SpaceX raises $75 billion in record IPO to launch 1 million AI satellites into orbit

SpaceX's historic IPO ignites the new space race

SpaceX's IPO -- the largest in history -- has out-of-this-world implications for AI, space commerce and extraterrestrial exploration SpaceX is shooting for the moon, in more ways than one. The company has just debuted on the stock market in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history, with the company raising some $75 billion and being valued at an almost ludicrous $1.77 trillion. That should give it the funds to roll out its massive Starship rocket, a vehicle crucial for SpaceX's plans to launch thousands of data-center satellites and land humans on the moon. "It's a watershed moment for the space sector," says Raphael Roettgen, founding partner of the U.S. space investment company E2MC Ventures, which has invested in SpaceX. The successful listing will be music to the ears not just to SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk, who is now set to become the world's first trillionaire, but NASA, too; the space agency's Artemis program is betting big on SpaceX and its Starship rocket for ferrying astronauts to and from the lunar surface as soon as 2028. The IPO is "a lot of cash inflow, which is good for any company," says Pierre Lionnet, a space economist at Eurospace in France. "They will be using that money to fund a lot of things, including data centers on Earth, data centers going to orbit, and finishing up development of Starship." On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. SpaceX's debut on the stock market came after months, even years, of buildup. Last week SpaceX announced it would be offering 555.6 million shares to investors at a price of $135 each. Prior to this, it had raised money through venture capitalists, private funding rounds, and customers -- notably NASA and other government agencies, as well as the roughly 10 million people that now use the company's Starlink Internet service. Going public gives SpaceX access to potentially a much larger pool of money. "Once you're public, you can keep accessing the public markets," Roettgen says. One of SpaceX's reasons for going public is to raise funds to build fleets of orbital data centers. In a prospectus for investors filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on May 20, the company said that artificial intelligence was a market potentially worth $26.5 trillion. SpaceX merged with another of Musk's companies, xAI, in February to tap into this market. SpaceX seeks to launch as many as a million data-center satellites to move the computing needs for AI from Earth into space, where less and looser regulation could allow more rapid growth -- and even greater profits. On Monday Musk offered a sneak peek of AI1, SpaceX's first AI-dedicated satellite, a massive GPU-packed spacecraft outfitted with solar arrays, heat-dissipating radiators and laser communications systems. For building out its fleet, the company says it needs the fully reusable Starship, the largest rocket in history, to deploy such satellites as quickly and cheaply as possible. Starship has yet to work flawlessly after more than three years of test flights, however. "The SpaceX conglomerate fully hinges on one single point of failure, which is Starship," Lionnet says. While eventually intended to take people to Mars, in the near term Starship is essential "for those data centers in space to happen," he adds. NASA will also be keeping a close eye on the IPO. Earlier this week the space agency announced the four astronauts for its Artemis III mission. Targeted for the latter half of 2027, this mission will see an Orion spacecraft dock with two prospective lunar landers in Earth orbit -- one the Blue Moon lander from Jeff Bezos's company Blue Origin and the other Starship. In the Artemis IV mission planned for 2028, NASA intends to use one of these landers to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since 1972. A devastating explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on May 28, however, might place additional focus on Starship, which has not fully reached orbit on any of its 12 test flights. "Starship is so important, but it's so obviously late, and a lot of problems are yet to be solved," Lionnet says. "It's clearly concerning for NASA's Artemis program." The IPO might give SpaceX the funds it needs to perfect Starship, ultimately benefiting Artemis, too. "Starship is a large [capital expenditure] program, and a war chest of this size means SpaceX can keep iterating at full speed without having to compromise," says Chad Anderson, founder and CEO of the investment firm Space Capital, which has invested in SpaceX. "Starship is the bridge between the SpaceX of today and the next phase of the company that its IPO valuation assumes." SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. The prospectus SpaceX used to woo investors also gives an interesting window into the company's operations, notably its launch and operational costs, which were not public before now. "For industry analysts, the public filings have been great," says Alistair Schofield, a space strategy consultant at NebuLink in England. "By going public, SpaceX has been forced to reveal closely guarded trade secrets that once cost thousands of dollars to even estimate, entirely for free." That includes the amount of revenue SpaceX brings in from its launches, of which it performed 165 in 2025, most from its partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Lionnet says the prospectus showed that while a Falcon 9 launch might cost a customer $60 to $70 million, for SpaceX the cost was only $15 to $20 million per launch. Few would have predicted that SpaceX would grow to become such a colossus when it reached orbit for the first time with its Falcon 1 rocket in 2008. "There were lots of skeptics," says John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of space policy at George Washington University. Musk "has proven that perspective wrong," he says. "He's eventually done most of what he said he was going to do." Whether this IPO will have a knock-on effect of more funding for other space companies is unclear. "It may well exhaust most of the venture capital that's willing to invest in commercial space," Logsdon says. "I don't think there will be a substantial spillover benefit to other companies." Anderson disagrees. "For the first time, every institutional investor, every index fund, every retail investor has a direct, liquid way to own a piece of the space economy -- and that's going to pull enormous amounts of new capital into the sector," he says. "We've seen this happen before in other industries: when the category-defining company goes public, it legitimizes the entire category. SpaceX is a rising tide that lifts all boats." Either way, for SpaceX, the IPO is yet another major milestone in the company's nearly quarter-century of history. "This IPO, in a sense, is a vote of confidence in Musk and his associates," Logsdon says. The best may be yet to come.

SpaceX Wants to Launch 1 Million AI Data Center Satellites. Experts Share the High Cost of Turning Space Into a Junkyard

Joe Supan is a senior writer for CNET covering home technology, broadband, and moving. Prior to joining CNET, Joe led MyMove's moving coverage and reported on broadband policy, the digital divide, and privacy issues for the broadband marketplace Allconnect. He has been featured as a guest columnist on Broadband Breakfast, and his work has been referenced by the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, National Geographic, Yahoo! Finance and more. SpaceX's dream for a million data centers in space is veering closer to reality than science fiction. On May 29, the company submitted a filing to the Federal Communications Commission that answered questions about its plan. Ten days later, Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, sat down for a video interview posted on his social media platform X to offer even more details. "Space is really big. It's not like space is going to get crowded," Musk said. "These satellites are so tiny you can't even see them. They're very, very tiny compared to Earth." Putting data centers in space would solve two of the biggest problems facing AI companies face in the US today: 7 in 10 Americans don't want them built where they live, and they use a staggering amount of electricity and water. But while Musk likes to remind people there's plenty of room in space, scientists have already raised alarms about the dangers of overcrowding in our current satellite ecosystem: Ozone depletion, an unsustainably high number of maneuvers and even debris from satellites falling back to Earth. What happens if we go from our current count of 15,000 satellites to one million? Since SpaceX announced its plan in January, the space industry experts I've spoken with have generally scoffed at the ridiculousness of that number. "I find it very hard to see, but then I'm pretty surprised they've gotten to 10,000 now," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who tracks satellite launches, told me. "Historically, betting against SpaceX changing the way space is done has not gone so well." New details have emerged recently about the reality of this actually happening. In my recent interviews, I've noticed an obvious shift from disbelief to genuine worry. "That orbital altitude is not in a great state, and it wasn't in a great state two decades ago," says Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham, on the planned half a million satellites between 900 and 1,000 kilometes. "It's not going to end well." It's probably not a coincidence that SpaceX is stoking the data center in space conversation right now, either. The company's initial public offering on June 12 is poised to be the largest IPO in history and make Musk the world's first trillionaire. AI-related stocks currently account for nearly half the S&P 500's market value. The timing of that IPO helped explain the slapped-together feel of SpaceX's FCC filing, said Hanno Rein, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto. "A lot of the numbers are a bit random and wishy-washy," Rein told me. "It's hard to disentangle how much of this we should take seriously and how much of it is just an advertisement for the IPO." I reached out to a SpaceX representative for comment and have not received a response. Bigger satellites, and a lot more of them Whether you take Musk at his word or with a heavy dose of salt, the sheer size of SpaceX's data center ambitions is hard to overstate. The data center satellites -- dubbed AI1 in the Musk interview -- will be 70 meters long and 20 meters high, for a total area of 1,400 square meters. That's roughly the size of an NHL hockey rink and significantly above the 800 square meters that SpaceX described in its FCC filing just 10 days earlier. The AI1 satellites will be roughly 12 times larger than the most common Starlink satellites in the sky today. One million of them would take up an amount of space that's difficult to conceive. "It's like 1% of the area of New Jersey," says Rein. "If someone were to propose that on Earth, there would be all kinds of logistical challenges. In space, everything is much more complicated." Those massive solar arrays will occupy the same space in low Earth orbit as the more than 15,600 active satellites in that area today. SpaceX says that more than 500,000 of them will live between 946 and 1,002 kilometers -- an altitude that's been stressing scientists out for decades. That's because objects at that altitude have a tendency to run into each other. In 2006, NASA determined that space debris would continue to increase for the next 200 years, even without any new launches. This was "primarily driven by the high collision activities" between 900 and 1,000 kilometers -- right where SpaceX plans to put as many as half of its orbital data centers. That altitude is a death trap for satellites because atmospheric drag is so low. That means debris won't naturally get pulled back into Earth's atmosphere to get burned up. "It's kind of the worst altitude for a lot of things," says McDowell. "If you have a satellite failure, it's not going to re-enter for probably hundreds of years." Why would SpaceX position so many satellites in this notoriously dangerous zone? It's essentially the same reason that debris sticks around for centuries: low atmospheric drag. Because the AI1's solar panels are so big, they'll have a huge amount of drag at lower altitudes. Essentially, they need to get above the outer atmosphere to overcome that. It also puts them at far greater risk for contributing to a doomsday event called the Kessler syndrome, a feedback loop in which one collision creates thousands of pieces of debris that would lead to even more collisions. In a worst case scenario, this would make space inoperable for satellites and space travel alike. Satellite graveyards in space The other major detail unveiled in SpaceX's FCC filing is its new methods for disposing of its AI1 satellites. In an effort to mitigate some of these overcrowding issues, the FCC began mandating in 2022 that satellites be de-orbited after five years in the sky -- a significant reduction from the previous 25-year rule. But what you do with those satellites after their five years are up has presented more problems. SpaceX currently lowers the altitude of its satellites until they burn up in the atmosphere. Only about a thousand Starlink satellites have been de-orbited so far, but each one adds significant quantities of aluminum and lithium aerosols to the atmosphere, which could eat away at the ozone layer and potentially accelerate climate change. One study funded by NASA and published in Geophysical Research Letters in mid-2024 found that a 550-pound satellite releases about 66 pounds of aluminum oxide nanoparticles when it's deorbited. The presence of these nanoparticles grew eightfold from 2016 to 2022, when there were still relatively few satellites being de-orbited. SpaceX says its new data center satellites will weigh about 6,600 pounds, compared to 1,760 pounds for the V2 satellites. This is the ripple effect that seems to weigh most heavily on the scientists I've spoken with, so I was interested to learn that SpaceX is looking to move away from atmospheric re-entry for its AI1 satellites above 600 km. At these altitudes, the company is asking that the FCC allow them to retire satellites into "Earth disposal orbits or heliocentric orbits." "Earth disposal orbits" essentially means anything outside of low Earth orbit, which stops at approximately 2,000 km. It's an open question where exactly SpaceX would send these defunct data centers, but just because they're out of low Earth orbit doesn't mean they stop posing a risk. "If they were just proposing a constellation of 100 satellites to dispose into that area, I'd go, 'Yeah, OK, that's probably fine,'" McDowell says. "But a million, that's going to be a very serious ring around the earth of dead stuff that is going to be a hazard to traffic." Both McDowell and Lewis brought up the 2008 animated Disney movie WALL-E when I asked them about these graveyard orbits, in which the Earth has become surrounded by a dense field of space flotsam. "If you think about a million satellites, each with a lifetime of five years, that's 200,000 a year that are going to be retiring on average," says Lewis. "They're going to collide, and the fragments will get ejected back into low Earth orbit." "It'll be a cloud around the Earth made up of what will be after five years a million satellites, and then another five years later is another million you've added. And you just keep doing that for as long as you operate the constellation." SpaceX also mentioned "heliocentric orbits" as another method of disposal, which would send old satellites past Earth's gravitational pull and into orbit around the sun. While this would take care of the space debris and Ozone concerns, it would also be a lot more technically challenging. These orbital data centers will live between 550 and 1,000 kilometers. To escape Earth's gravitational pull, they would have to travel beyond geostationary satellites at 36,000 kilometers. That would require either massive amounts of fuel, or years of time -- years in which SpaceX would be responsible for avoiding collisions, says Lewis. "You're basically just launching fuel, or it'll take years, and in that time you're passing through every altitude to get it out of the way," says Lewis. "I can't see how this is a viable prospect." Potential casualties on the ground One of the more grim details from SpaceX's FCC filing is when it notes the casualty risk to people on the ground is "less than 0.0001," which it says is "considered zero." This would only happen if pieces of a satellite survived re-entry and struck someone -- an extremely rare outcome, but not "zero," according to Rein. "It does not make any sense," Rein says. "They say they have a probability of 10 to the minus four casualty risk, but that's per satellite, so if you multiply 10 to the minus four times a million, then it's 100 people." Could we accept a world in which 100 people are killed by falling pieces of satellites each year? It might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Last year, farmers near Saskatoon found pieces of a Starlink satellites the size of large laptops in their fields. Debris from rocket launches are much more common: Last year alone, rocket parts fell on a mine in Australia, on a farm in Argentina, in the Algerian desert, near a school in Argentina and at a warehouse in Poland. Bekah Hinojosa, a community organizer with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, lives in Brownsville, TX, near a SpaceX launch site. "Every time they launch a rocket, my apartment starts vibrating. And I live 20 miles away from the launch pad," Hinojosa says. What happens if we reach a million satellites? Satellite megaconstellations are a relatively recent phenomenon. When SpaceX launched its first batch of Starlinks in May 2019, there were only around 2,000 active satellites in the entire sky. Since then, scientists have been ringing alarm bells about what the unintended consequences could be of sending so many objects into space. 15,000 satellites is already a concerning number; one million (much larger) satellites could exacerbate these issues in profound ways. "With a million satellites, it kind of doesn't matter where you put them. They're going to be a pain wherever they are," McDowell says. "On the one hand, this seems crazy. On the other hand, this is not the first time that we felt that and they've gone ahead and made it work."

Elon Musk wants to put 1 million AI satellites in space. Here's how SpaceX could do it

""We've got a pretty good idea of how to operate, just really large constellations, and do it safely now, right? We are the only operator that has any experience of that scale." SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined more details for his company's planned data centers in space ahead of a widely anticipated IPO on Thursday (June 11) expected to make him a trillionaire. A new half-hour video offers a typical Elon Musk fireside chat about where the billionaire founder of SpaceX wants to be taking his technology next. In the video posted on X on Monday (June 8), Musk described launching AI satellites, with "a lot of solar cells", as well as radiators and high-speed optical (laser) links for communication. SpaceX also expects to launch an AI-satellite-focused production facility by the end of next year, to be "operating at some reasonable volume," Musk said. "So, if anybody wants to work on AI satellites, this is kind of going to become the hub of that." The common pitch among these companies is that space is necessary to generate AI capabilities because data centers on Earth are running out of physical space to host them, as well as lacking community support out of concerns about significant power and water usage by these big computing hubs. The challenge is that orbital data centers are mostly notional, and not actually demonstrated by operating tech -- at least yet. But SpaceX is confident it can develop the necessary technologies to make an AI data center constellation a reality. The next generation of Starlink satellites SpaceX is developing already possess a lot of the tech needed to advance to AI centers, according to Musk. "A lot of this technology, we've already made for the Starlink V3 satellites," he said. "Basically, we don't think this is a super-hard problem, compared to things we already do." Musk described "racks of compute" (referring to the banks of computer chips on each satellite) that would connect with each other through laser links between the AI satellites, as well as with Starlinks. The data could be sent to the ground using antennas, or laser links at "not a particularly high latency" (meaning, high speed). Each AI satellite, Musk said, would generate 150 kW of power at peak, and 120 kW consistently, and would launch aboard SpaceX's heavy-lift Super Heavy and Starship vehicles the company is still testing out every few months for eventual mission operations. The SpaceX CEO also appeared to wave off concerns about overcrowding low Earth orbit, even after numerous reports have emerged about Starlink satellites having to maneuver away from each other or from other spacecraft. (SpaceX's Starlink constellation is currently at 10,000-plus operational members, according to analyst Jonathan McDowell.) "There's a lot of space up there, and so even when you're talking thousands, or even -- you know -- up to a million satellites, yeah, you got plenty of room to move around up there. Space is really big, so it's not like space is going to get crowded," Musk said in the video. Pointing to the growth of Starlink, Musk said SpaceX is uniquely positioned to be the company delivering on orbital data centers. "We've got a pretty good idea of how to operate, just really large constellations, and do it safely now, right? We are the only operator that has any experience of that scale." Musk periodically offers these sorts of chats for Starship and the company's Mars plans, often (as with this video) mixing in musings about where he sees "civilization" and "humanity" going next. But lately, there's been financial incentive to add AI into the planning for SpaceX. When the IPO drops, SpaceX plans to list its shares at $135 apiece for a value of more than $1.75 trillion -- and it is heavily betting on its company xAI, and orbital data centers in space to generate AI capabilities, in its pitch to investors. SpaceX is also in a race to attract attention from space investors, who are watching other orbital data center plans from entities ranging from big players like Google and Blue Origin and Microsoft, to smaller companies like Cowboy Space Corp. (formerly Aetherflux) and Starcloud.

Amid SpaceX IPO, Elon Musk wants to send 1 million AI satellites to space

Musk offered more details on his plans for SpaceX and orbital data centers in a video interview shared this week. * The proposed AI satellites are much larger than the current Starlink satellites but are expected to be less complex. * Demonstration launches for the AI satellites could begin by late 2027, with deployment starting as early as 2028. * The project coincides with SpaceX's record-breaking initial public offering, which aims to fund these ambitious ventures. Billionire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants SpaceX to put up to a staggering 1 million so-called AI satellites into space - beginning in as little as two years. The satellites, which would use artificial intelligence as part of Musk's lofty goal of operating orbital data centers, are not only way more numerous than the satellites SpaceX has placed in space under its Starlink business, but much bigger. Days after SpaceX submitted a filing to the Federal Communications Commission with information on the plan, Musk, the company's chief executive, sat down for a video interview to offer even more details. While Musk periodically offers updates on where he see SpaceX going, this particular conversation on the eve of SpaceX's highly-anticipated public offering may have been a way for the tech mogul to further entice investors. After all, Musk and SpaceX will have to rely on the new public stock to fund the company's ambitions for interplanetary spaceflight and artificial intelligence. Here's what to know. Elon Musk wants SpaceX to put 1 million AI satellites in orbit SpaceX has requested permission from regulators to launch up to 1 million AI satellites into space, which would operate orbital data centers built and deployed by the company. Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, believes orbital data centers to be the most efficient method to run artificial intelligence systems on Earth. Comparatively, Musk has said, ground-based data centers are too costly, take up too much space and are detrimental to the environment. The objective was central to SpaceX's decision to fold its artificial intelligence startup known as xAI under its banner earlier in 2026. Best known as the maker of the Grok chatbot, xAI would be crucial in the development of the space-based technology. How many Starlink satellites are there? For comparison, SpaceX has launched about 10,000 Starlink broadband internet satellites since 2019 into a constellation in a region close to Earth's atmosphere known as low-Earth orbit. But in a video posted June 8 on Musk's social media platform X - acquired in 2022 when it was known as Twitter - the tech mogul downplayed concerns that the AI satellite venture would lead to further orbital overcrowding. "Space is really big so it's not like space is gonna get crowded," Musk said, bucking reports that too many satellites in space create safety concerns. "If you look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can't even see them." What are AI satellites? Spanning 230 feet and delivering 120 kilowatts of average compute power, the satellites are expected to draw on hardware already built for Starlink satellites. The first generation of the satellites, known as AI1, would use "a lot of solar cells," as well as radiators and high-speed laser links for communication, Musk explained. "There's not some magic that's necessary that doesn't exist for AI satellites," Musk said. "A lot of this is technology we've already made." Crucially, though, Musk said the AI satellites should be less complicated than Starlink, even though they're much bigger. When will SpaceX launch AI satellites? Demonstration of AI satellite launches could begin by late 2027, ahead of the "as early as 2028" timeline for deployment disclosed in its IPO filing, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources. While the IPO filing said orbital data center deployments could then begin as early as 2028, it did not distinguish between demonstration missions and commercial deployments. SpaceX's Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket in the world, would be central to that timeline. While the latest 407-foot prototype of the rocket has only launched once in 2026, Musk said he expects the rocket to become fully reusable in 2026 and reach orbit for the first time since testing began in 2023. A new manufacturing facility called Gigasat in Bastrop, Texas, is also expected to be operating by the end of 2027, Musk added. What time does SpaceX go public? IPO launches today Musk's announcement comes as SpaceX made its highly-anticipated initial public offering Friday, June 12. The move means the commercial spaceflight company is now a public entity in which anyone can buy stock and invest. Those 555.5 million SpaceX shares cost $135 each. SpaceX, which is now trading on the Nasdaq Exchange, is raising $75 billion, making it the largest IPO in stock market history and valuing the company at more than $1.75 trillion. The funds will support Musk's grand ambitions for SpaceX to not only begin its orbital data center venture, but potentially launch human interplanetary missions, beginning with Mars. IPO could make Elon Musk world's first trillionaire. What is his net worth? Musk is already the richest person on the planet with an estimated net worth of $793 billion. But the record-breaking IPO for SpaceX could see his worth rise by about 26%, making him the world's first trillionaire. For context, that means Musk could spend $1 million a day for 2,700 years. Contributing: Alberto Cuadra, George Petras, USA TODAY; Reuters Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected]