electric car company Tesla.

The IPO will also bring Musk a huge fortune. Mr Musk is already one of the world’s richest people and could become the world’s first billionaire. The former adviser to President Trump controls 85% of the company’s voting power, according to documents filed Wednesday.

SpaceX’s IPO is a big flag-bearer for AI

SpaceX’s initial public offering has been anticipated for months. Earlier this year, the company filed confidential documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to begin the process of selling its stock to the public, the Associated Press and others reported in April.

IPOs could be a blockbuster year for Wall Street, with potential listings by OpenAI and Anthropic, makers of ChatGPT and Claude, also expected. Such IPOs create public value for some of the most powerful privately held technology companies driving the AI ​​boom, making them ultimately available for purchase by retail investors.

SpaceX is among them. The company has already cornered the space launch market, making reusable rockets and building Starlink, the world’s only satellite internet service. Last year, it merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI. Musk hopes to build orbiting data centers, lunar bases, and eventually put humans on the surface of Mars.

SpaceX is spending an eye-watering amount of money to realize these ambitions, according to filings. Last year, xAI more than doubled its capital expenditures to $12.7 billion in data center development and construction. Last year, the company spent an additional $3 billion developing its massive new rocket, Starship.

In the first quarter of this year, two of SpaceX’s three major businesses suffered losses. The rocket launch business reported an operating loss of $662 million, and the AI ​​business posted a loss of nearly $2.5 billion. Only the satellite communications business, which operates Starlink, had an operating profit of $1.2 billion. Overall, the company reported total revenue of $4.7 billion and a net loss of nearly $4.3 billion from January to March.

Advantages and disadvantages of IPOs for companies and public investors

IPOs allow public market investors, including individual investors, to buy shares in the most talked about and best-known companies. The deal will also raise a huge amount of money for the companies selling these shares and the individual investors who have been funding their pre-IPO growth.

Analysts also hope SpaceX’s IPO will reinvigorate the initial public offering market, which has been relatively sluggish over the past few years.

However, there are some risks for individual investors considering purchasing SpaceX as it goes public. Post-IPO companies tend to believe that their stock price will underperform the overall market.

“Historically… it’s pretty shocking how bad it is,” said Franco Granda, a research analyst covering SpaceX at data firm Pitchbook.

He added that for a high-profile company like SpaceX, whose valuation soared while under private ownership, going public would also mean more exposure to scrutiny from financial regulators and the general public.

“They are now under even greater scrutiny; [big] “Sometimes it’s difficult to justify the valuation,” he says.

SpaceX’s public value is closely tied to Elon Musk

Perhaps no company is more closely associated with 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 won numerous contracts to launch defense satellites, commercial payloads, and even astronauts aboard its Dragon capsule. It has won multibillion-dollar contracts from the Department of Defense and NASA. SpaceX rockets accounted for 85% of all launches last year, with private companies outpacing even nations such as China and Russia, according to an analysis by independent firm Blytech.

Despite this advantage, space launches actually represent only a small portion of SpaceX’s revenue, said Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates. The majority of the company’s revenue comes from Starlink. The company generated $11.4 billion in revenue from its connectivity division in 2025, compared to $4.1 billion from its space launch division and $3.2 billion from its AI business, according to the filing.

But Farrar believes even Starlink can’t fully justify its $1 trillion valuation.

“The rating depends entirely on how much people believe in Elon Musk,” he said. “It doesn’t depend on the current business.”