TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX has taken a key step toward going public after confidentially filing for a potentially record-breaking initial public offering, according to multiple reports citing people familiar with the matter, in what space leaders hope is a watershed moment for the industry.
The move puts the company on track to raise as much as $75 billion in a June IPO that could target a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion, reported Bloomberg, which first covered the filing earlier today.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has floated the idea of taking SpaceX public for more than a decade, often saying the company would wait until its Starship rocket and broader Mars colonization plans were more firmly underway. In the meantime, investors have gained limited access through private secondary share sales.
The company has not commented on whether it submitted an IPO filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission via a confidential route, which would enable it to receive feedback from the regulator and revise disclosures before they are made public.
Key details, including the number of shares to be sold and the expected price range, are typically revealed in subsequent filings.
SpaceX is also reportedly exploring a dual-class share structure that would give Musk and other insiders outsized voting control.
The company could allocate up to 30% of shares to retail investors, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Investor spotlight
The filing marks a pivotal moment for a space sector that is increasingly attracting mainstream market investors, even as SpaceX’s valuation raises questions about how much weight to place on future ambitions.
SpaceX’s core launch and Starlink broadband businesses generated $15 billion to $16 billion in annual revenue last year, Reuters reported in January, with profits reaching about $8 billion.
Much of the company’s projected value, however, is expected to be tied to bets that extend beyond established operations, such as plans to deploy up to a million orbital data centers to support surging artificial intelligence workloads.
Despite significant technical and economic hurdles, orbital data centers are gaining traction across the industry, with two-year-old startup Starcloud recently raising $170 million from investors seeking exposure to this emerging market.
“SpaceX is the most anticipated IPO in history,” said satellite industry analyst Armand Musey.
“However, there are lots of questions about valuation and how the current company can justify the price talk. It can’t. At the end of the day, the IPO pricing is a bet on Elon Musk’s and his team’s ability to deliver new products and services that either don’t exist or that we might not even foresee.”
Future opportunities
While markets often price in future innovation, Musey said the extent to which SpaceX’s valuation depends on unproven opportunities is unusual, even given its strong track record.
“Data centers in space face many challenges, including the cost of space-hardened equipment, launch costs, the massive size of required solar arrays, and heat dissipation — just to name a few,” he added.
“When you put these together, it’s hard to see how space is a better place for data centers than on Earth. On the other hand, Musk has accomplished a lot of things people thought were impossible.”
For others, that track record supports a far more expansive view of SpaceX’s long-term potential.
“SpaceX’s valuation is not based on its current business model, but rather what is possible in the future of space, including becoming an interplanetary species through Elon’s vision of going to Mars,” said Ross Carmel, a partner at securities law firm Sichenzia Ross Ference Carmel, which advises companies on IPOs.
“When you take the most technologically advanced space company in SpaceX, coupled with the greatest visionary and entrepreneur of our generation in Elon, you cannot determine valuation based on today’s metrics, but rather the potential of what SpaceX can be and accomplish in the near future in space, artificial intelligence, energy and critical minerals and resources.”