Musk's SpaceX Secretly Files Forms in Sprint for Biggest IPO Ever

According to Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and many other foreign media reported on April 2, Elon Musk's (Elon Musk)SpaceXThe Company has confidentially filed an initial public offering (IPO) application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

SpaceX plans to raise $40 billion to $80 billion (about RMB 275.2 billion to RMB 550.4 billion), with a target valuation of more than $1.75 trillion (about RMB 12.04 trillion). If it proceeds smoothly, thewhich would be the world's largest-ever IPO.It far exceeded Saudi Aramco's record of about $29 billion (roughly Rs. 199.5 billion) in 2019.

▲ Musk says he wants SpaceX to complete its IPO by July (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Last week on March 25, foreign media broke the news that Musk, to start the largest IPO in history. Now SpaceX officially to the SEC secret table, the listing process is officially promoted, the target June to July listing.

SpaceX may be the first of this year's three mega-IPOs to go public, with OpenAI and Anthropic also reportedly gearing up to go public within the year. For the global capital markets, this is certainly an event that will go down in history. For Musk himself.He is already the richest man in the world and could use it to become the first trillionaire.

First, the five major investment banks escort, global bank zones to take orders

According to foreign media reports, SpaceX has selected Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley five institutions to serve as the main underwriters of the IPO, and it is expected that these investment banks will receive a total of hundreds of millions of dollars in underwriting fees.

In addition, SpaceX has also laid out a number of international banks globally responsible for the management of orders in various regions. According to Bloomberg, Barclays Bank is responsible for the British market, Deutsche Bank and UBS are responsible for Europe, Royal Bank of Canada is responsible for Canada, Mizuho Financial Group is responsible for Asia, Macquarie Group is responsible for Australia, and Citigroup has unified and coordinated the division of labor among them.

The Wall Street Journal noted that SpaceX's revenues, costs and balance sheets have been highly confidential for years, accessible only to a handful of investors close to the company's executives.

This time, the form was delivered in secret, and the financial data will not be disclosed in the near future.that the company will first engage in multiple rounds of feedback modifications with the SEC.Details such as the number of shares and price range will be disclosed before the official listing.. The giant company, which spans the rocket launch, satellite communications and AI businesses, will then reveal its complete family to the public for the first time.

Notably, SpaceX is considering a dual shareholding structure in which insiders such as Musk would have greater voting power to dominate company decisions, similar to what Google's parent company Alphabet has done. Additionally, SpaceX could allocate as much as 30% of its IPO share to retail investors, which is relatively rare in mega-IPOs.

Second, the valuation soared after the merger of xAI, the business territory is huge

In February, Musk merged his AI company xAI into SpaceX via a share swapThe merger is valued at $1.25 trillion (about RMB 8.6 trillion), setting a record for the largest corporate merger deal in U.S. history.

The merged SpaceX business landscape encompassesStarship giant rockets, Starlink satellite internet, xAI's AI chatbot Grok, and social networking platform X (formerly Twitter).

According to Bloomberg Industry Research data, SpaceX's rocket launches and Starlink satellite services contribute the vast majority of revenue, with combined revenue in 2026 expected to be close to $20 billion (roughly Rs. 137.6 billion), while xAI's revenue is likely to be less than $1 billion (roughly Rs. 6.9 billion). Musk previously revealed on social media that SpaceX's projected revenue for 2025 is $15.5 billion (roughly Rs. 106.6 billion), with about $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 7.6 billion) coming from NASA.

According to documents obtained by the New York Times, Starlink alone generates $8 billion (roughly Rs. 55 billion) in sales in 2024, compared to SpaceX's total revenue of $7.4 billion (roughly Rs. 50.9 billion) in 2023, which is a significant growth momentum.

▲SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

SpaceX absolutely dominates the U.S. in the rocket launch space. According to Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technologies.Five out of every six U.S. space launches are done by SpaceX. As of the end of March 2026, SpaceX has completed about 40 Falcon 9 launches, with a goal of 140 to 145 for the year.

III. Use of fund-raising: space data center, moon base and debt repayment

The huge amount of money raised from the IPO will go in a number of directions, and according to the New York Times, the funds will be used primarily forBuilding an AI data center in space, establishing a moon base, funding operations for xAI, and paying off the billions of dollars in debt Musk incurred when he bought Twitter in 2022.

Banks have asked SpaceX to hold at least $15 billion to $20 billion (roughly Rs. 103.2 billion to Rs. 137.6 billion) in cash reserves after the IPO.

In a recent internal memo, Musk said that orbital data centers will be the most cost-effective way to meet AI arithmetic needs in two to three years. He also put forward a theory of “sustainable abundance”, which suggests that his companies, working in tandem, will be the most cost-effective way to meet AI computing power needs.AI and robotic products will be created that end poverty and don't require human work.

SpaceX executives have said for years that the company won't go public until rockets can regularly fly to Mars. But the Wall Street Journal notes that the company changed its strategy last year and began accelerating its push for an IPO, mainly because Musk is betting that the spacefaring of AI data centers will be the next competitive frontier, which will require huge amounts of money to support.

Fourth, the market reaction is mixed, Musk or IPO to hit a trillion dollars

For Musk personally, the SpaceX IPO means a huge leap in wealth. According to Forbes data, Musk's current net worth is about $823 billion (roughly Rs. 5.66 trillion), a significant portion of which comes from his holdings of about 44% in SpaceX.

▲ Musk's net worth change in recent years (Source: Forbes)

If the valuation continues to rise after the IPO, he is expected to become the first person in the world to reach the trillion-dollar level.At the same time, this is a long-awaited opportunity for early employees and investors to cash in, some of whom have been waiting for more than 20 years.

But not everyone is bullish on the listing. Investment manager Ross Gerber has bluntly stated that the current global geopolitical conflicts and unpredictable economic environment“It's a bad time to go public.”. He believes Musk desperately needs cash to prop up costly projects like space data centers and chip factories, while X and xAI are still losing money.

Ark Investment (Ark Invest) chief futurist Brett Winton (Brett Winton) is more optimistic. Ark Invest predicted last year that SpaceX's valuation would reach $2.5 trillion (about 17.2 trillion yuan) by 2030. Winton said, “The size of the fundraising matches the size of the opportunity.”

In addition, Musk's past record in the public markets has raised concerns. in 2018 he claimed on social media that he had arranged for funding to take Tesla private, but that was not the case. the IPO will require him to disclose more information to investors and deliver on his promises, and he has been overly optimistic on projects such as the Mars timetable and the Space Data Center.

Conclusion: 24 years of SpaceX for the biggest IPO in history

It took Musk 24 years from founding SpaceX in 2002 to secretly handing in his form. After years of SpaceX executives saying to the public that the company wouldn't go public until its rockets could fly to Mars on a regular basis, it's now voluntarily speeding things up.

The reasons behind this are varied, but it is undeniable that SpaceX is already the most commercially viable space company in the world. The number of Starlink users has doubled year after year, and five out of every six space launches in the U.S. bear the SpaceX logo. merging xAI gives the company another AI story to tell.

As for the “aerospace + AI” combination is worth 1.75 trillion U.S. dollars (about 12.04 trillion yuan), when the official prospectus is open, the day the financial data spread in the sun, the market will give the answer.

Sources: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Information, Forbes