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The company is preparing to go public, which could catapult the fortune of the leader of Tesla and Starlink into the stratosphere. Are these ambitions really cosmic or just another black hole for investors?
has a habit of turning science fiction into reality. From reusable rockets to autonomous electric vehicles and humanoid robots, the billionaire’s ventures often achieve what was once considered impossible. With the initial public offering (IPO) of , now, Musk is aiming for even higher goals.
The company, which has remained strictly private for 24 years, is now preparing to go public. In a hundreds-of-page S-1 document sent to U.S. regulators on Wednesday, SpaceX announces plans to capture about 75 billion dollars with new investors, which would increase the company’s value to 1.75 billion dollars.
Not bad for a company that still operates at a loss and that Musk — already the richest man in the world — will, in practice, continue to control.
Mars, asteroid mining, orbital data centers
Musk wants SpaceX to do more than send astronauts to space. It plans to build the infrastructure necessary to ensure the future of human life beyond Earth. The ultimate goal, according to Musk, is to create self-sustainable cities on Mars capable of hosting up to one million people.
To achieve this goal, SpaceX plans to use — its gigantic reusable spacecraft — to carry out the first unmanned trips by 2030. The one-way trip to the Red Planet covers, on average, around 225 million kilometers and takes approximately six to nine months. The first missions will test landing systems and begin installing basic infrastructure, followed by manned trips a few years later.
SpaceX also wants to use existing resources on celestial bodies much closer to Earth to support humanity’s multiplanetary expansion. Musk believes that the asteroidswhich traverse Space in variable orbits, could one day be explored for mining.
The near-zero gravity of asteroids makes landing and extracting materials much easier and cheaper. However, large-scale mining of platinum, nickel, gold and ice — water — on asteroids, all vital to sustaining life, building habitats and producing fuel on Mars, is not expected to be achieved until the 2040s, or even later, according to predictions from space industry analysts.
A crucial first step, however, will be the Luawhich is just three days’ travel from Earth. SpaceX envisions that habitats, factories and fuel depots could be built on the Moon, a much cheaper option than launching tons of materials from Earth.
Musk also believes that Space has the answer to one of the biggest problems facing artificial intelligence (AI): the enormous amount of energy and cooling needed to make large data centers process billions of user requests simultaneously.
Instead of building more of these energy-intensive facilities on Earth, SpaceX floated the idea of put gigantic AI supercomputers into orbitin large satellite constellations. Those data centers they could use unlimited sunlight as a power source and the cold vacuum of Space for free refrigeration, making large-scale AI training much cheaper and more efficient than on our planet.
The world’s first trillionaire?
As if SpaceX’s ambitions weren’t bold enough, the IPO plans to boost Musk’s fortune are truly extraordinary. It currently owns about 42% of SpaceX. With the target valuation of $1.75 trillion, this stake alone would be worth approximately 735 billion.
Adding up Musk’s holdings in Tesla, xAI and other ventures, the IPO would likely bring his total net worth to more than one billion dollarsmaking him the first trillionaire in history.
A special dual-class share structure gives Musk more than 80% of voting rights despite holding a much smaller stake in SpaceX. This configuration makes it, in practice, irremovable as CEOallowing you to pursue long-term, high-risk projects without pressure from short-term investors or activist shareholders.
Musk’s absolute control has drawn criticism before, especially in Teslawhere shareholders sued the company over its huge compensation packages and potential conflicts of interest, arguing that the board of directors lacks true independence. Similar concerns have arisen regarding its control of the social networks Xwhere he personally made decisions such as strategic changes and mass layoffs.
The splashy IPO will also create enormous wealth for early investors and executives. According to the Economic Journal, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen would see their shares surpass $1 billion in value. Longtime investor Antonio Gracias could walk away with $70 billion or more, while PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek’s stake would be worth about $5 billion.
Wall Street’s boldest bet
Wall Street is preparing for what could be the biggest IPO in historywith investment bank Goldman Sachs acting as lead underwriter.
If SpaceX raises additional $75 billion in funding, it would represent nearly triple Saudi Aramco’s previous record of approximately $29.4 billion in 2019. Before that, the largest initial public offering in the United States was Alibaba’s $22 billion in 2014.
A valuation of $1.75 billion would put the SpaceX among the ten largest listed companies in the worldalongside Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet — owner of Google — and Microsoft. This would represent a huge vote of confidence on the part of investors, as SpaceX continues to be a loss-making companyhaving recorded a net loss of US$4.94 billion in 2025 due to high investments in Starship, satellite launches and AI resources.
Due to the enormous risks of operating outside of planet Earth, coupled with the rapid advancement of AI, the IPO filing outlines the very real dangers that SpaceX faces. These include “a unique range of Space-related risks,” including “radiation from solar and cosmic sources; micrometeorites and orbital debris,” as well as “injury or death to humans.”
The document presented this Wednesday also warns that the company has “a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future”.
The sky-high market valuation has led some analysts to question whether SpaceX’s ambitions are more utopian than space science — a debate that is likely to intensify when trading begins on the Nasdaq next month.
