SpaceX skeptics concerned as Musk comments diverge from IPO filing
Elon Musk photographed at SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas.
Marvin Joseph | Washington Post | Getty Images
SpaceX filed for an IPO a week ago, and Elon Musk is already creating confusion.
Days before the reusable rocket maker was set to pitch its story to investors, Musk took to social network X (owned by SpaceX) late Wednesday to reveal details of the company’s recent partnership with rival artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. His comment included a potentially important consideration about the deal that was not included in SpaceX’s 300-plus page IPO. filing.
Earlier this month, SpaceX announced that it would lease unused computing capacity at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, to Anthropic. Last week’s prospectus said Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX “$1.25 billion per month through May 2029, and capacity will be increased at a reduced rate in May and June 2026.” The application also states, “The Agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.” The statement was also stated.
His x post “SpaceX has not committed to renting Colossus in years,” Musk wrote Wednesday night, describing the deal as “a 180-day lease with 90 days’ mutual notice of cancellation.” However, the prospectus said nothing about the potential for the deal to close within a few months.
Whether Anthropic will pay SpaceX $15 billion a year for the next three years or spend significantly less over a much shorter period of time is an important consideration for potential investors. SpaceX’s total revenue in 2025 was just $18.7 billion, and selling computing capacity from its data center provides an entirely new revenue stream. ICompetition with so-called neocloud providers such as nebius And CoreWeave.
Some investors are currently wary of buying into the largest IPO in history and backing a company with the largest IPO ever. While billions of dollars were burned every quarter, its value was over $1 trillion. Musk’s post also raises other questions about the company’s financial disclosures.
“The weird thing is that either Musk is right and the S-1 is materially misleading, or the S-1 is accurate and Elon is experiencing the same excitement,” Eric Talley, a Columbia Law School professor and corporate governance expert, said in an email. “But more than that, it’s confusing for investors trying to value SpaceX (as best they can).”
Anthropic declined to comment for this story, and SpaceX representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
The anthropic statement is not the only statement in SpaceX’s filing that analysts have stressed is not comprehensive enough.
Franco Granda, an analyst at PitchBook, cataloged a number of omissions in a report following the prospectus’s release.
“Critical explanations are missing,” Granda wrote. He wrote that the company did not cut subscriptions to Grok or
Artificial Intelligence Economy
The AI part of SpaceX is particularly challenging for investors to value.
Musk founded xAI in 2023 to try and take on OpenAI in the emerging generative AI market. While xAI remains a niche player in the market, Musk valued the business at $250 billion in February. merged it with SpaceX in a deal that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.
In the first quarter of this year, SpaceX’s capital expenditures more than doubled from the previous year, reaching $10.1 billion, with $7.7 billion of that tied to xAI, according to the prospectus. The AI unit, now known as SpaceXAI, recorded an operating loss of $2.5 billion in the quarter.
In choosing to lease its computing capacity to Anthropic, SpaceX was acknowledging that its AI models and services were not creating major demand and that it was not in a position to take advantage of the company’s costly infrastructure.
In his post on Wednesday night, Musk said he wanted to be able to cut the deal short if SpaceX needed capacity.
“We will not let them down and will provide a reasonable way out,” Musk wrote, referring to Anthropic. “But I said we might need it again at some point if computing gets too congested.”
Cathie Wood, a SpaceX bull from Ark Invest, praised Musk’s move to monetize xAI’s computing infrastructure, which cost billions of dollars to build.
“Thanks to its deal with Anthropic, XAI is now moving from massive losses at Colossus to significant profitability as a neocloud,” Wood wrote after the deal was announced on May 9. At the time, he estimated the move would bring in $5 to $6 billion in annual revenue.
That was before the IPO filing revealed an even larger figure, and well before Musk took action this week by effectively acknowledging that the disclosure had its shortcomings.
Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said SpaceX “should have accompanied the tweet with an explanation” because it amended the S-1 before the offer. He said via email that Musk’s post appeared to contradict the application, but that the differences might be “reconcilable.”
“Typically, this is accomplished by separately submitting an update to the SEC,” he wrote.
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