SpaceX, the aerospace firm based by Elon Musk 24 years in the past, has lastly made its IPO submitting public. And as soon as the corporate goes public, Musk shall be at its heart as CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the board.
The hefty submitting, posted after markets closed Wednesday, exhibits an organization that has developed far past its preliminary pursuit of reusable rockets — though its long-term mission to create a multi-planetary species stays intact. SpaceX is now a know-how conglomerate engaged on satellites and AI, and has turn into one of many world’s most dear non-public firms.
When it goes public later this 12 months on the Nasdaq alternate, it should turn into one of the vital useful publicly-traded firms. (Nvidia presently holds the crown with a market cap of $5.4 trillion.) SpaceX has chosen the ticker “SPCX” for the itemizing.
The regulatory submitting, generally known as an S-1, presents probably the most vivid and financially illuminating public dissection of SpaceX’s enterprise up to now. And it comes simply weeks forward of what’s anticipated to be the biggest IPO ever, each by way of potential cash raised (anticipated to be round $75 billion) and total valuation (reportedly $1.75 trillion). It comprises 36 pages of threat components to SpaceX’s enterprise, and particulars authorized fights it faces following the absorption of Musk’s synthetic intelligence and social media firms — battles SpaceX says will probably value it $530 million.
Lots of the headline particulars have been reported within the weeks since SpaceX first submitted a confidential model of its S-1 submitting to the Securities and Change Fee on April 1. The corporate misplaced about $4.9 billion in 2025 on income of greater than $18 billion, as Reuters reported final month.
The submitting particulars a enterprise that’s presently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc web providing, which generated greater than half of the corporate’s income final 12 months — round $11 billion. It additionally exhibits how a lot SpaceX has burned to get so far: greater than $37 billion misplaced since inception, in response to the S-1.
XAI, the bogus intelligence firm Elon Musk created and just lately merged into SpaceX, just isn’t serving to on that entrance. The submitting exhibits SpaceX directed round 60% of its capital spending in 2025 to its AI division, or round $20 billion. And but that division — which homes the chatbot Grok — misplaced billions final 12 months, and solely grew income by about 22%. That’s far beneath the reported income development charges at frontier AI labs.
However the firm is, in fact, making a number of astronomical guarantees within the submitting. One of many largest? That it has “recognized the biggest actionable whole addressable market in human historical past” of $28.5 trillion. The corporate attributes an unlimited portion of that — $22.7 trillion — to “enterprise functions” of AI.
It’s all in regards to the rocket
Regardless of SpaceX’s advanced enterprise, a lot of its future is pegged to the success of Starship, the absolutely reusable heavy-lift rocket that has had a collection of explosions and technical revamps over the previous a number of years. The corporate is anticipated to conduct the twelfth launch of Starship as early as this week, and far is using on its success.
SpaceX stated within the submitting that it expects Starship to start payload supply to orbit within the second half of 2026, leaving little room for error. Assuming SpaceX can hit that milestone, the corporate plans to start utilizing Starship to ship its Starlink broadband satellites into orbit within the second half of 2026 and its next-generation V2 cellular satellites in 2027.
SpaceX’s plans for Starship stretch far past satellite tv for pc launches. The corporate desires to make use of the quickly reusable spacecraft, which is designed to ship 100 metric tons to Earth’s orbit, for Mars exploration and to launch orbital AI knowledge facilities into area.
Pushing towards that objective has been expensive for SpaceX, the S-1 submitting exhibits. The area section of the corporate invested closely in analysis and improvement for the Starship program, spending $3 billion in 2025 and $930 million within the first quarter of 2026.
The fee is value it, in SpaceX’s view. The corporate stated Starship is important to lowering the price of reaching orbit by 99% or extra relative to the historic common launch value.
Starry-eyed visions
The S-1 particulars SpaceX’s many excessive objectives, like making life multi-planetary, reaching the moon and Mars, and constructing orbital networks of satellites that may do space-based computing.
However there are different flashy, futuristic concepts included within the submitting, too.
SpaceX is seemingly nonetheless taken with utilizing its Starship rocket as a terrestrial transportation system — an concept Musk first proposed in 2017. The corporate says it plans to “develop ultra-fast long-haul point-to-point Earth transport utilizing Starship, enabling passengers and cargo to journey between main cities in a fraction of present transit occasions, revolutionizing international logistics and passenger journey with unprecedented velocity and effectivity.”
The corporate caveats this concept as a “future market,” so it’s not anyplace within the near-term image. Consequently, the deserves and dangers of the thought of point-to-point journey doesn’t get the identical form of scrutiny within the submitting as SpaceX’s core enterprise.
One other “future market” listed is “area tourism.” SpaceX has flirted with this prior to now, permitting non-public residents to fly to area on its Dragon spacecraft. It additionally as soon as deliberate a mission across the moon with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, however that received canceled lengthy earlier than it might occur. Within the submitting, SpaceX says it expects “growing curiosity in human area journey because it turns into simpler and extra widespread to entry area.”
SpaceX executives additionally imagine that the corporate will someday allow manufacturing amenities in-orbit and on the moon and Mars.
“We intention to determine in-space manufacturing amenities that leverage the distinctive microgravity situations of area to provide supplies, prescription drugs, and superior parts which might be tough or not possible to fabricate on Earth, opening new high-value industrial markets,” the submitting reads. Amenities on the moon and Mars could be centered on producing gas, development supplies, and different “important assets,” together with photo voltaic power manufacturing.
Lastly, SpaceX believes it might someday get entangled in asteroid mining operations. As it’s listed as one other “future market,” there may be little element about how SpaceX plans to sort out this concept.
Complete management
Make no mistake, that is Elon Musk’s firm. Per the submitting, Musk would be the the CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the SpaceX board after the IPO.
The S-1 exhibits he owns 93.6% of SpaceX’s Class B inventory, which comes with 10 votes per share. Musk is subsequently presently sitting on 85.1% of the voting energy at SpaceX. That quantity is anticipated to drop following the IPO however will keep above 50%, permitting SpaceX to dodge sure guidelines about having impartial administrators on its board.
He was additionally handed a brand new compensation package deal in the beginning of this 12 months, which might internet him as many as 1 billion shares of Class B inventory if he hits will increase the worth of SpaceX to $7.5 trillion and the “institution of a everlasting human colony on Mars with no less than a million inhabitants.” He stands to reap much more shares if the corporate is ready to to create space-based knowledge facilities able to delivering “100 terawatts of compute per 12 months.”
While you buy by hyperlinks in our articles, we could earn a small fee. This doesn’t have an effect on our editorial independence.
