Elon Musk’s SpaceX has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, starting the firing gun on what is expected to be the biggest ever listing in American corporate history.
The rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company has filed a draft IPO registration to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Bloomberg reported. It comes as other AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are also said to be preparing for mega listings.
SpaceX is expected to pursue a potential valuation of more than $1.75 trillion.
The company is hosting an analyst day on April 21, a source told Reuters. SpaceX is also reportedly offering analysts a visit to xAI, Musk’s AI company, which recently merged with SpaceX. It is understood to be planning a virtual meeting on May 4 to discuss financial models with banks.
When SpaceX merged with xAI last month, the deal valued the rocket company at $1 trillion and the developer of the Grok chatbot at $250 billion.
Musk, 54, who is the world’s richest man with an estimated fortune of $823.6 billion according to Forbes, launched SpaceX in 2002 with ambitions to make travelling to space more affordable and accessible. The company designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. It also runs Starlink, the internet satellite service.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket launches from Starbase during its second test flight in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2023AFP
SpaceX has sought permission to launch up to 1 million solar‑powered satellites engineered as orbital data centres, as engineers study how to move energy-hungry computing to space.
The company dominates the space industry, conducting more launches annually than any other company globally.
Earlier this year, Musk said that SpaceX was focused on building a “self-growing city” on the moon, which could be achieved in less than 10 years. He said SpaceX planned to start building a city on Mars within five to seven years, “but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilisation and the Moon is faster”.