Elon Musk reportedly plans massive IPO for SpaceX. Here’s what that means
By Chris Isidore, Jackie Wattles, CNN
(CNN) — Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, could soon be much richer. Bloomberg reports he’s planning one of the largest initial public offerings in history for SpaceX.
Musk’s space company plans to raise $30 billion next year, Bloomberg reported, and an IPO could value the company at up to $1.5 trillion. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment on the report.
SpaceX has not had any trouble raising money despite being privately-held. But the ability to sell public shares could increase the cash flow into a company with ambitious, and exorbitantly expensive, plans.
A Wall Street debut would give Musk the added benefit of increasing his already massive wealth. However, it would also bring outside scrutiny to how SpaceX conducts business, something that has rankled Musk during his time running Tesla.
What does Elon Musk stand to gain?
The money raised would go to the company, not to Musk. But given that he reportedly owns nearly half the company’s shares, it would significantly increase his net worth.
A publicly-traded SpaceX means Musk could more easily borrow against the value of his stake in the company, as he has with his Tesla holdings. That frees up tax-free cash for his various endeavors.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Tracker, Musk currently has a net worth of $461 billion with most of that due to his Tesla shares and options. If SpaceX is worth $1.5 trillion, that net worth could more than double, according to Bloomberg.
Why does it need to go public?
SpaceX is at an inflection point. It has cornered most of the market for astronaut and satellite launches. And its constellation of Starlink microsatellites has turned the company into a major internet service provider.
More capital could help the company reach its more ambitious goals. (Even if its ultimate goal, a colony on Mars, proves to be technologically and economically prohibitive.)
SpaceX’s next generation of heavy rocket, dubbed “Starship” by the company, is a radical new approach to reaching outer space. But its still in development – and the rocket has suffered a number of mishaps and explosions during testing that have cast doubt on Musk’s ambitious timelines.
Going public would also allow current investors to cash out their stake in the company at a profit.
Who is invested in SpaceX?
SpaceX’s business has drawn a wide spectrum of major investors, including Google parent Alphabet, financial giants such as Fidelity Investments, and prominent venture capital firms such as the Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The company has raised $10 billion in funding already, according to Pitchbook. And any time it’s raised funds, it’s had more people clamoring to give it money than it needs.
Why is SpaceX believed to be so valuable?
Unlike most other space companies, SpaceX has a positive cash flow, according to the most recent tweets from Musk.
Musk said the Starlink business provides most of the company’s current revenue. But it also has multibillion-dollar contracts to service the International Space Station as well as carry astronauts to the moon under NASA’s program.
Starship has suffered several explosive setbacks during uncrewed test flights in 2025. However, if successful, Starship is expected to underpin SpaceX’s Mars ambitions, which include establishing a permanent settlement on the planet. Starship could also slash the price of carrying a kilogram of cargo to space by orders of magnitude.
Are there drawbacks to going public?
Yes. And no one has been more focused on those downsides than Musk.
Going public could put investor pressure on the company’s capital-intensive plans, which might not produce a return on any investment for years to come, if at all.
It also means greater oversight from the public, and scrutiny from regulators such as the Security and Exchange Commission, which Musk has battled with in the past. This is evident in how he’s responded to scrutiny of Tesla. In 2018, Musk proposed taking Tesla private once again, a move he eventually abandoned.
Musk has also regularly battled some investor groups. That includes analysts and short sellers (who make money by betting a stock will decline) as well with firms that advise institutional shareholders. He recently called such research firms “corporate terrorists.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
