The SpaceX IPO filing is filled with AI bets, Starship dreams, and Elon Musk at the center

SpaceX, the aerospace institution founded by Elon Musk 24 years ago, has yet made its IPO filing public. And erstwhile the institution goes public, Musk volition beryllium astatine its halfway arsenic CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the board.

The hefty filing, posted aft markets closed Wednesday, shows a institution that has developed acold beyond its archetypal pursuit of reusable rockets — though its semipermanent ngo to make a multi-planetary taxon remains intact. SpaceX is present a exertion conglomerate moving connected satellites and AI, and has go 1 of the world’s astir invaluable backstage companies.

When it goes nationalist aboriginal this twelvemonth connected the Nasdaq exchange, it volition go 1 of the astir invaluable publicly-traded companies. (Nvidia presently holds the crown with a marketplace headdress of $5.4 trillion.) SpaceX has chosen the ticker “SPCX” for the listing.

The regulatory filing, known arsenic an S-1, offers the astir vivid and financially illuminating nationalist dissection of SpaceX’s concern to date. And it comes conscionable weeks up of what’s expected to beryllium the largest IPO ever, some successful presumption of imaginable wealth raised (expected to beryllium astir $75 billion) and wide valuation (reportedly $1.75 trillion). It contains 36 pages of hazard factors to SpaceX’s business, and details ineligible fights it faces pursuing the absorption of Musk’s artificial quality and societal media companies — battles SpaceX says volition apt outgo it $530 million.

Many of the header details person been reported successful the weeks since SpaceX archetypal submitted a confidential version of its S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission connected April 1. The institution mislaid astir $4.9 cardinal successful 2025 on gross of much than $18 billion, arsenic Reuters reported past month.

The filing details a concern that is presently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink outer net offering, which generated much than fractional of the company’s gross past twelvemonth — astir $11 billion. It besides shows however overmuch SpaceX has burned to get to this point: much than $37 cardinal mislaid since inception, according to the S-1.

XAI, the artificial quality institution Elon Musk created and precocious merged into SpaceX, is not helping connected that front. The filing shows SpaceX directed astir 60% of its superior spending successful 2025 to its AI division, oregon astir $20 billion. And yet that part — which houses the chatbot Grok — mislaid billions past year, and lone grew gross by astir 22%. That’s acold beneath the reported gross maturation rates astatine frontier AI labs.

But the institution is, of course, making a batch of astronomical promises successful the filing. One of the biggest? That it has “identified the largest actionable full addressable marketplace successful quality history” of $28.5 trillion. The institution attributes an tremendous information of that — $22.7 trillion — to “enterprise applications” of AI.

It’s each astir the rocket

Despite SpaceX’s analyzable business, overmuch of its aboriginal is pegged to the occurrence of Starship, the afloat reusable heavy-lift rocket that has had a bid of explosions and method revamps implicit the past respective years. The institution is expected to behaviour the 12th motorboat of Starship arsenic aboriginal arsenic this week, and overmuch is riding connected its success.

SpaceX said successful the filing that it expects Starship to statesman payload transportation to orbit successful the 2nd fractional of 2026, leaving small country for error. Assuming SpaceX tin deed that milestone, the institution plans to statesman utilizing Starship to nonstop its Starlink broadband satellites into orbit successful the 2nd fractional of 2026 and its next-generation V2 mobile satellites successful 2027.

SpaceX’s plans for Starship agelong acold beyond outer launches. The institution wants to usage the rapidly reusable spacecraft, which is designed to present 100 metric tons to Earth’s orbit, for Mars exploration and to motorboat orbital AI information centers into space.

Pushing toward that extremity has been costly for SpaceX, the S-1 filing shows. The abstraction conception of the institution invested heavy successful probe and improvement for the Starship program, spending $3 cardinal successful 2025 and $930 cardinal successful the archetypal 4th of 2026.

The outgo is worthy it, successful SpaceX’s view. The institution said Starship is captious to reducing the outgo of reaching orbit by 99% oregon much comparative to the humanities mean motorboat cost.

Starry-eyed visions

The S-1 details SpaceX’s galore utmost goals, similar making beingness multi-planetary, reaching the satellite and Mars, and gathering orbital networks of satellites that tin bash space-based computing.

But determination are different flashy, futuristic ideas included successful the filing, too.

SpaceX is seemingly inactive funny successful utilizing its Starship rocket arsenic a terrestrial proscription strategy — an thought Musk first projected successful 2017. The institution says it plans to “develop ultra-fast long-haul point-to-point Earth transport utilizing Starship, enabling passengers and cargo to question betwixt large cities successful a fraction of existent transit times, revolutionizing planetary logistics and rider question with unprecedented velocity and efficiency.”

The institution caveats this thought arsenic a “future market,” truthful it’s not anyplace successful the near-term picture. As a result, the merits and risks of the thought of point-to-point question doesn’t get the aforesaid benignant of scrutiny successful the filing arsenic SpaceX’s halfway business.

Another “future market” listed is “space tourism.” SpaceX has flirted with this successful the past, allowing backstage citizens to alert to abstraction connected its Dragon spacecraft. It besides erstwhile planned a ngo astir the satellite with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, but that got canceled agelong earlier it could happen. In the filing, SpaceX says it expects “increasing involvement successful quality abstraction question arsenic it becomes easier and much communal to entree space.”

SpaceX executives besides judge that the institution volition 1 time alteration manufacturing facilities in-orbit and connected the satellite and Mars.

“We purpose to found in-space manufacturing facilities that leverage the unsocial microgravity conditions of abstraction to nutrient materials, pharmaceuticals, and precocious components that are hard oregon intolerable to manufacture connected Earth, opening caller high-value concern markets,” the filing reads. Facilities connected the satellite and Mars would beryllium focused connected producing fuel, operation materials, and different “essential resources,” on with star vigor production.

Lastly, SpaceX believes it could 1 time get progressive successful asteroid mining operations. As it is listed arsenic different “future market,” determination is small item astir however SpaceX plans to tackle this idea.

Total control

Make nary mistake, this is Elon Musk’s company. Per the filing, Musk volition beryllium the the CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the SpaceX committee aft the IPO.

The S-1 shows helium owns 93.6% of SpaceX’s Class B stock, which comes with 10 votes per share. Musk is truthful presently sitting connected 85.1% of the voting powerfulness astatine SpaceX. That fig is expected to driblet pursuing the IPO but volition enactment supra 50%, allowing SpaceX to dodge definite rules astir having autarkic directors connected its board.

He was besides handed a caller compensation bundle astatine the opening of this year, which could nett him arsenic galore arsenic 1 cardinal shares of Class B banal if helium hits increases the worth of SpaceX to $7.5 trillion and the “establishment of a imperishable quality colony connected Mars with astatine slightest 1 cardinal inhabitants.” He stands to reap adjacent much shares if the institution is capable to to make space-based information centers susceptible of delivering “100 terawatts of compute per year.”