Record listing: SpaceX headquarters is shown in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX’s IPO is already set to be the biggest of all time, with the amount raised expected to be as much as US$50bil, even before it included xAI. — Reuters
LOS ANGELES: SpaceX has held meetings with banks from outside the United States for its initial public offering (IPO), according to people familiar with the matter, as Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker targets a listing this year on an ambitious timeline.
Foreign banks pitched for roles at SpaceX’s California office in mid-January, with one grouping comprising European banks and another made up of firms from other regions, some of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public.
The meetings for junior roles to fill out the bank lineup for the IPO took place before the announcement on Monday that SpaceX would acquire Musk’s xAI, the people said.
The combined company is still expecting to hold the IPO later this year, Bloomberg News has reported.
Bankers were encouraged to make the case for why their firms’ position in their respective region matters, some of the people said.
Before the banks pitched, SpaceX had already interviewed the big Wall Street firms. Bank of America Corp, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley are the four Wall Street lenders that have been lined up to lead SpaceX’s listing, people familiar with the matter have said.
No final decisions have been made and details of the IPO could change, the people said.
A representative for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
SpaceX’s IPO was already set to be the biggest of all time, with the amount raised expected to be as much as US$50bil, even before it included xAI.
Such a deal would likely need a vast army of banks in its syndicate in order to meet that goal.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s 2014 IPO in New York raised US$25bil, and listed 35 firms as underwriters, including banks from across the United States, Europe and Asia.
Musk’s rocket company is considering earmarking a significant portion of the shares for retail investors, with Robinhood Markets Inc vying for a key role on the IPO, people familiar with the matter have said.
Musk fans who have stakes in Tesla Inc are already lobbying for priority access to SpaceX shares, and voted a question on the topic to the top of the ranking ahead of the carmaker and robot firm’s earnings last month.
A listing would bring the world’s largest private company onto the public market, with the xAI acquisition valuing the combined firm at US$1.25 trillion – assigning SpaceX a valuation of US$1 trillion, and xAI a value of US$250bil, people familiar with the matter have said. — Bloomberg
