CHICAGO: SpaceX boosted its target initial public offering (IPO) valuation above US$2 trillion, according to sources, as the world’s most valuable startup gears up to pitch potentially the biggest-ever market debut.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence (AI) company and its advisers are floating the figure to prospective investors in its IPO, the sources said, ahead of meetings in the coming weeks.
The so-called testing-the-waters briefings would likely include more detail that would support the valuation, Bloomberg News has reported.
At more than US$2 trillion, SpaceX’s valuation would increase by nearly two thirds in a matter of months.
The company’s acquisition of Musk’s xAI valued the combined company at US$1.25 trillion, Bloomberg News reported in February.
It would also be bigger than all but five of the companies in the S&P 500 Index – Nvidia Corp, Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc.
It would be larger by that metric than Meta Platforms Inc. and Musk’s own Tesla Inc, the two other members of the so-called Magnificent 7 stocks.
SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO that could take place in June, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.
The listing would make SpaceX the first of a potential trio of mega-IPOs, followed by OpenAI and Anthropic PBC, whose chatbots are rivals to SpaceX subsidiary xAI’s Grok.
Deliberations are ongoing and details of the offering could still change, the sources said.
A representative for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
SpaceX leads launch and low-earth orbit communication/broadband offerings, with the xAI merger and planned IPO supporting investment in larger launch vehicles and data centres in space.
Launch and Starlink still generate the majority of revenue, approaching US$20bil in 2026, as xAI is likely to garner less than US$1bil.
Launch and Starlink are peer leaders with significant distance from rivals.
A listing for SpaceX would raise as much as US$75bil, Bloomberg News has reported.
At that size, it would dwarf the biggest ever IPO, Saudi Aramco’s US$29bil debut in 2019.
The company would use the funds to fund Musk’s vision of AI data centres in space and a factory on the moon.
The billionaire’s grand plans will require unprecedented amounts of capital and resources that span several of the companies he controls.
Furthermore, Musk said in March that his Terafab project, which would eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, AI and space data centres, will be jointly run by Tesla and SpaceX. — Bloomberg
