In brief
SpaceX has filed confidential papers with the SEC to go public, with market estimates suggesting a valuation exceeding $1 trillion. This IPO marks a pivotal moment for the company, which is expanding its ventures into space exploration and satellite communications. Musk's stake could position him as the world's first trillionaire, while the funds raised are expected to fuel further innovations and mergers within his business empire.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is poised to become one of the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world. The company, which manufactures rockets, space exploration technology and Starlink satellites, is currently privately held. But on Wednesday it made a confidential filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering, which would allow shares to be traded in the stock market. The value of SpaceX once it goes public is expected to surpass $1tn (£751bn). That would make its eventual stock market debut one of the most financially significant in history.Musk's own holding in SpaceX would put the billionaire on track to become the world's first trillionaire. The BBC has contacted SpaceX for comment. The company is aiming to officially go public sometime in June, according to reports in Bloomberg, Reuters and the New York Times.A confidential IPO filing with the SEC allows a company to avoid immediately revealing information to the public while it requests feedback from the regulator. The next step will be for company executives to hold 'roadshows' - meetings with big investors to convince them to buy shares. By making shares of SpaceX available for purchase by the public, the company is looking to raise $50bn or more, according to the reports.Earlier this year, SpaceX took over xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence venture. After that all-stock merger, SpaceX is believed to have become the most valuable private company in the world, with an internal valuation of $1.25tn.Recently, Musk's various companies have been becoming increasingly intertwined. Last year, xAI, best known for its chatbot Grok, took over X, the social media platform previously called Twitter that Musk bought in 2022. This degree of consolidation was a clear sign to investors that SpaceX was preparing to go public.Emily Zheng, a senior analyst at Pitchbook, earlier told the BBC that by bringing xAI under SpaceX, Musk could show potential investors that he was consolidating costs and able to easily share resources between his companies. With its large-scale ambitions, SpaceX is in need of a massive cash infusion that going public can provide, Zheng added. The company is racing to keep up with the 'sheer cost of compute, infrastructure, and energy' needed to expand, she said.Earlier this year, Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company, revealed it had invested more than $2bn in xAI. The billionaire said a significant share of Tesla's manufacturing would begin to shift toward building robots, which would make use of xAI technology like Grok. Grok is already included in some Teslas as an AI assistant.SpaceX would also partner with Tesla and xAI in the massive chipmaking endeavour Musk announced last month, which he is calling Terafab. Tesla, xAI and SpaceX have all done amazing things that people did not think could be done before, Musk said in a March presentation discussing Terafab.Musk started SpaceX in 2002 with the aim of reducing the cost of launching crafts into space, mainly by making rockets that could be launched more than once. It first contracted with NASA in 2006. Today, most of SpaceX's work continues to revolve around rockets and the operation of Starlink, a fleet of satellites offering internet connectivity across the globe. But Musk often discusses grander ambitions for the company, including putting data centers needed for AI in space and building a self-sufficient city on Mars, which many experts have said could be impossible to realise.
