Elon Musk wants to take investors on a ride to the moon — and beyond.
His pioneering rocket company SpaceX filed Wednesday for what’s expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, potentially raising at least $75 billion and valuing the company at well over $1 trillion.
The registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an expected public offering next month explicitly sets aside stocks for retail investors, though the exact number will be spelled out in a later filing, as will the offering price and company valuation.
Interest in the stock offering is expected to be high despite the billionaire’s controversial politics, including his involvement last year with the Department of Government Efficiency, the makeshift cost-cutting effort that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of government jobs.
“Potential investors, are probably just as polarized as the electorate is, too, given his dabbling in politics,” said Carol Schleif, chief market strategist, for BMO Private Wealth. “But it’s not just the SpaceX IPO per se, it’s a bigger, broader excitement among investors for space investment in general.”
Investor interest was piqued by the Artemis moon mission earlier this year that SpaceX did not participate in, she said. However, the company is expected to play a larger role in future missions that land astronauts to the moon by ferrying them there in its massive Starship rocket under development.
Ultimately, Musk wants to establish a colony on Mars but those plans have been set on the back burner, with NASA now focusing on moon missions.
Founded in 2002 in El Segundo, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industy by developing the reusable Falcon 9 rocket that has radically lowered launch costs.
The company moved its headquarters from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024. However, SpaceX retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Since developing its reusable rocket technology, SpaceX has established its Starlink network as the leading satellite-based broadband internet service. It also is moving into satellite-based cellular service and last year merged with Musk’s xAi artificial intelligence company that also included his X social network.
The regulatory filing claims that the market for its rocket, internet and mobile telephone businesses could be as large as $28.5 trillion. The company also plans to send orbiting data centers powered by the sun that would perform AI calculations.
With the company making massive capital investments, it recorded a $4.28-billion loss in the first quarter.
The public offering is expected to hit the market next month after a “road show” during which SpaceX will seek to drum up interest from both institutional and retail investors.
It will arrive after a fairly quiet year for IPOs that was brightened last week when Cerebras Systems, a Sunnyvale company that makes semiconductors for AI supercomputers, went public.
Shares at Cerebras were offered at $185 and spiked 68% on its opening day. They closed Wednesday at $290.69.
Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said the SpaceX offering would dwarf Cerebras, as it is expected to raise more than every IPO combined in the last two years.
“A win here or a loss could really impact the IPO market,” he said. “The sheer size of this deal is going to make or lose fortunes.”
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