SpaceX targets biggest ever stock market debut, putting Musk on course to be trillionaire | SpaceX
Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to raise $75bn (£55bn) from a blockbuster stock market listing next week as the rocket company aims for its biggest ever IPO.
If the stock market launch, scheduled for June 12, goes as planned, founder Musk, the richest person in the world, could make history as the first trillionaire.
The rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, said in a filing on Wednesday that it would sell 555.6 million shares at $135 per share.
This would give loss-making SpaceX a market value of $1.77 trillion. Only six companies in the blue-chip S&P 500 stock index are worth more; US semiconductor company Nvidia tops the list with $5.2 trillion. The previous IPO record belonged to oil company Saudi Aramco, which went public in 2019 at a price of $1.7 trillion and raised $25.6 billion.
Musk is not selling any of his shares in the SpaceX bid and will retain 82.4% of the voting power in the company.
Forbes states that Musk’s net worth is $825 billion and his stake in SpaceX is $542 billion. The South African-born billionaire also leads social media platform X, as well as electric car maker Tesla. Forbes said in April that SpaceX would “almost guarantee his net worth will rise above $1 trillion.”
SpaceX is expected to have a large weighting in the S&P 500 due to its size, meaning most people with investment accounts or retirement funds will be exposed to stock market performance as investors in the company.
SpaceX filed a confidential application to go public in April. Founded in 2002, SpaceX has been at the center of Musk’s ambition to build a “self-sufficient city on Mars”. Since its founding, the company has been the recipient of lucrative aerospace contracts. NASA, for example, relies on SpaceX rockets for most of its launches.
SpaceX has also joined rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI in the race to scale up AI technology. The company acquired Musk’s xAI with the aim of creating a solar-powered infrastructure that can meet the energy demands of this AI boom era.
Anthropic, known for its artificial intelligence chatbot Claude, filed paperwork to go public this week. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is expected to follow suit soon. Google owner Alphabet moved this week to raise $80 billion in equity capital to finance its vast artificial intelligence infrastructure investments.
The wave of splashy IPOs and fundraising has been widely interpreted as an attempt to generate capital to fund data centers powering AI technology. SpaceX, home to Musk’s xAI company, wants to develop data centers in space and expects to launch “orbital computing” by 2028.
The expanded SpaceX business will be divided into three parts: the rocket launch unit; Starlink satellite broadband arm; and the AI company that includes social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Although the Starlink part is profitable, the entire business is at a loss. Despite the high valuation, the SpaceX business loses $4.9 billion in 2025 on revenue of $18.7 billion. But revenue is rising and is up by a third compared to the previous year.
The roadshow for SpaceX’s IPO is expected to begin Thursday; During this show, bankers who helped launch the deal will introduce the company to investors. SpaceX is seen by some market observers as a means for Musk to invest in entrepreneurial talent and capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom.
In the long term, some investors hope that a major merger could bring together Tesla, the electric car maker in which Musk owns an 11 percent stake, and SpaceX, and SpaceX, providing markets with a one-stop shop for investing in the tycoon.
“Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem, and the holy grail may be to gradually combine SpaceX and Tesla, providing the connected fabric between disruptive tech giants looking to lead the AI revolution,” said Dan Ives, an analyst at US financial services company Wedbush Securities.
JP Morgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon reportedly plans to discuss an IPO with thousands of the bank’s high-net-worth clients this week, according to Bloomberg.
Dimon will reportedly host a “live interactive discussion” at JP Morgan’s headquarters on Thursday, featuring Mary Callahan Erdoes, boss of the bank’s asset and asset management division, as well as two SpaceX executives – chairman Gwynne Shotwell and chief financial officer Bret Johnsen.
Space X’s listing represents a huge money-making opportunity for bankers. Last month, Goldman Sachs was named the lead bank for the IPO, along with Morgan Stanley. JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citigroup are among the 23 banks working on the listing.
