As is always the case, the paperwork arrived on a Wednesday. A prospectus with the ticker symbol SPCX and listing venue Nasdaq was discreetly submitted to the SEC. The rockets continued to be stacked somewhere in Boca Chica, Texas, even though traders in midtown were already exchanging rumors about the pricing range by the end of the afternoon. It seems both inevitable and a little unlikely that SpaceX will go public.
The figures are the kind that cause seasoned bankers to pause for a moment. An estimated $1.25 trillion. An IPO that might be the biggest in Wall Street’s history. At the center of it all is a founder who currently owns more shares of Tesla than the majority of people will ever own, and who is now in a position to simultaneously manage two publicly traded companies worth trillions of dollars. Elon Musk becomes the world’s first trillionaire on paper if the float prices are even close to the targets being discussed. It’s difficult not to question whether the financial system has ever had to absorb a single person’s wealth on this scale as you watch this play out.
The prospectus places Goldman Sachs at the top of the list, followed by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase. According to reports, the roadshow will begin on June 8. Slide decks, hotel ballrooms, and courteous inquiries from fund managers who have already made their purchasing decisions are examples of the standard equipment of a mega-IPO. The business that operates beneath it is not typical.
Last year, SpaceX made $18.6 billion and lost $4.9 billion. With $4.3 billion in losses compared to $4.7 billion in sales, the first quarter of this year was worse financially. The balance sheet displays $60.5 billion in debt and $102 billion in assets. Despite the fact that none of this appears to be a clear growth story, investors appear to think that the losses are the price of creating something that lacks a true benchmark. The BBC was informed by Ruth Foxe-Blader of Citrine Venture Partners that it wasn’t surprising that a project this ambitious was still losing money at IPO. She also described it as “extremely exciting,” a term used by venture capitalists who have already allocated their funds in their minds.
Upon closely examining the filing, it appears that SpaceX is selling more than just rockets. The company claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, which is nearly meaningless until you consider that NASA essentially depends on SpaceX for crewed access to orbit, that Starlink is currently beaming internet down from about 10,000 satellites, and that xAI, the artificial intelligence division Musk recently merged into SpaceX, recently signed a $15 billion-a-year data center deal with Anthropic. When you consider it, that final detail is truly peculiar. Grok is built by xAI, and Claude is built by Anthropic. They are direct rivals. Additionally, one is now paying the parent company of the other an annual amount for computation that is greater than the GDP of several small nations.
It is more difficult to ignore the lawsuits. A lengthy list of claims, including patent infringement, music copyright disputes, EU content moderation complaints inherited from X, data breach allegations, and multiple lawsuits over Grok being used to create sexualized deepfakes of real women and girls, led SpaceX to flag more than half a billion dollars in anticipated legal costs. It’s the kind of disclosure section that reads more like an independent company’s annual report than a footnote.
Employees still pass Falcon rocket stages on their way to the parking lot outside the SpaceX gates in Hawthorne, California. The Starship test program is still in progress. Years ago, Tesla faced similar skepticism, and those who persevered during that time became wealthy. It is currently unknown if the same pattern will recur here. A portion of the story will be told during the roadshow. Another part will be revealed on the first day of trading. It’s still unclear if the market is purchasing a defense contractor, an AI company, a rocket company, or just a wager on one man’s ability to continue fulfilling his commitments. Most likely all four. Most likely more.
