SpaceX files confidentially for mega IPO at $1.75T valuation

Elon Musk once swore SpaceX wouldn't go public until humans touched down on Mars. But it turns out, building Starship and training frontier AI models requires a mountain of cash that even the private markets can no longer comfortably supply.

SpaceX has confidentially filed draft IPO paperwork with the SEC, targeting a June debut that could value the rocket, satellite, and AI conglomerate at an eye-watering $1.75 trillion, according to Bloomberg. The company aims to raise a staggering $75 billion. If successful, that would easily smash the historical record set by Saudi Aramco's $29 billion offering back in 2019.

Project Apex brings in 21 banks

To orchestrate what could be the largest listing in financial history, SpaceX has put together a massive syndicate of 21 banks under the internal codename "Project Apex," Reuters reported Tuesday. Under SEC rules, filing confidentially allows a business to hammer out comments and revisions with regulators in private, up until 15 days before launching an official roadshow to investors.

To put that $75 billion target in perspective: SpaceX has only raised an estimated $10 billion total across its entire 24-year run as a private venture.

What public markets will be evaluating is no longer just a space exploration contractor. Back in February, SpaceX acquired Musk's generative AI venture xAI in a blockbuster transaction valuing the entity at $1.25 trillion. The consolidated parent company now packages together SpaceX's reusable rockets, the 10,000-satellite Starlink constellation, xAI's frontier models, and social network X.

The astronomical burn rate

Musk's shift toward an IPO boils down to sheer capital appetite. Space and AI might sound like very different businesses, but they share one core trait: they burn billions of dollars at unprecedented speed.

SpaceX needs constant capital to iterate on Starship, the massive heavy-lift vehicle critical to its long-term roadmap and NASA's high-stakes race against China to reach the moon. Starlink also demands billions to purchase wireless spectrum and replace retiring satellites across its low-Earth-orbit network.

Then there is xAI, which requires endless computing clusters to build next-generation deep learning architectures. Musk has also floated a radical concept in recent months: building and launching a constellation of up to one million spaceborne data center satellites from lunar soil. Turning that into hardware requires liquidity on a scale that only public exchanges can offer.

Why it matters

This confidential filing is a massive power play. Market watchers spent the past year anticipating that OpenAI or Anthropic would spearhead the AI era's public market debut. Instead, Musk just cut in line, setting up SpaceX to absorb the bulk of institutional liquidity before anyone else rings the bell.

For everyday retail and institutional investors, this represents the first opportunity to buy into Musk's crown jewel. Yet entering at a $1.75 trillion valuation leaves razor-thin room for missteps. Buyers aren't just betting on orbital dominance; they are also taking on the volatility of social platform X and the cutthroat cash burn of generative AI.

We think wrapping xAI and Starlink into SpaceX is an exceptionally clever, albeit risky, maneuver. It anchors frothy AI hype to a rocket business with a near-monopoly on commercial launch, while using the promise of artificial intelligence to command software-style multiples. But once quarterly earnings calls begin, public markets will scrutinize every dollar shuffled between rockets and GPUs. SpaceX wanted scale, and now it gets the glare of public accountability to match.