{"id":672159,"date":"2026-05-29T13:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/672159\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T13:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:04:11","slug":"spacex-skeptics-concerned-as-musk-comments-diverge-from-ipo-filing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/672159\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX skeptics concerned as Musk comments diverge from IPO filing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk is photographed at SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Marvin Joseph | The Washington Post | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX filed for an IPO a week ago, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/elon-musk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elon Musk<\/a> is already creating confusion.<\/p>\n<p>Days before the reusable rocket maker is slated to start pitching its story to investors, Musk took to social network X (which is owned by SpaceX) late Wednesday to explain details of the company&#8217;s recent partnership with competing AI startup Anthropic. His comment included a potentially material aspect about their deal that wasn&#8217;t included in SpaceX&#8217;s 300-plus page IPO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/Archives\/edgar\/data\/1181412\/000162828026036936\/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm#id286866c4c474ba490d6531a57db9e93_51\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">filing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, SpaceX <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/06\/anthropic-spacex-data-center-capacity.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a> it was leasing unused compute capacity at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee to Anthropic. Last week&#8217;s prospectus <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/20\/spacex-ipo-live-updates.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a> that Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX \u201c$1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee.&#8221; The filing also noted, &#8220;The agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days&#8217; notice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In his <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/2059880289514696927?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">X post<\/a> Wednesday night, Musk wrote, &#8220;SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years,&#8221; and called the pact a &#8220;180 day lease with 90 day notice mutual cancellation thereafter.&#8221; The prospectus, however, said nothing about the deal potentially ending in a matter of months. <\/p>\n<p>Whether Anthropic is slated to pay SpaceX $15 billion a year for the next three years or will be spending substantially less over a much shorter period represents a major consideration for prospective investors. SpaceX&#8217;s total revenue in 2025 was just $18.7 billion, and selling compute capacity out of its data center adds an entirely new revenue stream, while putting SpaceX in competition with so-called neocloud providers like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NBIS\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nebius<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/CRWV\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CoreWeave<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/108312444-17798853481779885344-46193382582-1080pnbcnews.jpg\" alt=\"SpaceX targets June 12 IPO listing: Former Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld on what to expect\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Some investors are already leery of buying into the largest IPO on record, and backing a company that&#8217;s valued at over $1 trillion while burning billions of dollars a quarter. Musk&#8217;s post raises further questions about the company&#8217;s financial disclosures. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The odd thing is that either Musk is correct and the S-1 is materially misleading, or the S-1 is correct and Elon is up to his old hijinx,&#8221; said Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on corporate governance, in an email. &#8220;But more than that it&#8217;s confusing to investors who are trying (best they can) to put a valuation on SpaceX.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Anthropic declined to comment for this story, and representatives from SpaceX didn&#8217;t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>The Anthropic disclosure isn&#8217;t the only one in SpaceX&#8217;s filing that analysts have highlighted as less than thorough.<\/p>\n<p>Franco Granda, an analyst at PitchBook, catalogued an array of omissions in a report following the publishing of the prospectus.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Critical disclosures are missing,&#8221; Granda wrote. He pointed to &#8220;subscriber churn&#8221; as well as &#8220;unit economics&#8221; for the Falcon 9, SpaceX&#8217;s partially reusable rocket, and &#8220;AI segment granularity,&#8221; writing that the company didn&#8217;t break out subscriptions to Grok or X or provide details on the &#8220;utilization rate on 1.0 GW of deployed compute.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"headline0\"\/>Economics of AI<\/p>\n<p>The AI part of SpaceX is particularly challenging for investors to value. <\/p>\n<p>Musk founded xAI in 2023 to try and take on OpenAI in the booming generative AI market. While xAI remains a niche player in the market, Musk valued the business at $250 billion in February, when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/02\/03\/musk-xai-spacex-biggest-merger-ever.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">merged<\/a> it with SpaceX in a deal that gave the combined entity a valuation of $1.25 trillion. <\/p>\n<p>During the first quarter of this year, SpaceX&#8217;s capital expenditures totaled $10.1 billion, more than doubling from a year earlier, with $7.7 billion of that tied to xAI, according to the prospectus. The AI unit, now known as SpaceXAI, recorded a $2.5 billion operating loss in the quarter.<\/p>\n<p>In opting to lease its compute capacity to Anthropic, SpaceX was acknowledging that its own AI models and services haven&#8217;t inspired great demand, and that the company isn&#8217;t in position to take advantage of its costly infrastructure. <\/p>\n<p>Musk said in his post on X Wednesday night that SpaceX wanted to be able to cut the deal short in case it needs the capacity.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We won&#8217;t leave them hanging and will provide a reasonable off-ramp,&#8221; Musk wrote, referring to Anthropic. &#8220;But if compute gets super tight I said we might need it back at some point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ark Invest&#8217;s Cathie Wood, a SpaceX bull, touted Musk&#8217;s move to monetize compute infrastructure, which cost xAI billions of dollars to build.   <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thanks to its deal with Anthropic, XAI, now SpaceXAI, is pivoting from massive losses at Colossus to significant profitability as a neocloud,&#8221; Wood wrote after the deal was announced on May 9. She estimated at the time that the move would bring in $5 billion to $6 billion in annual revenue. <\/p>\n<p>That was before the IPO filing laid out an even bigger number, and well before Musk chimed in this week, effectively acknowledging that the prospectus has shortcomings.<\/p>\n<p>Ann Lipton, a law professor at University of Colorado, said that, as SpaceX amends its S-1 ahead of the offering, it should &#8220;file the tweet with an explanation.&#8221; She said by email that Musk&#8217;s post does appear to contradict the filing, but that the differences may be &#8220;reconcilable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Usually this is handled by filing an update separately with the SEC,&#8221; she wrote. <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0WATCH: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/05\/26\/could-a-spacex-tesla-merger-be-on-the-horizon.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Could a SpaceX-Tesla merger be on the horizon?<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/108312200-17798295401779829538-46181330789-1080pnbcnews.jpg\" alt=\"Could a SpaceX-Tesla merger be on the horizon?\"\/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk is photographed at SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas. Marvin Joseph | The Washington Post | Getty Images&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[38080,118154,293234,10060,4,122,11,6199,2195,124035,79,193,74,10058,164],"class_list":["post-672159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-alphabet-class-a","tag-ark-innovation-etf","tag-arko-corp","tag-autos","tag-breaking-news","tag-business-news","tag-elon-musk","tag-ipo","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-nebius-group-nv","tag-science","tag-space","tag-technology","tag-tesla-inc","tag-venture-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}