Elon Musk on Wednesday night appeared to confirm reports that his rocket company, SpaceX, is preparing to go public in the new year at an estimated valuation of above $1 trillion, in what could be the biggest IPO of all time.
Key Takeaways
- In the past few weeks, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have reported on SpaceX’s recent private market offerings and its plans to go public in 2026.
- On Wednesday, Musk reacted to an article by ArsTechnica Space Editor Eric Berger on why SpaceX was planning to go public now after “years of resisting it.”
- Berger shared his article on X and wrote: “Here’s why I think SpaceX is going public soon,” and Musk responded: “As usual, Eric is accurate,” without elaborating.
- The billionaire did not make any follow-up posts on the matter, but he reposted an older SpaceX post promising human space travel.
What Do We Know About Spacex Ipo Reports?
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported SpaceX was conducting a secondary share sale. This private market offering valued the company at $800 billion, which is double the $400 billion valuation from the company’s July secondary share sale. According to the report, SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen told the rocket company’s investors it was considering an IPO in 2026. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was pressing forward with its IPO plans, seeking to raise “significantly more than $30 billion.” The report added that the company was targeting a valuation of about $1.5 trillion, almost double the valuation reported by the Journal for the secondary share sale. Citing unnamed sources, the Bloomberg report added that the public listing could happen sometime around “mid-to-late 2026,” but it may also slip in 2027.
Big Number
$29.4 billion. That is how much Saudi state-owned oil giant Aramco raised in its 2020 public offering, making it the largest IPO of all time. The IPO initially raised $25.6 billion, but this grew to $29.4 billion after the company exercised an option to issue an additional 450 million shares due to increased demand. According to Bloomberg, SpaceX’s IPO plans to “significantly more” than $30 billion, which would eclipse Aramco’s record.
Tangent
The ArsTechnica article, which Musk called “accurate,” argued that Musk may be looking to raise “large amounts of money in the next 18 months” to help fund AI and robotics-related initiatives at SpaceX. The article cited a recent Musk tweet in which he said SpaceX is planning to scale up its Starlink satellite fleet to build data centers in space. Earlier this week, Musk talked about this again and claimed that “Satellites with localized AI compute” will be the “lowest cost way” to push AI-generated data streams within 3 years.
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This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
