SpaceX to launch another secondary private stock sale, hints at going public
UPDATE: Elon Musk has posted on X that this story is “not accurate.”
According to reports yesterday, SpaceX is about to launch another secondary private stock sale that double the value of the company.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is initiating a secondary share sale that would give the company a valuation of up to $800 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
SpaceX is also telling some investors it will consider going public possibly around the end of next year, the report said.
At the elevated price, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor would be valued above ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which wrapped up a share sale at a $500 billion valuation in October.
At $800 billion, SpaceX would be the world’s most valuable private company.
As for going public, nothing is confirmed. Musk has made some comments suggesting he is considering the idea, but at the same time has noted the problems such a act would cause him.
Musk recently discussed whether SpaceX would go public during Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting last month. Musk, who is the CEO of both companies, said he doesn’t love running publicly traded businesses, in part because they draw “spurious lawsuits,” and can “make it very difficult to operate effectively.”
It seems to me it would be a big mistake for Musk to do this. As a public stock-trading company, Musk would lose the freedom he presently has with SpaceX.
Meanwhile, this new private stock offering has done wonders for the value of Echostar’s stock, now that the company’s own stake in SpaceX after selling it some of its FCC licensed spectrum.
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
UPDATE: Elon Musk has posted on X that this story is “not accurate.”
According to reports yesterday, SpaceX is about to launch another secondary private stock sale that double the value of the company.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is initiating a secondary share sale that would give the company a valuation of up to $800 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
SpaceX is also telling some investors it will consider going public possibly around the end of next year, the report said.
At the elevated price, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor would be valued above ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which wrapped up a share sale at a $500 billion valuation in October.
At $800 billion, SpaceX would be the world’s most valuable private company.
As for going public, nothing is confirmed. Musk has made some comments suggesting he is considering the idea, but at the same time has noted the problems such a act would cause him.
Musk recently discussed whether SpaceX would go public during Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting last month. Musk, who is the CEO of both companies, said he doesn’t love running publicly traded businesses, in part because they draw “spurious lawsuits,” and can “make it very difficult to operate effectively.”
It seems to me it would be a big mistake for Musk to do this. As a public stock-trading company, Musk would lose the freedom he presently has with SpaceX.
Meanwhile, this new private stock offering has done wonders for the value of Echostar’s stock, now that the company’s own stake in SpaceX after selling it some of its FCC licensed spectrum.
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
No!
SpaceX should never go public.
That’s just opening up a door for another MacDoug takeover with engineers back to being the low man on the totem pole again.
Don’t do it, Elon!
Elon has now posted that this reporting is false.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1997399963509150089?s=20
In fact, he goes into more detail than in the past regarding SpaceX finances, which I find to be very enlightening.
The financial press is pretty much the same as every other kind of press these days – anything for clicks and views, true or not. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this whole episode was ginned up by desperate Tesla short-sellers or other anti-Musk-ians who were looking for a quick pump-and-dump opportunity in Echostar shares – which, it would seem, they’ve gotten. Maybe not quite a formal conspiracy between market manipulators and “journalists” of easy virtue, but not more than an eighth of an inch from it.
I think a publicly-traded SpaceX would prove antithetical/obstructive to much that Elon wants to do – especially Mars. The whole outfit should stay privately-held, including Starlink.
Dick Eagleson wrote, “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this whole episode was ginned up by desperate Tesla short-sellers or other anti-Musk-ians who were looking for a quick pump-and-dump opportunity in Echostar shares – which, it would seem, they’ve gotten.”
That was my thought exactly once Musk denied the story.
It is frightening how systemic such corruption is now in American society.
“There has been a lot of press claiming __________, which is not accurate”.
In this case it was Elon on SpaceX.
Can anyone point to a single thing in the corporate propaganda media that has been accurate in the past 10 years? I’ll wait.
John: While we are of like minds when it comes to our modern corporate propaganda press, I must note that I do link to a lot of their stories, though when doing so I almost always have to note their corrupt spin so my readers can see the real story buried behind that propaganda.
This inability to report things straight speaks poorly of the current intellectual culture. Worse is the fact that the people doing it are completely unaware that they have a narrative that distorts their thinking.
Minor edit in first sentence: “that doubles the value of the company.”
My heart skips enough beats as it is…
I simply cannot see Elon taking SpaceX public in any way, shape or form until he *at least* has that first batch of colonists living on Mars.
I *could* see him taking Starlink public at some point in this decade, perhaps, once certain revenue levels had been reached. That is something he at least has hinted at doing previously.
Elon’s follow-on post is just the perfect rebuttal to a hundred variations of a certain ignorant misunderstanding of SpaceX and its relationship with NASA today.
Richard M: It is that 5% number that is so significant, and so ignored by too many. As I have noted numerous times, SpaceX doesn’t need NASA or the government any longer. It will take its business (that’s simply good sense) but it is funding its development and space effort from profits from others. This gives it a freedom that not even NASA has.
And, that 5% will continue to shrink as Starlink revenue surges ever higher, with each passing quarter.
NASA contracts are a “nice to have,” and likely a necessary price (unofficially) of continuing to lease NASA facilities like LC-39A; I know they take a certain pride in launching high prestige national missions like ISS crew and Europa Clipper. But the revenue is not do-or-die for them in the way it once was.
With the Europeans turning their nose up at Elon what with fines, chosing China’s product for Airbus–now would be a good time to nix NATO funding and put that towards NASA instead.
I am tired of babysitting them.
Forget for a moment the space/tech achievements of Musk/SpaceX, what they’ve accomplished and how they continue to perform as a business is remarkable.
A private company that almost ran out of money 17 years ago, operating in an industry dominated by major established players (including state backed entities) has come to utterly dominate, making profits not just from the core launch biz but from the Sat Comm biz.
Google and Amazon were game changing performers but not in a tech/hardware heavy biz like space. (And seeing how the smart/energetic Amazon founder’s space company’s accomplishments compare to SpaceX underlines my point).
I watch Marcus House’s weekly space news videos on You Tube. Of course most of the news is SpaceX – what astounds me is not just all the launches or the SH/Starship developments, but the sheer amount of infrastructure that SpaceX builds, then blows up, builds again, tears down for a new design and so on. When NASA needed a launch tower for SLS it took a $billion+ and a year/2 years? Space X is in the process of building 4 SH/Starship pads along with the rest of its activities. Astounding!
I have to figure there are business students/professors along with tech reporters studying SpaceX, hope there are some accurate/well researched books in the future.
The money NASA put into SpaceX is the best investment the US gov’t made this century.
Richard M,
I think taking Starlink public by itself would also be a mistake. Starlink is the once and future cash cow for everything else Musk intends to do anent space that isn’t contractual for NASA or the War Dept. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained by providing his enemies with additional places to try seating their pry bars.
To Mitch
NATO funding is the waste
https://redstate.com/adam-turner/2025/12/07/sorry-elon-but-other-nations-dont-care-about-freedom-of-speech-n2196882
NATO was to keep Europe free.
At least NASA money is BY Americans FOR Americans.
I don’t want to see one dime spent overseas.
Hello Dick,
“I think taking Starlink public by itself would also be a mistake.”
I’m inclined to think so, too. I only mean to say that there’s more of a case (lower risks) in just spinning off Starlink and going public once it reaches a certain point, than there is with SpaceX in toto. It’s the only IPO scenario I’ve even seen mooted in public by Elon or Gwynne.
Most likely, it won’t happen, I suspect. Elon knows what a hassle running a publicly traded company is. The extra capital you get comes with a high cost.
“It seems to me it would be a big mistake for Musk to do this. As a public stock-trading company, Musk would lose the freedom he presently has with SpaceX.”
Most commenters here seem to already know this, but for the readers who do not:
The freedom lost will be a sudden fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. Instead of betting the company on building a Martian colony, Musk may have to put the company’s innovations in directions that are more likely to produce near-term profits for the investors. In fact, he doesn’t even have to bet the company, but putting some of the company’s investments into something that could be unlikely to pay off could be seen as being against the investors’ interests. Going public could destroy SpaceX’s goal.
Keeping the company private reduces the oversight and interference by the government. The company can make sure that private investors are in favor of the goals that may be more expensive than they are worth. The investors are more likely to accept that risk. For a public company, the investors are self selected, and they may have desires that are very different than the company’s. For example, public investors may desire dividends, and if enough of them insist, then money that would have gone toward Mars may have to be paid out as dividends.
It is the government-interference in corporate America that creates a requirement that the companies focus on quarterly profits rather than long-term gains. Freedom in America is slowly being eroded by an overbearing government.
I don’t have access to Bloomberg, but they announced: SpaceX to Pursue 2026 IPO Raising Far Above $30 Billion
“SpaceX plans to go public at $1.5 trillion valuation in 2026, the largest IPO in history”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-09/spacex-said-to-pursue-2026-ipo-raising-far-above-30-billion?srnd=homepage-americas
Here is another source:
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/09/spacex-reportedly-planning-2026-ipo-with-1-5t-valuation-target/
Jay: I saw that also, and decided I would wait for Elon Musk’s guaranteed denial momentarily on X.
There are obviously games being played here to manipulate stocks for companies like Echostar, which are publicly traded but are now a part owner of SpaceX.
Robert Zimmerman & Jay,
Eric Berger has joined the SpaceX IPO chorus on Ars Technica and Elon has tweeted that his reporting is “accurate.” So it seems we were all wrong. SpaceX is going to do an IPO next year.
Why?
I’ve been giving this some thought.
Starlink has raised SpaceX’s annual revenue to a projected $15.5 billion for 2025 with several billion of that representing net profit. For 2026, revenue should handily exceed $20 billion with perhaps 10 of those billions as net profit. So what could be the impetus to raise $25 – $30+ billion in the next six months if that amount in profit should be in-hand within the next three years anyway?
The answer appears to be AI. It is known that Musk thinks the future of AI must not be left in the hands of people like Sam Altman and Larry Page. The only way to insure that doesn’t happen is for Musk and his companies to be the dominant AI players. I find this rationale quite convincing.
Toward this end, xAI and Tesla are both building out as much terrestrial AI data center infrastructure as they can. But there are sizable obstacles on this path. Siting hassles and energy supply are the most consequential of these. And these obstacles are faced by all major AI players, not just the Musk-iverse.
These considerations have driven increasing discussion, and a few start-up efforts, aimed at siting the needed AI data center capacity in space rather than on the ground. Among other things, it was the motivation behind Sam Altman’s recent unsuccessful attempt to buy Stoke Space.
Elon and his SpaceX, xAI and Tesla folks have apparently been busily formulating scenarios and running numbers for awhile and the conclusion seems to be that there is a way for the Musk-iverse companies to secure and extend the lead they already have over AI competitors by upping the ante still further and not only basing giant AI data centers in space, but actually doing most of the fabrication required on the Moon using lunar-sourced materials.
This sort of thing, especially at the required scale, needless to say, cannot be whistled up overnight. While a massive effort to industrialize the Moon is being ginned up, SpaceX has come up with an interim path forward involving use of modified versions of its Starlink birds as nodes in a distributed space-based AI data center that can begin deployment quite soon in the form of a piggy-back on additional Starlink build-out that was always going to happen anyway.
To meet the schedule required for all efforts, it seems, a fairly prompt infusion of at least $25 billion is needed sooner than it can be accumulated via Starlink-driven SpaceX profits. Thus, the IPO, even with all of the known downstream downsides, is now deemed worth pursuing because it gets the Musk-iverse AI efforts into an even more commanding position faster than would waiting for a comparable accumulation of profits from extant operations at their projected growth rates.
The projected timing of the IPO – mid-2026 – is likely based on a desire to demonstrate that Starship has reached at least an initial state of operational readiness by that time, making SpaceX’s stock more desirable than it would be at present. That allows more money to be raised by selling fewer shares to the general public.
Raising, say, $30 billion in an IPO that would value SpaceX at a total of $1.5 trillion implies selling just 2% of company-owned outstanding shares. Given how much appreciation their shares have already seen over the years and the huge bump in value that will be occasioned by the IPO, I foresee little or no prospect of major prompt share sales by long-time SpaceX investors.
So SpaceX will be public, but with very little of its total value in public hands, rendering moot many of the more common forms of public company downside. A hostile takeover would be impossible and even the inveterate Musk-hating shorts would find very limited leverage.
For SpaceX, the challenge of relatively quickly bootstrapping up a sizable industrial infrastructure on the Moon – from absolute scratch – means, at the very least – the following:
1) Everything Moon-related anent Starship will be pursued even more aggressively than it already has been even in the wake of all of the recent argy-bargy, in Congress and elsewhere, about Starship anent Artemis and the recent test stand failure of Super Heavy B18.
2) On-orbit refilling will be a thing ASAP in 2026 as will deployment of the first Starlink V3s with the AI data center payloads. Both might well happen before the IPO as that would boost the yield from same still more.
3) There will definitely be Earth-to-lunar-orbit-and-back Starships in both crew and cargo variants developed. The first of these could well be ready to sub in for SLS-Orion on Artemis 3.
4) The scale of what SpaceX and the rest of the Musk-iverse intend to do on the Moon will dwarf the Artemis program, as currently envisioned, into comparative insignificance. If the Musk-iverse lunar efforts can be compared to WW2, then Artemis is roughly comparable, on that scale, to a gang rumble in Chicago. The notional lunar efforts of the PRC will, on this scale, be comparable to a street mugging.
5) Given that Musk is already pretty much a half-trillionaire, with his net worth actually having briefly exceeded that amount on three separate occasions in recent weeks and continuing to be just below that level, this IPO should instantly catapult him over and past the trillionaire mark on his way to being the species’s first deci-trillionaire sometime in the 2030s.
It would be better if SpaceX didn’t have to go public, but tempus fugit and Elon – based on hard experience with Tesla – is going to arrange the SpaceX IPO so that as much as possible of the public company downsides do not descend upon SpaceX. I don’t think he would be planning to do this unless he thought it would provide him with advantages, overall – including accomplishing the Musk-iverse’s AI ambitions significantly sooner – that far eclipse the inevitable downsides.
If we think we’ve been living in interesting times to this point, I think we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Dick Eagleson: Your analysis made me consider this point: Musk created Falcon 9 but then discovered he didn’t have enough customers to his satisfaction (at least not then). He thus created Starlink to fill that need, and also created a profit-center to pay for further space development.
He is now creating Starship and has likely decided he needs more customers for it as well. Well, why not use AI data centers in orbit, inside Starships, to provide this new profit center.
Makes sense, and fits what you and Richard M has previously noted. I still however remain unconvinced that Musk has made a final decision. His tweet simply confirmed Berger’s report was accurate, but Berger’s report didn’t say the IPO was definitely happening, only that SpaceX is exploring the possibility.
Berger’s essay, anent Dick Eagleson’s comment:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/after-years-of-resisting-it-spacex-now-plans-to-go-public-why/
From that essay:
Musk’s tweet: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1997706687155720229
Launching satellites by mass driver/railgun suggests that sending satellites into orbit with a SpinLaunch or cannon is also practical and maybe economical.
Gerard K. O’Neal thought that lunar mass drivers would be good for getting material off the Moon in order to build orbital solar power satellites to power the Earth, but here we see that a whole lot of power may be used in orbit, too. Industrializing space, like this, is also an idea that Jeff Bezos had recommended in order to reduce the pollution on Earth.
I believe Berger is off by half an order of magnitude on both ends, so that the $1 trillion in launch costs may be closer to $100 billion. It may not seem like much, but in high finance, it is.
Currently, a Starship is estimated to be able to launch no more than 250 tons, requiring about 4,000 ships and somewhere around 40,000 refueling launches (if it comes from the Earth, not the Moon or from asteroids). Musk had estimated that a launch could cost as little as $2 million (before recent inflation, so it is probably more than $3 million, now), so the total cost could be rough-order-of-magnitude $100 billion or so.
However, this is a long way to get to my point that it looks like industrialization of space, using space-mined materials, is far closer to reality than we previously thought to be realistic. Those companies that wanted to do space mining could make a real killing sooner rather than later. Once we start manufacturing satellites in space, a complicated endeavor, we will easily be able to transfer that technology into making other goods in space, also using space-mined material.
It is beginning to look like the next decade will be much more exciting than this decade has been.