SpaceX files initial paperwork for going public
SpaceX yesterday filed the first confidential paperwork the the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO) of public stock, now targeting a June-July time frame.
The filing was reported by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The SEC said it had no comment on the matter. The filing will lead to a sale of shares by June or July, according to the published reports. Confidential filings are used by companies to share information with the SEC and investors before they have to disclose to the broader public.
How much SpaceX plans to raise through a sale of some of its shares are not yet available due to the confidential nature. But CEO and principal shareholder Elon Musk is expected to control a majority of voting shares once the details are revealed. And it could make Musk, already the world’s richest person, that much richer.
SpaceX was valued at $800 billion and xAI $230 billion at their most recent funding round in January according to PitchBook, a research firm that tracks the valuation of private companies. That puts the combined companies’ worth at more than $1 trillion.
SpaceX also now includes X (formerly Twitter) that Musk bought for $44 billion, so the combined company is actually even larger. We still do not know any details, such as the number of shares to be sold as well as the initial sale price. One rumor has indicated that SpaceX wants to reserve 30% for sale to individuals, a number much higher than usual. Other rumors say that Musk is designing the sale to make sure he remains the majority stock-holder and thus in control of all three companies.
Stock experts have predicted this stock sale could garner SpaceX as much as $75 billion in cash, which would give it the resources to not only build its proposed million-satellite data center constellation in orbit but also develop the Starship/Superheavy infrastructure to build its own data center on the Moon. And along the way SpaceX would have the funds to do its own space program to settle Mars.
If SpaceX does raise that much, it will truly become America’s space program, doing far more that NASA and much faster — financed voluntarily by the American people.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX yesterday filed the first confidential paperwork the the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO) of public stock, now targeting a June-July time frame.
The filing was reported by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The SEC said it had no comment on the matter. The filing will lead to a sale of shares by June or July, according to the published reports. Confidential filings are used by companies to share information with the SEC and investors before they have to disclose to the broader public.
How much SpaceX plans to raise through a sale of some of its shares are not yet available due to the confidential nature. But CEO and principal shareholder Elon Musk is expected to control a majority of voting shares once the details are revealed. And it could make Musk, already the world’s richest person, that much richer.
SpaceX was valued at $800 billion and xAI $230 billion at their most recent funding round in January according to PitchBook, a research firm that tracks the valuation of private companies. That puts the combined companies’ worth at more than $1 trillion.
SpaceX also now includes X (formerly Twitter) that Musk bought for $44 billion, so the combined company is actually even larger. We still do not know any details, such as the number of shares to be sold as well as the initial sale price. One rumor has indicated that SpaceX wants to reserve 30% for sale to individuals, a number much higher than usual. Other rumors say that Musk is designing the sale to make sure he remains the majority stock-holder and thus in control of all three companies.
Stock experts have predicted this stock sale could garner SpaceX as much as $75 billion in cash, which would give it the resources to not only build its proposed million-satellite data center constellation in orbit but also develop the Starship/Superheavy infrastructure to build its own data center on the Moon. And along the way SpaceX would have the funds to do its own space program to settle Mars.
If SpaceX does raise that much, it will truly become America’s space program, doing far more that NASA and much faster — financed voluntarily by the American people.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“Stock experts have predicted this stock sale could garner SpaceX as much as $75 billion in cash, which would give it the resources to not only build its proposed million-satellite data center constellation in orbit but also develop the Starship/Superheavy infrastructure to build its own data center on the Moon. ”
What??? Only $75 billion to get one million satellite data center? Are you kidding me? Try $1 to 5 trillion. $75 billion is rounding error.
In my mailbox today, “Starlink Residential 100Mbps internet, discounted to $35/month. Order Now, Ends April 30th.”
J Fincannon,
While you are likely correct that $75 billion won’t be enough to build out an entire million-sat AI data center constellation in Earth orbit, especially while an aggressive lunar industrialization program is also going on, fed by the same kitty, it doesn’t have to be enough.
Just as the Starlink constellation started coining serious bank before it was more than 5% complete, the same will certainly be true of the SpaceX AI data center, literal, megaconstellation. Gross profit from early-stage operations of the Earth-orbital AI data center fleet will contribute to what continues to be a rapidly rising pile of cash being thrown off by Starlink and its recently-announced upcoming global cell service adjunct Starlink Mobile.
This “adjunct” will almost certainly surpass its sibling in generated revenue once it reaches minimum viable service capability. This latter service, in particular, has the potential to pull in billions per month even if it adds only 50 cents, say, to the monthly bills of even half of the world’s cell phone users. And, to the extent SpaceX operates this service as a straight replacement, rather than an adjunct, to terrestrial cell services, the average monthly bill could well be lower with SpaceX taking the entire amount. As with Internet broadband, Starlink Mobile would appeal most, as a stand-alone cell service, to people in rural-to-suburban areas.
By 2030, SpaceX will have sufficient cash flow to be able to afford to continue both its Earth-orbit AI data center project and the industrialization of the Moon and construction of a lunar mass driver to deploy tens of millions more AI data center sats in lunar and/or cis-lunar Earth and/or trans-lunar Earth and/or solar orbits.
In short, it isn’t necessary to have $1 trillion in-hand to get started. $75 billion will do nicely. The rest will be there by the time it’s needed.
“…financed voluntarily by the American people.”. This is the key point.
What you want is some level of independence.
If an atomic Moonbase becomes self sufficient, it won’t matter as much if the market crashes or people vote against space spending. THAT’S what is most important.
I always wonder if the moon will become “a harsh mistress?”
That was Camilla
Dick Eagleson,
“While you are likely correct that $75 billion won’t be enough to build out an entire million-sat AI data center constellation in Earth orbit, especially while an aggressive lunar industrialization program is also going on, fed by the same kitty, it doesn’t have to be enough.”
The sentence I quoted suggested all million orbiting data centers would cost $75,000 each . There is no “likely” in this. $75 billion is _definitely_ not enough to build one million data centers.
Elon just poisoned his own well:
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/musk-asks-spacex-ipo-banks-buy-grok-ai-subscriptions-nyt-reports-2026-04-03/
That no one has to beg to build American wonders Virginia class submarines or SLS) is a strength.
And as to the blurb about such an so being “financed voluntarily,” apparently Elon didn’t get the memo.
Here’s the thing….Wall Streeters are more Bob Smith than Limp, so that they can say “no” to funding Musk’s projects a weakness–they don’t want to hear about “hardware rich” this or experimental that.
Now, the best thing about this little war is that it has shown just how vulnerable conventional military force projection really is, so I think a better course of action would be to cut federal dollars to F-35 and to boost Space Force at expense of the USAF, that goes through a. SLS program ‘s cost per hour with far less to show for it.
Early ICBMs blew up a lot too—but Uncle Sam supported it when investors would run…. because space/missiles/rocketry is too important to be left up to junk bond dweebs with no patriotism.
Jeff Wright,
As usual you seem to have no idea how anything related to business and finance – especially at this level – actually works.
Elon is not “begging” anything from anyone. He’s not some street bum rattling a tin cup. He’s bringing these Wall Streeters a deal that will make any of them involved a nice piece of change and even garner them a small slice of the pie being baked. Given that said “pie” now includes the corporate entity behind Grok, it is actually in the interest of the Wall Streeters to selectively support the AI products of the entity for which they are helping to secure financing.
After all, it’s not as though big banks can simply ignore AI, either as a thing or, especially, as an investment. Given that they will have to deal with AI in some fashion, it simply makes good sense to throw in with the guy who has baldly stated that this entire IPO thing is aimed at securing indisputable leadership in the AI arena. Elon is not engaging in mendicancy here, he’s appealing to rational self-interest and sweetening the pot a bit.
Why you compare this all to – variously – ICBMs, Virginia-class submarines and SLS is interesting as you apparently see no difference between government-purchased public goods and an entirely private sector financing deal. In any case, all of these things were, at the end of the day, provided by private sector contractors, though I will grant you that the difference between private sector contractor and state-owned enterprise has been eroded quite a bit in recent decades in the case of the legacy primes and their major pilotfish and crumb-chaser subordinates.
Even here, there are useful distinctions to be made. Early blow-up-y ICBMs were a thing six or seven decades ago. I was around in those days. There was talk of a “Missile Gap.” The priority was speed, even if that meant breaking things – a lot. The legacy primes were mostly still being run by their founder-entrepreneurs in those days and they had a much more Elon-like attitude about these things. Which didn’t make them anathema to investors of the era either – quite the contrary.
Returning to the here-and-now, the Virginia-class boats are not a good comparand to SLS. For one thing, their production rate is a lot higher. For another thing, the Virginias qualify as durable goods – in spades. Each of these boats is likely to serve at least 30 years in harness before retirement.
SLS, on the other hand, is pretty much insanely expensive Brobdignagian ammunition – you buy it, you load it, you fire it, you never see it again. Not a good deal for something that actually costs as much or more per unit as a Virginia-class boat.
You want a rocket that has some actual comparability to a Virginia-class SSN? Try Starship. They’re both big, round, sleek and made of steel and are both intended to have long life-times in service.
Virginia will actually function.
Elon isn’t the issue here, it’s Wall Street.
Some of the Musk shine has worn off, and the bankers (who had no problem DE-banking Americans) are fearing a Blue Wave.
It doesn’t matter that SpaceX is ahead of Bezos, so long as he is the less “toxic” choice.
These are the same scum who de-banked people. I am being sued by Bank of America in that I either payed on debt or pay medicine. I was in hospital with lungs full of clots, a bad heart valve—and a “spot” on a kidney.
I got the summons today—Easter Sunday—no lie.
When Medical Center East killed my parents when I was in my 30’s, I could not find one attorney to help me—-but the Mammon worshipers can be expected to act like jackals if they sniff blood.
It might be a little harder for them to go after Elon than me—but don’t think they won’t try.