SpaceX, an aerospace company founded by Elon Musk 24 years ago, has finally announced its initial public offering (IPO). And once the company goes public, Musk will be at the center of it as CEO, CTO and chairman of the board.
The massive filing, posted after markets closed Wednesday, shows the company has advanced far beyond its initial pursuit of reusable rockets. Although the long-term mission to create a multi-planetary species remains intact. SpaceX is now a technology giant in satellite and AI, and one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
When it lists on the Nasdaq exchange later this year, it will be one of the most valuable public companies. (Nvidia currently ranks first with a market capitalization of $5.4 trillion.) SpaceX chose the name “SPCX” for its listing.
The regulatory filing, known as the S-1, provides the most vivid and financially clear public analysis of SpaceX’s business to date. And that’s just a few weeks ahead of what is expected to be the largest IPO of all time, both in terms of money potentially raised (estimated to be around $75 billion) and overall valuation (reportedly $1.75 trillion). The document contains 36 pages of risks to SpaceX’s business and details the legal battles Musk’s artificial intelligence and social media company will face after being absorbed. SpaceX estimates the fight will cost it $530 million.
Many of the headline details have been reported in the weeks since SpaceX first filed a confidential version of its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1. SpaceX lost about $4.9 billion in 2025. Last month, sales were more than $18 billion, according to Reuters.
The filing details the business currently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service. The service generated more than half of the company’s revenue last year, or about $11 billion. It also shows how much it has cost SpaceX to get to this point, according to S-1. It is said to have incurred losses of more than $37 billion since its founding.
XAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk and recently merged with SpaceX, is no help in this regard. SpaceX has committed about 60% of its 2025 capital spending, or about $20 billion, to AI, according to the filing. But the division, which owns chatbot Grok, lost billions of dollars last year and sales grew only about 22%. This is much lower than the revenue growth rate reported by Frontier AI Labs.
However, the company of course makes a lot of astronomical promises when submitting documents. One of the biggest? It identified “the largest viable total addressable market in human history” at $28.5 trillion. The company attributes a huge portion of that ($22.7 trillion) to “enterprise applications” of AI.
all about rockets
Despite SpaceX’s complicated business, much of its future hinges on the success of Starship, a large, fully reusable rocket that has gone through a series of explosions and technological improvements over the past few years. With the 12th Starship launch scheduled as early as this week, expectations for its success are high.
SpaceX said in the filing that it expects Starship to begin delivering payloads to orbit in the second half of 2026, leaving little room for error. Assuming SpaceX can hit that milestone, the company plans to use Starship to send the Starlink broadband satellite into orbit in the second half of 2026 and the next-generation V2 mobile satellite into orbit in 2027.
SpaceX’s Starship plans go far beyond satellite launches. The company wants to use a rapidly reusable spacecraft designed to deliver 100 metric tons to Earth orbit for Mars exploration and launch orbital AI data centers into space.
Moving toward that goal has been costly for SpaceX, according to the S-1 filing. The company’s space division has invested heavily in research and development for the Starship program, including spending $3 billion in 2025 and $930 million in the first quarter of 2026.
From SpaceX’s perspective, the cost is worth it. The company said Starship is critical to reducing the cost of reaching orbit by more than 99% compared to historical average launch costs.
starry vision
S-1 details many of SpaceX’s extreme goals, including bringing life to multiple planets, reaching the Moon and Mars, and building a satellite orbital network capable of performing space-based computing.
But the filing also contains other flashy, futuristic ideas.
SpaceX is apparently still interested in using its Starship rocket as a ground transportation system, an idea Musk first proposed in 2017. “Using Starship, we plan to develop ultra-fast, long-haul, point-to-global transportation, enabling passengers and cargo to travel between major cities in a fraction of current transit times, revolutionizing global logistics and passenger travel with unprecedented speed and efficiency,” the company said.
The company considers this idea a “future market” and therefore not relevant in the near term. As a result, the benefits and risks of the point-to-point travel idea don’t get the same kind of scrutiny in filings as SpaceX’s core business.
Another ‘future market’ listed is ‘space tourism’. SpaceX has attempted this in the past, allowing civilians to fly into space on its Dragon spacecraft. He also once planned a trip around the moon with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, but that was canceled long before it became a reality. In the filing, SpaceX said it expects “interest in human space travel to increase as access to space becomes easier and more common.”
SpaceX executives also believe the company will one day activate manufacturing facilities in orbit, on the Moon, and on Mars.
“We aim to open up new high-value industrial markets by building in-space manufacturing facilities that utilize the unique microgravity conditions of space to produce materials, pharmaceuticals, and advanced components that are difficult or impossible to manufacture on Earth.” Facilities on the Moon and Mars will focus on producing fuel, building materials and other “essential resources” along with solar energy production.
Lastly, I believe SpaceX could one day engage in asteroid mining operations. There are few details about how SpaceX plans to tackle this idea, as it’s listed as yet another “future market.”
complete control
Make no mistake. This is Elon Musk’s company. According to the filing, Musk will serve as CEO, CTO and Chairman of the Board of SpaceX after the IPO.
The S-1 shows he owns 93.6% of SpaceX’s Class B stock, with 10 votes per share. Therefore, Musk currently holds 85.1% of SpaceX’s voting rights. That number is expected to decline after the IPO, but will remain above 50%, allowing SpaceX to avoid certain rules about having outside directors on its board.
He also received a new compensation package earlier this year that would increase SpaceX’s valuation to $7.5 trillion and give him up to 1 billion shares of Class B stock if he “establishes a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants.” If the company can create a space-based data center capable of providing “100 terawatts of computing per year,” he could get a much larger stake.
If you purchase through links in our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
