Rocket maker SpaceX has filed to make an initial public offering, according to a person familiar with the matter, becoming the second company run by Elon Musk to eye a stock market listing after the first one, Tesla, vaulted the billionaire to become the world’s richest person more than a decade after its 2010 debut.
SpaceX’s debut marks the most anticipated IPO in years, one that could set a record by making shares of the trillion-dollar firm publicly available. Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has established a foothold in satellite delivery, taken on numerous missions for NASA, put thousands of satellites into orbit and pioneered reusable rockets. Bloomberg News, which first reported on SpaceX’s confidential filing to go public, said the company could seek a $1.75 trillion valuation and debut on the stock market in June.
SpaceX did not immediately reply to request for comment. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private dealmaking.
SpaceX, which acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI earlier this year, is dedicated to Musk’s bets on placing humans on the moon and eventually taking them to Mars, establishing a colony there. Musk has also pushed the company to corner the market on satellite-based internet and has announced plans to put data centers, a key to artificial intelligence, in space. Through its xAI acquisition, it also now encompasses X, the social media site Musk bought for $44 billion in 2022 when it was called Twitter.
Gene Munster, managing partner at SpaceX investor Deepwater Asset Management, said the IPO is expected to “easily” set the record for market debuts, raising more than $80 billion in his estimate.
“The narrative around space is that it’s early and they’ve got the pole position,” he said of SpaceX. “I could see it go vertical right out of the gate.”
Munster said SpaceX’s diverse array of businesses would prove attractive to investors — from internet access to data centers to space exploration. The company is expected to make an unusually large amount of its shares available to retail investors, capitalizing on hype from individuals who want a stake in a flashy, Musk-run venture.
“Retail likes sizzle,” Munster said. “This is like the ultimate sizzle story.”
The regulatory environment that has fueled SpaceX’s growth is poised to expand with the appointment of Jared Isaacman, an executive handpicked by Musk to lead NASA. Isaacman’s nomination was withdrawn last year during a standoff between Musk and President Donald Trump, and was restored as part of an effort to repair relations with Musk, The Washington Post previously reported.
At the Hill and Valley conference in Washington last week, Isaacman described a future vision that mirrored Musk’s ambitions for SpaceX: a child looking up at the night sky and seeing “a lunar economy” with many people living and working on the moon, “a few million AI satellites,” and “lots of commercial space stations.”
Christian Garrett, a partner at 137 Ventures, a major SpaceX shareholder, said at the conference that the IPO would be a “major unlock” for the entire private space economy.
SpaceX’s flagship vehicle, Starship, stands around 400 feet and is intended “to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.” It is, SpaceX says, “the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.”
Recently, however, SpaceX has struggled to prove it is capable of carrying out a crewed moon mission, a priority of Trump’s second term. After a public feud with Transportation Secretary and then-acting NASA administrator Sean P. Duffy over doubts about SpaceX’s progress, Musk narrowed the company’s ambitions earlier this year. After years of aiming to place humans on Mars, SpaceX, he said, would now prioritize the moon.
“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk said in an X post in February. “SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”
The stock market debut is expected to further drive up the net worth of Musk, already the world’s richest person, months after he was offered an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package by Tesla last year — contingent on hitting certain valuations and other milestones.
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