SpaceX IPO banks on orbital AI data centers to justify $1.77 trillion valuation

The three hard-tech moonshots fueling SpaceX's unbelievable IPO

SpaceX is coming to market on Friday, and investors can barely contain their excitement. The $75 billion stock offering is reportedly deeply over-subscribed, with some institutional investors ponying up for $10 billion blocks of Elon Musk's empire. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the investment -- big IPOs tend to sink, the company is losing money, and Musk's erratic online behavior would be terrifying coming from any other tech CEO -- but it doesn't seem to be slowing anyone down. Tech investors have learned to never bet against Elon, whatever the business logic indicates. But a dispassionate look at SpaceX's financial plans can still tell us a lot about what they're betting on: A business centered around orbital data centers that emerged in the last eighteen months as Musk sought a vision that would unite his conglomerate ahead of its IPO. In true Musk style, it's a bold scheme, and one that requires at least three near-impossible feats of engineering: a reusable rocket, a brand-new American chip foundry, and a sprint to build satellites faster than ever before. That kind of business plan can be difficult to score. This week, two analyses tried to offer a more a sober assessment of SpaceX's plan -- one from Morningstar, the financial research firm, and another from Aswath Damodaran, a New York University finance professor who takes a special interest in corporate valuation. Both exercises find SpaceX significantly less valuable than the nearly $1.8 trillion assessment proffered by the company's bankers. Morningstar assigns a value of about $825 billion, while Damodaran suggests the company is worth $1.2 trillion. The significant difference is, in many ways, the result of bolting a world-beating space monopoly to a far riskier AI business. Morningstar's analyst characterizes the difference between their assessment of a fair value of $63 a share, and SpaceX's offering price of $135, as a $72 call option on the company's ability to deliver orbital data centers at the rate and capability that Musk believes is possible. In both analyses, the high-margins of the company's space launch business and its satellite internet network are the most attractive things about the company, while its AI business is the most uncertain. To cloud or not to cloud? Part of the question is, what is SpaceX's AI business? In the company's S-1 market analysis, it frames its largest opportunity in enterprise AI -- that its models will power coding tools built by the team it acqui-hired from Cursor, or the company's Macrohard project, which is intended to equip digital agents with the capabilities to perform white-collar labor. SpaceX assessed the total market for that business as $22.7 trillion, compared to $2.4 trillion for AI infrastructure and just under $2 trillion for the company's space efforts. But that contradicts the company's recent deals to sell significant amounts of compute to Anthropic and Google, ostensible competitors in the model business. That's not out of place for a Musk company; SpaceX frequently launches satellites operated by competitors to its Starlink network. It just usually does that from a place of strength, not while playing catch-up. Acting like a neocloud might be good near-term business, but it raises the question of where value will accrue in the AI tech stack: Is it better to be a compute provider or a model-builder, if you can't be both? The scaling logic that dominates the AI business demands that serious frontier labs constantly train new and more powerful models (or, as Musk admitted in his recent lawsuit against Sam Altman, by distilling capabilities from other companies models). Any competitor not rushing ahead is likely to fall behind, although the rising abilities of cheaper open-source models might undermine that dynamic. Space data centers are one way to square the circle, providing so much compute that SpaceX could effectively do both. Musk's space data center architecture In a video interview released by SpaceX this week, Musk laid out the logic for why SpaceX is best positioned to deliver on data centers. The core of the argument was that SpaceX is the only company capable of putting a lot of mass on orbit cheaply, building a lot of solar panels, and building a lot of chips. In general, industry experts see space data centers at scale being about a decade away, but Musk argued (with a lot of caveats) that they are much closer. "This is not a promise of what we'll do," Musk said in the video. "This is what we are going to try to do, and think we probably can do, which is to get to roughly an annualized rate of a gigawatt per year by the end of next year, in terms of space AI compute." Based on his expected maximum power delivery of 150kW per satellite, that's a production rate of 6,666 satellites a year, or about 556 a month. That's roughly twice the reported current production rate of Starlink satellites, which is just 70 a week. Though Musk says that the AI satellites are simpler in architecture, that's a lot to ask for a production facility that hasn't been built yet. The company is also still building out its solar panel production facility. That's before we get to Terafab, the company's much-discussed chip foundry, which Musk sees feeding into the later stages of this product as the company tries to scale up to a terawatt of annual compute production. Chip fabs are some of the hardest modern industrial projects, typically costing billions of dollars and taking as long as a decade to build. Then there's the most vital question: What about Starship, the key to SpaceX's ability to economically put all those chips in orbit? A recent test flight went well enough, but it didn't suggest that rapid reusability is right around the corner. SpaceX may end up reusing just the booster at first, which would raise the costs of the space data center roll-out. For now, the company is still undergoing a mishap investigation for the FAA to understand why the booster stage failed to make a controlled reentry as planned. SpaceX hasn't responded to questions about when the vehicle will fly again, thought it has said it expects to begin launching Starlink satellites with it by the end of this year. But take that with a grain of salt: Consider that NASA, which has a nearly $4 billion contract with SpaceX to use Starship as a Moon lander, still isn't ready to commit to a test mission with the vehicle scheduled for late 2027. Buyer Beware As public investors get their hands on SpaceX shares, they'll find themselves owning a near-monopoly on access to space in the US and Europe, a world-spanning communications network, and a wager on the most ambitious infrastructure project of the AI era. Those projects depend on SpaceX creating something never seen before -- a fully-reusable rocket. The company will also need to build a high-rate production facility for AI satellites, but do so in eighteen months, not the decade it took to develop its Starlink manufacturing. Finally, it will need to build a chip foundry in the US, something even dedicated silicon firms are reluctant to take on. Musk is right that SpaceX is the only company positioned to build any of this anytime soon, but that speaks to the magnitude of the challenge as much as the company's likelihood of achieving it. Musk used to say he wouldn't take SpaceX public until he reached Mars, since fickle investors might lose faith along the way. Those plans may have been put on hold, but what he's laid out ahead of the company's IPO could be just as difficult.

SpaceX aims to launch orbital AI computing tests by end of next year, sources say

NEW YORK, June 9 (Reuters) - SpaceX executives say the company is aiming to launch initial demonstrations of space-based artificial intelligence computing infrastructure by late 2027, ahead of the "as early as 2028" timeline for deployment disclosed in its IPO filing, according to two people who attended investor presentations held ahead of the offering. The orbital-compute effort is central to SpaceX's long-term growth pitch to investors. The company claims in its IPO documents that it is "the only company with a commercially viable path to building orbital AI compute at scale." SpaceX has requested permission from regulators to launch up to 1 million space-based data-center satellites. During two investor presentations ahead of the IPO, both featuring President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen, SpaceX ⁠executives outlined a roadmap to begin demonstrating orbital-compute capabilities in 2027, according to the two people familiar with the discussions. Both sources were at a Goldman Sachs meeting and one attended another meeting as well. While the IPO filing said orbital data-center deployments could begin as early as 2028, it did not distinguish between demonstration missions and commercial deployments. Shotwell and Johnsen, who have been meeting with major investment banks to pitch a $75 billion fundraise in the company's IPO targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion, described the initial deployments as demonstrator systems intended to validate the technology before any broader commercial rollout, the sources said. One of them interpreted the timeline in the IPO filing as providing management room for potential delays in Starship development or satellite manufacturing. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the event attended by several investors and portfolio ⁠managers. SpaceX stock is scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker symbol SPCX, with the IPO price targeted at $135 per share. STARSHIP DELAYS POSE CHALLENGE Starship, the fully reusable rocket that underpins the company's plans for orbital computing, remains years behind SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's original targets and has yet to demonstrate the rapid reusability needed to make large-scale deployment economically viable. Musk has encountered delays with projects at many companies he runs, but many involve open-ended challenges ⁠that were particularly difficult to solve, said Michael Monaghan, partner and portfolio manager at Founder ETFs, who was not at the meetings. "I think that orbital data centers, while a difficult problem, have some bounds on it, which to me gives greater confidence that the timelines laid out will be hit." In a video ⁠released on Monday, Musk said that building orbital AI data centers is not a difficult engineering challenge because much of the required technology already exists in its current Starlink satellite network. The first version of the AI satellite is likely to use Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab chips and the spacecraft's computer power ⁠would be equivalent to that of an Nvidia GB300 rack, the CEO said. Reporting by Akash Sriram in New York; Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Akash Sriram Thomson Reuters Akash reports on technology companies in the United States, electric vehicle companies, and the space industry. His reporting usually appears in the Autos & Transportation and Technology sections. He has a postgraduate degree in Conflict, Development, and Security from the University of Leeds. Akash's interests include music, football (soccer), and Formula 1.

Report Says SpaceX Plans to Launch Space Data Center Test by Late 2027

Reuters reported Tuesday that "two people who attended investor presentations" ahead of the SpaceX IPO have leaked exciting news about SpaceX's plan for AI data centers in space: There will supposedly be a tech demo launched by the end of next year. That's super soon when you consider the company has also said in its S-1 filing (also according to Reuters), that the related initiatives "involve significant technical complexity and unproven technologies, and may not achieve commercial viability." Gizmodo is not a source of investment advice, but it seems like if you're looking for a clear picture of a company's proximity to a technological breakthrough, if that company is on the verge of an IPO, it might just be offering less than reliable predictions. For instance, if you look at the Lyft prospectus, released just before that rideshare company's 2019 IPO, you can read an awful lot about autonomous vehicles. The company said it was building a "world-class autonomous vehicle system at [its] Level 5 Engineering Center, with the goal of ensuring access to affordable and reliable autonomous technology." The prospectus later says: "Within 10 years, our goal is to have deployed a low-cost, scaled autonomous vehicle network that is capable of delivering a majority of the rides on the Lyft platform." Almost exactly two years after the IPO, the aforementioned engineering division, Level 5, was sold to Toyota for $550 million. For all anyone knows, Lyft may still roll out a network of AV's -- it hasn't given up altogether -- but it'll be tricky to do it by 2029 without the engineering division purpose-built for that job. So tech companies in the midst of IPOs can be a bit blustery. Nonetheless, this is far from the most outlandish of Elon Musk's hi-tech fever dreams (ahem). According to SpaceX's own artists' rendering, space data centers will be satellites -- big satellites, but otherwise not too different from what you probably picture when you close your eyes and imagine a satellite: a 20-foot by 70-foot structure, mostly made up of two solar panel "wings," with another panel in the middle housing the silicon needed to train and run AI models. As one of my Gizmodo colleagues noted last year, "the company does appear uniquely well-positioned to lay the groundwork for orbital server farms." Any given expert analysis of the SpaceX plan to put AI data centers in space generally coalesces around the same points: it's not impossible based on existing technology, but it's intricate and fraught with potential drawbacks. Moreover, success would not clearly be a slam dunk when it comes to competing with earthbound hyperscalers.

SpaceX reveals its share price and record valuation: 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece, at a $1.77 trillion valuation | Fortune

It's official: SpaceX is on track to be the largest IPO in history, seeking to raise $75 billion once it goes public later this month. The company will sell 555.6 million Class A shares at a fixed price of $135 each, according to an amended statement filed with the SEC on Wednesday. Combined with the company's total shares outstanding, that prices SpaceX at roughly $1.77 trillion; enough to make it, on arrival, the seventh-largest company in the U.S. per the Fortune 500 list, walloping current no. 7 spot Berkshire Hathaway, and even CEO Elon Musk's other darling, Tesla, which trades at a market cap of about $1.6 trillion. The company going public is not just a rocket maker, anymore. February's all-stock absorption of xAI turned SpaceX into a money-losing satellite-internet and AI conglomerate, with proceeds earmarked partly for expanding AI compute alongside the Starlink network. Musk makes the goal in the prospectus very clear: get a colony of a million people on Mars. The rockets are to transport there, and the AI is to organize the colony and also figure out how to get a million people on Mars. How much of the $80 billion actually reaches that buildout is another question: as Fortune has reported, more than three-quarters of the proceeds are already spoken for, pledged to repay debt held by Valor Equity Partners, X Corp, and xAI investors, and to pay EchoStar for a spectrum acquisition, leaving less than $18 billion for the AI express. What is clear is that Musk has full control of the company. The amendment shows the founder, CEO, CTO, and chairman holding roughly 82.4% of voting power after the offering, enough to elect or eject a majority of the board outright and to make SpaceX a "controlled company" exempt from certain Nasdaq governance rules. Public shareholders are just along for the ride to space. The filing starts the timer on a hot IPO summer, with the other rumored trillion-dollar listings -- Anthropic and OpenAI -- set to follow. Anthropic confidentially filed its prospectus on Monday. The question on Wall Street's mind is whether there's enough money in the public markets to absorb them all. Nasdaq controversially rewrote its rules last month in anticipation of the megacap arrivals, allowing the largest IPOs to enter its prestigious Nasdaq 100 index after just 15 trading days, rather than waiting months for the index's regular reconstitution; and scrapping its 10% minimum float requirement in the process. SpaceX is expected to float barely 4% of the company, and Nasdaq index funds will be forced to absorb SpaceX shares mechanically, at whatever price prevails. That hands early SpaceX investors a ready exit in what would be the biggest payday in startup history. SpaceX's lockup period, like everything else about the company, is unorthodox: instead of a standard 180-day cliff, insiders can sell up to 20% of their locked shares once the company reports its first quarterly earnings, with an additional 10% if the stock is trading at least 30% above the IPO price.The shares unlock in staggered tranches starting after the company's second earnings report; expected to be around late July or early August. Musk himself can't sell for 366 days. The structure is designed to gradually increase the float -- and accelerate SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq 100.

Ahead of SpaceX IPO, Musk says AI satellites will use mostly existing technology

The ⁠billionaire said ⁠that much of the required technology already exists in its current Starlink satellite network. "Part of what we want to convey here is that there is not some magic that is necessary, that doesn't exist," Elon Musk said in a video discussion released by the company. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Monday that building orbital AI data centers is not a difficult engineering challenge as the company prepares for its blockbuster IPO this week. The ⁠billionaire said ⁠that much of the required technology already exists in its current Starlink satellite network. "Part of what we want to convey here is that there is not some magic that is necessary, that doesn't exist," Elon Musk said in a video discussion released by the company. "A lot of this is technology we've already made for the Starlink V3 satellites. We don't think this is a super hard problem compared to the things we already do." The comments come as investors scrutinize SpaceX's ⁠plans for orbital AI data centers, a key element of the company's long-term growth narrative ahead of an initial public offering expected to value the company at about $1.75 trillion. Musk and ⁠SpaceX engineer Ian Dahl outlined plans for AI satellites that would operate as computing nodes in orbit, powered by solar energy and cooled by radiating heat into space. The company argues that placing computing infrastructure in orbit could help overcome some of the power constraints increasingly facing terrestrial AI data centers. According to the presentation, the first proposed AI satellite would generate about 150 kilowatts of peak power and 120 kilowatts of sustained compute power. Musk said that is roughly comparable to a single Nvidia GB300 AI server rack, which typically consumes around 140 kilowatts at peak power. SpaceX said the satellites would rely heavily on technologies already being deployed in its next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, including solar arrays and thermal-management systems. Dahl described the spacecraft as ⁠being simpler than Starlink satellites because they would not require the large phased-array antennas used for broadband communications. The company said Starship's fully reusable design would eventually allow it to launch the large volumes of solar panels, radiators and computer chips needed to scale orbital computing. Musk said SpaceX expects its AI satellite factory in Bastrop, Texas, to reach meaningful production volumes by the end of next year. The orbital computing initiative forms part of a broader strategy to position SpaceX not only as a launch and satellite communications company but also as a major AI infrastructure provider as it enters public markets.

SpaceX Could Demo Space-Based AI Computing In 2027, Earlier Than IPO Filing Suggested - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NV

SpaceX executives have told investors the company aims to launch initial demonstrations of space-based artificial intelligence computing infrastructure by late 2027, moving ahead of the "as early as 2028" deployment timeline disclosed in its IPO filing, according to two people who attended pre-IPO investor presentations. SpaceX Moves Up AI Compute Timeline During two investor presentations before the offering, both featuring SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen, executives outlined a roadmap to begin demonstrating orbital-compute capabilities in 2027, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Both sources attended a Goldman Sachs meeting, and one attended another presentation. The orbital-compute project is central to SpaceX's long-term pitch as it seeks to raise $75 billion in a record initial public offering. In its IPO documents, SpaceX says it is "the only company with a commercially viable path to building orbital AI compute at scale." The IPO filing said orbital data-center deployments could begin as early as 2028, but did not distinguish between test missions and commercial deployments. Demonstrator Systems Would Test Technology First The company has requested regulatory permission to launch up to 1 million space-based data-center satellites. Shotwell and Johnsen described the early launches as demonstrator systems meant to validate the technology before any broader rollout, the sources said. One source said the filing's 2028 language appeared to give management room for possible delays in Starship development or satellite manufacturing. Starship is central to the plan. The fully reusable rocket is designed to carry the mass needed for large-scale orbital computing, but it remains years behind Elon Musk's earlier targets and has not yet demonstrated the rapid reusability needed to make the project economical. Starlink Technology Could Support AI Satellites SpaceX shares are scheduled to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. The IPO price is targeted at $135 a share, implying a valuation of about $1.75 trillion. Demand for the offering has been intense. Photo Courtesy: JOCA_PH on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

SpaceX IPO: Elon Musk's AI ambitions fueling space data centers & trillionaire dreams

SpaceX's upcoming IPO, fueled by immense investor demand, could propel Elon Musk to trillionaire status. Beyond its space ambitions, the company's prospectus reveals plans for space-based data centers, hinting at Musk's strategy to fund his AI endeavors. This move addresses the escalating costs and logistical challenges of terrestrial AI infrastructure. SpaceX's much-anticipated IPO could be one of the biggest debuts on the US stock market. With reported investor demand of about $150 bn, almost twice the $75 bn the company is seeking to realise, the offering could make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. The enormous sum of money and SpaceX's niche in space tech have made the IPO a focal point for investors. But the buzz around the offering also stems from unusual plans enlisted in its prospectus, including endeavours to establish a colony of 1 mn people on Mars. While such promises may be far-fetched, the prospectus also mentions plans of launching data centres into space. This promise stands out, as it hints towards the bigger stage Musk could be setting for his AI ambitions. With global AI expansion hinging on costly data centre growth, Musk appears to understand AI economics deeply, and by framing the IPO around a space dream, he could raise the capital needed to emerge as an AI leader. Musk has long harboured AI ambitions, and was among the earliest investors in OpenAI when it was established in 2015. But the two are now on poor terms, highlighted by Musk's recent lawsuit against OpenAI. While OpenAI's ChatGPT became a market leader, Musk's AI company xAI and its chatbot, Grok, have not seen similar adoption. xAI suffered operational losses of about $6.4 bn last year. With the company now acquired by SpaceX, those losses were transferred to the latter's balance sheet, although SpaceX was already profitable beforehand, generating $18.7 bn in revenue in 2025 and $6.6 bn in adjusted EBITDA. While Musk's xAI struggles, the journey has not been smooth for other AI giants either. Much of this challenge stems from the substantial cost of frontier models and data centre expansion. In a bid to capture market share, AI companies initially burned billions to expand access to compute, and did not pass these costs on to users through higher fees. But with adoption growing rapidly, companies are charging more for proprietary models. This higher fee is rooted in token economics. AI processes text as tokens computed on GPUs, and compute demand rises with token volume and task complexity. While companies have sharply reduced token prices by expanding compute capacity, rapid AI adoption is driving exponential growth in token usage and raising overall costs. GitHub's announcement that it would switch flat-rate plans to more expensive usage-based models reflect a hard reality: AI providers cannot absorb inference costs indefinitely. And once providers stop subsidising AI usage, demand takes a hit. Microsoft reportedly cancelled its internal Claude code licences because token-based billing made AI usage unfeasible. For a given amount of compute access, rising adoption would ultimately reach a point where AI providers either sacrifice profits, or let demand plummet. In such a situation, expanding compute capacity would not be a straightforward solution. Apart from large investments, land availability, energy requirements, and environmental concerns can become major barriers to data centre development. Amid these dynamics, whoever owns the largest compute capacity would be able to provide AI at the lowest cost. Musk appears to understand these dynamics, and the planned space-based data centres seem justified in this context. Space-based computing infrastructure exists on a small scale. Axiom Space deployed a data-processing prototype powered by Red Hat Device Edge onboard the International Space Station in 2025, capable of running cloud computing and AI. The first two orbital data centre nodes were successfully launched into low Earth orbit this year. For AI companies, space data centres powered by solar energy and cooled by space vacuum could prove greener and cheaper than terrestrial ones. The primary bottleneck is the enormous cost of launching such infrastructure into orbit, a challenge Musk could address through the SpaceX IPO. Musk is a man of many interests, and his business ventures are equally diverse. But while he tries to 'do it all', results have not always been desirable. Examples include his acquisition of Twitter on the pretext of protecting free speech, at a price experts considered unreasonably high. The move backfired financially as advertising revenue fell. Similarly, Tesla's Cybertruck has found only few buyers. Ironically, it was SpaceX that reportedly bought around $131 mn worth of Cybertrucks. The case of SpaceX is stranger. As a company dedicated to space tech, it actually earns most of its revenue from its Starlink internet service, which handles over 90% of global space-based internet traffic and had roughly 8.5 mn subscribers by 2025. The company's vision has shifted from rockets to satellites, Mars, and now AI infrastructure, that too by apparently disguising AI ambitions in the skin of a space dream Ultimately, investors should be more curious about why a company dedicated to space tech is leveraging Musk's halo effect to indirectly fund AI ambitions. While his intentions regarding space-based data centres could be genuine, the degree of control he exercises over SpaceX raises an important question: do the breakthroughs in AI compute technology that Musk aspires justify the scale of control, capital, and regulatory oversight being sought in the name of plans that still seem no less than science fiction? With 85% voting power, Musk could end up exercising unusually large control over the biggest pool of efficient compute available. It is yet to be seen whether the June 12 SpaceX IPO will be successful, and what kind of impact it could have on the broader stock market. For now, one thing is certain: Musk knows where the AI industry is heading. And he seems to be prepared with a long-term strategy. Kapoor is chair, Institute for Competitiveness. Puri is founder, PurInsights. Saad is researcher at Institute for Competitiveness.

Elon Musk Breaks Down What Goes Into An AI Satellite And Why It Is 'Easier' To Design Ahead Of Mega Space

Elon Musk unveiled a more detailed look at an early version of an AI data-center satellite that SpaceX plans to build, offering new insight into one of the most ambitious projects underpinning the company's expected record initial public offering. Musk Details SpaceX's AI Satellite Plan Musk showed a rendering and specifications for what SpaceX calls its AI-1 satellite, the first version of a spacecraft the company plans to use in a future network of about 1 million orbital satellites designed to run complex artificial intelligence computing. Starlink Experience Gives SpaceX Head Start Musk said SpaceX's experience building Starlink gives it a head start. He argued that AI satellites would be simpler than Starlink satellites because they would not need the same complex communications antennas. "An AI satellite is essentially a lot of solar cells, a radiator, and you still need some laser links, but you don't have all of the super complex antennas that you have on a Starlink satellite," Musk said. "Given the two, the easier one to design for is the AI satellite." Musk also showed plans for Gigasat, a major expansion of SpaceX's Bastrop, Texas, site. The facility would span more than 11 million square feet across more than 405 hectares and manufacture large solar panels for the satellites. IPO Filing Highlights Power Bottlenecks The planned Terafab would be even larger. Musk said it would cover 100 million square feet, about 10 times Tesla's Austin gigafactory. In its IPO filing, SpaceX noted that "access to electricity and water at economically viable prices" will constrain the $26.5 trillion AI market. The company suggested that space-based solar power could overcome this limitation. The company plans to go public on June 12 at $135 a share, raising $75 billion at a roughly $1.77 trillion valuation. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

SpaceX IPO gets Cryptocurrency touch. Here's how

SpaceX, which began its roadshow last week, has drawn investor demand of about $150 billion for its IPO, about double the $75 billion it is seeking to raise, said two people familiar with the matter on Friday. Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit said it will offer retail investors access to tokenized initial public offerings (IPOs) at the offering price, starting with SpaceX as its first offering. Bybit users via Payward's xStocks, a ⁠tokenization platform, can ⁠subscribe to tokenized representations of publicly traded equities. For the SpaceX offering, registration and subscription will run from June 7 to June 11, 2026, with allocations to be finalised between June 11 and June 12. Tokenized shares are expected ⁠to begin trading on Bybit's spot market from June 12. Users will be ⁠able to purchase shares at IPO pricing bypassing secondary market competition without the need to open or maintain traditional brokerage accounts. SpaceX, which began its roadshow last week, has drawn investor demand of about $150 billion for its IPO, about double the $75 billion it is seeking to raise, said two people familiar with the matter on Friday. Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken said ⁠this month it had opened SpaceX IPO access to clients in more than 110 countries via xStocks. Wall Street is betting 2026 could be a breakout year for the U.S. IPO market, underpinned by a strong pipeline of high-profile private companies and pent-up demand for new listings. SpaceX on Friday signed a blockbuster cloud computing agreement under which Google will pay the Elon Musk-founded rocket company $920 million per month for access to a massive cluster of AI chips, according to a disclosure in its initial public offering filing. The deal, which will bolster SpaceX's finances ahead of its IPO on June 12, covers a computing infrastructure of approximately 110,000 Nvidia GPUs -- the crucial hardware needed to power Google's Gemini AI models. The filing says Google will begin paying the full monthly rate in October 2026, with a reduced fee applying during a ramp-up period until then. The agreement runs through June 2029, implying total payments of roughly $30 billion over the life of the contract. The deal resembles one struck with AI giant Anthropic, in which SpaceX leased compute capacity at its Colossus data centers in Memphis, Tennessee for $1.25 billion a month. The facilities were originally built to power Musk's rival AI venture, xAI. SpaceX's IPO filing revealed that xAI last year posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion on total revenue of $3.2 billion. "This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected," a Google Cloud spokesperson said in an email to AFP. The filing adds that after December 31, "the agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days' notice." The deals with Google and Anthropic come just days ahead of SpaceX's IPO, which will be the biggest in history, valuing the company at $1.8 trillion. That valuation is largely based on faith that Musk can deliver on his ambitions to vastly expand his Starlink satellite business, put data centers into space using SpaceX rockets, as well as begin colonizing Mars.

SpaceX Revenue Could Hit $3.4 Trillion By 2040, Co-Lead Underwriter Morgan Stanley Predicts - Morgan Stan

Elon Musk's SpaceX is set to debut on the Nasdaq next week in what could be the largest IPO ever, and one of its co-lead underwriters projects the rocket maker's revenue may hit $3.4 trillion by 2040. Bank Forecasts Lean Heavily On AI Growth SpaceX's AI division, formed after the February merger with xAI, reported $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025. Goldman projects that unit could contribute around $322 billion in 2030, while Morgan Stanley sees closer to $190 billion. The optimism is anchored by a concrete deal. In March, SpaceX leased its Colossus 1 supercomputer, which houses 220,000 Nvidia GPUs, to Anthropic for $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, giving xAI a $15 billion annual revenue floor before Grok factors in. The 'Orbital Compute' Pitch The S-1 also outlines plans to launch orbital data centers by 2028, using the Starship heavy-lift system and the Starlink V3 laser mesh network. Moving compute workloads into space could leverage constant solar power and natural radiative cooling to solve the energy and heat constraints throttling terrestrial data centers. It is the sci-fi premium the banks are selling, repositioning SpaceX as an off-planet AI infrastructure play. Kalshi gives a 25% chance of there being a Data Center in space by 2033. NYU's Damodaran Calls The AI Math 'Fantasy' Polymarket gives roughly 69% odds that SpaceX's IPO closing market cap is over $2 trillion, with the company targeting a $1.77 trillion valuation at $135 per share. NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran values SpaceX closer to $1.3 trillion in a post-prospectus analysis published yesterday, calling the prospectus's $26 trillion AI total addressable market a fantasy and comparing it to inflated estimates from the Uber and Airbnb IPOs. Damodaran cut his projected AI operating margin to 25% from 45%, citing competitive pressure from Anthropic, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and OpenAI. With Musk retaining over 85% of voting control via dual-class shares, investors may have limited say if SpaceX doubles down on AI spending. Image: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

SpaceX IPO Plans $75 Billion Raise as Starlink Profits Fund Costly AI Expansion

Launch services remain central to satellite deployment and government contracts. Even so, the financial data shows SpaceX increasingly depends on recurring Starlink subscriptions for revenue growth and operating earnings. SpaceX's AI division generated $3.2 billion in 2025 revenue, although it recorded a $1.2 billion adjusted operating loss. Management is developing the segment around Grok, cloud computing and enterprise AI services following the company's combination with xAI. Capital spending climbed from $4.4 billion in 2023 to $20.7 billion in 2025. AI computing systems, satellite deployment and launch infrastructure drove much of the increase. SpaceX told investors heavy investment spending has limited its current profitability. Still, its AI forecasts carry uncertainty. estimates artificial intelligence could eventually represent a $26.5 trillion market. Such long-range estimates depend on adoption rates, computing demand and the company's ability to compete with established technology providers. SpaceX is targeting gross margins near 70% over time, compared with 49% in 2025. The plan depends on higher Starlink margins and stronger AI revenue, although both targets remain uncertain under the current spending programme.

SpaceX targets $1.75 trillion valuation in all-primary IPO next week, sources say

SpaceX is preparing for a massive initial public offering targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion. The company plans to raise at least $75 billion by selling new shares. This move is expected to be the largest IPO ever. Investors will get a chance to buy into Elon Musk's vision for space exploration and technology. SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, plans to target a valuation of $1.75 trillion in its blockbuster initial public offering, which will consist entirely of new shares, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. The IPO is expected to be structured as an all-primary offering, meaning all proceeds would go to the company and existing SpaceX shareholders will not be able to sell any of their shares in the IPO, the sources said. Shareholders would likely have to wait until at least after the company reports its first quarterly earnings, under a staggered lockup, Reuters previously reported. US MarketsPowered By As on 03 Jun 2026, 01:30 AM IST S&P 500 Top Gainers Hewlett Packard56.15(19.47%) Corning200.40(13.41%) Alexandria Real Estate52.74(8.45%) Aptiv73.85(7.65%) Gainers" S&P 500 Top Losers Trade Desk21.10(-9.13%) Intuit322.14(-8.94%) Coterra Energy32.56(-8.62%) Cboe Global Markets275.59(-8.44%) Losers" After some early meetings with investors, or a "testing the waters" process, the company has indicated it plans to raise at least $75 billion in its base offering, the sources said, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential information. The greenshoe option, set at ⁠15%, would ⁠allow underwriters to sell additional shares if investor demand exceeds expectations, one of the sources said. Pure primary offerings are not unprecedented, although they are not the most common structure for large listings, which are often a mix of primary and secondary shares allowing early investors to sell down stakes. In 2021, for instance, Rivian Automotive's IPO was structured entirely as a primary issuance, with early backers including Amazon and Ford not selling shares at the time of listing as the company raised capital to fund expansion. Other features of the proposed offering that diverge from conventional public listings are early inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 index and unusual provisions giving Musk effective control over the board and his roles as chief executive and chairman. The move marks the first time SpaceX has communicated specific fundraising and valuation targets to banks after early investor meetings, as it prepares for what is expected to be the largest-ever IPO. Reuters ⁠previously reported the company was considering a preliminary valuation of around $1.75 trillion. The roadshow for the IPO is set to begin on Thursday, Reuters previously reported. The plans, including the size of the raise, are subject to change as investor meetings get under way, the sources cautioned. The IPO will give public investors a rare opportunity to ⁠buy into Musk's vision for space, satellite communications and artificial intelligence through SpaceX, which has emerged as the crown jewel of the world's richest person's business empire. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. MEGA IPO WAVE The listing is expected to kick off a wave of mega IPOs, with SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic together poised to add almost $4 trillion in market capitalization to public markets and intensify competition for investor dollars. Unlike most IPO candidates, SpaceX lacks a clear public market benchmark. Analysts say investors must piece together comparisons from aerospace, telecom and defense companies while factoring in Starlink's growth potential and Musk's long-term ambitions, making valuation a complex task. For many investors, the bet is as much on Musk as on SpaceX. His track record at electric-vehicle company Tesla and his ability to galvanize retail traders could likewise spur strong demand for shares, as his reputation has done for past ventures. Still, two of SpaceX's three businesses are burning cash, with only its connectivity segment, home to the Starlink satellite constellation, generating profits and widely viewed as the company's cash cow. Beyond rockets and satellites, SpaceX is pitching investors a future that includes ambitious projects such as data centers in orbit, positioning itself to benefit from a surge in AI-related infrastructure spending. SpaceX merged with Musk's AI startup xAI earlier this year in a deal that valued the rocket and satellite ⁠company at $1 trillion and the developer of the Grok chatbot at $250 billion. Its revenue rose to $4.69 billion in the three months ended March 31 from $4.07 billion a year ago. Losses widened to $1.27 per share versus 18 cents per share over the same period. In 2025, SpaceX's revenue jumped to $18.67 billion from $14.02 billion a year earlier, but the company swung to a net loss of $4.94 billion from a profit of $791 million. Since a large part of SpaceX's pitch to investors hinges on Musk, some corporate governance concerns could give investors pause, experts have said. Measures, including a dual-class share structure laid out in the IPO prospectus, concentrate voting power in the hands of Musk and a small group of insiders. SpaceX is aiming to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "SPCX." The debut is expected as early as June 12, Reuters has previously reported, after the company accelerated the timeline of its IPO. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan are the joint book-running managers for the offering, leading a syndicate of global investment banks underwriting the deal.