NEW YORK: SpaceX\u2019s blockbuster IPO filing included some out of this world details, including a provision that founder Elon Musk\u2019s massive bonus only kicks in if one million humans settle on Mars.<\/p>\n
The bonus structure, laid out in SpaceX\u2019s prospectus filed with US regulators on Wednesday, reads less like a compensation agreement and more like a science fiction plot.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s bonus is contingent on SpaceX\u2019s stock market value hitting targets ranging from $400 billion to $6 trillion \u2014 along with the company moving a million people to a planet 140 million miles (225 million kilometres) away.<\/p>\n
Musk describes that ambition as essential to the long-term survival of the human race, though most experts see it as being at least decades away. Still, Musk will do just fine if the IPO goes ahead in the coming weeks as planned.<\/p>\n
At the company\u2019s reported target valuation of $1.75 trillion, Musk\u2019s existing stake would be worth an estimated $735 billion \u2014 before a single person sets foot on the Red Planet.<\/p>\n
A second, smaller bonus ties an additional 60 million shares to a different moonshot: building data centers in orbit capable of delivering 100 terawatts of computing power per year \u2014 a figure that dwarfs anything that exists on Earth today. SpaceX filed for its long-awaited IPO Wednesday, targeting a listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker \u201cSPCX\u201d in what could be the largest public offering in Wall Street history.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s Starship rocket \u2014 whose latest iteration could launch on Thursday \u2014 is explicitly designed with Mars colonization in mind.<\/p>\n
The filing confirmed a dual-class share structure that will leave Musk firmly in control of the company after the listing, sidestepping the kind of governance fights that have dogged him at Tesla, where shareholders have repeatedly taken aim at his compensation and the board\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n
Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK: SpaceX\u2019s blockbuster IPO filing included some out of this world details, including a provision that founder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-439558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}