SpaceX has officially locked in its IPO pricing, and the numbers are nothing short of staggering. The company set a fixed price of $135 per share, planning to sell 555.6 million shares in what would amount to a $75 billion fundraise. That makes this not just the biggest aerospace IPO in history, but the biggest overall IPO ever, period. We’re talking more than triple the size of Alibaba, which has held the record for the largest U.S. IPO to date.
The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that underwriters have the option to purchase an additional 83.33 million shares at the IPO price, adding another $11.2 billion to the pot. Goldman Sachs is leading the deal, with Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase following close behind. SpaceX is set to debut on the Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker symbol SPCX.
At that $135 price tag, SpaceX would be valued at $1.77 trillion, assuming the EchoStar spectrum and Cursor transactions close. That valuation places SpaceX as the seventh-biggest company in the U.S. by market capitalization, and it puts Tesla, valued at around $1.6 trillion, in the rearview mirror. Elon Musk will own over 82% voting control after the offering, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.
The approach here was notably different from the typical IPO process. Usually, issuers offer a price range to gauge demand at different levels. SpaceX, however, went straight for a fixed price after what the filing describes as “testing-the-waters” meetings ahead of the roadshow. It’s a bold move, and it signals confidence, or perhaps just the kind of swagger you’d expect from Musk’s space venture.
There’s also plenty of intercompany drama in the filings. The updated paperwork revealed that xAI, Musk’s AI unit, purchased $269 million worth of Tesla megapacks in April. Tesla previously disclosed it sold $430 million worth of its giant backup batteries to xAI last year. The two companies merged in February in a deal that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. And Tesla owns 18.99 million SpaceX shares, valued at $2.56 billion at the IPO price. These companies are so deeply entangled that it’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins.
The filing explicitly notes: “We have historically collaborated with Tesla through commercial, licensing, and support agreements.” That feels like an understatement of the century.
SpaceX isn’t the only AI-heavy company racing toward the public markets. Anthropic got out ahead of its primary rival this week, confidentially filing its IPO prospectus with the SEC on Monday. OpenAI is preparing to file its confidential prospectus in the coming weeks, according to earlier CNBC reporting. The AI space is heating up, and the public markets are about to get a lot more interesting.
But here’s the part that really catches attention: chatter is building that Musk’s ultimate goal might be to combine SpaceX with Tesla. Earlier CNBC reporting indicated that Musk has discussed with colleagues the possibility of folding the companies together, and a current Tesla employee said the topic is openly discussed internally. After this IPO, that possibility feels less like speculation and more like a matter of when, not if.
