SpaceX Files for IPO, Sets Record Valuation at $1.75 Trillion

SpaceX has officially filed for an IPO, disclosing financial details of a company that revolutionized rocketry and now aims to take humanity to Mars and build AI data centers in space.

A successful offering could value SpaceX at a record $1.75 trillion, making Elon Musk the first person in history with a trillion-dollar fortune. This reflects the success of the reusable rocket strategy many once dismissed as impossible.

The IPO, announced Wednesday, may open the door for a wave of major listings in coming months, including tech giants OpenAI and Anthropic. If successful, SpaceX would instantly become one of the most valuable public companies and the second Musk enterprise to surpass $1 trillion in market capitalization, after Tesla.

Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has grown into the world’s leading space company by launching thousands of Starlink internet satellites. Most of its $18.67 billion in revenue last year came from a network of about 10,000 satellites providing broadband internet to consumers, governments, and businesses.

SpaceX’s pioneering use of reusable rockets has reshaped space economics, forcing rivals like Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to play catch-up as the commercialization of space intensifies. Private companies compete to lower launch costs, deploy satellite networks, and win government contracts.

While much of SpaceX’s future growth depends on AI-related businesses, its young xAI unit is still posting losses, according to the filing.

The regulatory announcement comes during a crucial week, with SpaceX preparing to test-launch the next-generation Starship rocket. Plans to send people to the Moon, Mars and expand Starlink all depend on this vehicle. The test flight, initially set for Tuesday, has been delayed to later this week.

SpaceX’s board has granted Musk control but tied most of his compensation to bold goals: establishing a permanent colony on Mars and building space data centers with computing power equivalent to 100 terawatts, or 100,000 1-gigawatt nuclear reactors.

The share sale is expected as early as June 11, with a listing soon after.

Celebrity appeal may draw investors

Analysts and academics say the star power of CEO Elon Musk may matter more to some investors than SpaceX’s fundamentals, since no comparable company exists to benchmark its value.

SpaceX says it is targeting a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion across all business lines, with the majority of future revenue expected from AI. First-time disclosures in the S-1 filing show SpaceX relies on Starlink revenue but believes long-term prospects lie in unprofitable AI and related infrastructure activities.

The $1.75 trillion valuation, if achieved, would surpass the IPO record of Saudi Aramco, which debuted on the Riyadh exchange at $1.7 trillion in 2019. Reuters previously reported that SpaceX expects to raise over $75 billion in this offering.

The scale of the deal draws attention to Musk’s increasingly interconnected business empire, often called “Muskonomy,” which includes Tesla and AI and brain-chip ventures. SpaceX merged with xAI in a deal that valued the rocket company at $1 trillion and the Grok chatbot developer at $250 billion.

Analysts say concerns about Musk managing multiple companies with a combined market value exceeding a trillion dollars could weigh on investor sentiment.

SpaceX plans to reserve a significant portion of shares for retail investors. The company will list on Nasdaq under the ticker ‘SPCX’. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan are the underwriters.