SpaceX files historic IPO that could make Elon Musk a trillionaire

SpaceX has launched plans for public listing in the US, enabling people to trade shares in the firm in a move that could make Elon Musk a trillionaire.

The initial public offering (IPO) on the US stock market is expected to be the largest listing in the history of Wall Street and could start as soon as next month under SPCX. Given that Musk already owns shares in SpaceX, the move will inevitably cause his already-significant net worth to surge.

Currently, SpaceX values itself at US$1.25 trillion, meaning that Musk’s majority ownership of the company results in his share being worth more than $600 billion, according to the BBC.

It also speaks to how tightly Musk is controlling SpaceX, particularly after the company acquired his own social media and AI company, xAI, which drove most of the company’s spending and also the majority of its losses in Q1, according to the filing.

Of SpaceX’s three divisions, only its satellite division was actually profitable in the first three months of this year. Starlink reportedly generated an operating profit of $1.19 billion, but SpaceX still recorded a total operating loss of $1.94 billion in the first quarter.

It shows that, while Musk is quite obviously collecting the cash, the amount of spending SpaceX is currently doing is overwhelming. The filing also evidences that much of the company’s plans currently rely on technology that hasn’t yet been built, including references to AI data centres in space, which could reach a potential market of $28.5 trillion.

The IPO confirmed that Anthropic, the company responsible for Claude AI models, will pay $1.25 billion a month to use compute capacity from xAI’s Colossus and Colossus II data centre clusters in Memphis, Tennessee through May 2029. Anthropic is renting 300MW of data centre space from xAI.

Reuters reported that SpaceX is aiming to list shares as early as 12 June, with the share sale expected as early as 11 June.

The news comes as the company is preparing to launch a test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket today. It’s expected to be a significant improvement over previous prototypes.

It also comes as Musk rival OpenAI is expected to be publicly listed as soon as this year, sparking further conversations about the role of AI and digital transformation in today’s economy.

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