Written by: Su Yang
Edited by: Xu Qingyang
On May 20th, U.S. local time, SpaceX officially filed its S-1 document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), initiating its Nasdaq IPO process under the ticker symbol "SPCX". The company plans to raise $70 billion to $80 billion through the IPO, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion. It is expected to list on Nasdaq on June 12th.
This was the largest IPO in human history, and Musk's debut on the public market with absolute control. After the IPO, he still held 85.1% of the voting rights, leaving public shareholders with virtually no say.
Back on April 1st of this year, SpaceX had already submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC confidentially, internally codenamed "Project Apex," which is the first formal legal step in the IPO process.
According to the prospectus, investment bank Goldman Sachs led the underwriting team, with Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and 16 other underwriters serving as joint underwriters in this offering.
This IPO filing marks the first time SpaceX has publicly revealed its financial handbook: Starlink is a cash cow, xAI is a money-burning black hole, and Musk has transformed a space company into a super narrative of "AI + Spaceflight." So, what truly supports its $2 trillion valuation?
01 Starlink has annual revenue of $11.4 billion, but its AI business lost $6.4 billion in a single quarter.
SpaceX's financial data presents a stark contrast between its current state and its current state.
SpaceX Key Financial Data
In 2025, SpaceX achieved consolidated revenue of $18.67 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $6.584 billion, but suffered an operating loss of $2.589 billion and a net loss of nearly $4.94 billion. Almost all of these losses came from its AI business—xAI lost $6.4 billion in 2025, while Starlink contributed $4.4 billion in operating profit during the same period. The money earned in space was all burned through on the ground by its massive models.
In the first quarter of 2026, the company's revenue was $4.694 billion, adjusted EBITDA was $1.127 billion, and operating loss was $1.943 billion.
By business segment, connectivity, represented by Starlink, contributed $3.26 billion, accounting for nearly 70% of revenue and making it the absolute mainstay; AI (xAI) revenue was $818 million; and space operations (including rocket launches and government contracts) revenue was $619 million.
SpaceX Core Business Financial Data
According to the balance sheet, as of March 31, 2026, SpaceX held $15.9 billion in cash and cash equivalents, $7.8 billion in marketable securities, total assets of $102.1 billion, and total liabilities of $60.5 billion, of which approximately $30.3 billion was debt and finance leases.
Even with billions in cash on hand, the company still faces enormous cash flow pressure in the face of annual capital expenditures exceeding $20 billion.
Starlink's operational data is equally impressive.
SpaceX Space Business Highlights
The prospectus shows that as of March 31, 2026, Starlink had 10.3 million users, compared to only 8.9 million at the end of 2025, representing a net increase of 1.4 million users per quarter. With approximately 9,600 satellites in orbit, Starlink's adjusted EBITDA reached $7.2 billion, with an EBITDA margin of 63%, a 22 percentage point increase from 41% in 2023. Free cash flow was approximately $3 billion, making it SpaceX's only business segment generating positive cash flow.
However, Starlink's average monthly revenue per individual user dropped from $99 in 2023 to $81 in 2025, and then to $66 in the first quarter of 2026, shrinking by more than 30% in two and a half years.
This is a classic example of the "price-for-scale" logic—SpaceX rapidly expanded its user base by proactively lowering prices, but as the scale grows, the willingness of individual users to pay actually decreases. If ARPU continues to decline, to achieve the market's expected long-term revenue targets, the growth rate of user scale must consistently outpace the rate of price reduction.
SpaceX's total capital expenditure for 2025 is $20.7 billion, exceeding its total revenue for that year. Of this, $12.7 billion is spent on the AI division, which exceeds the combined expenditure of its space and satellite businesses.
SpaceX's capital expenditures and cash flow
xAI burns through approximately $1 billion per month on average, totaling about $14 billion in cash burn annually. For comparison, OpenAI and Anthropic burned through approximately $9 billion and $4 billion respectively in 2025, and SpaceX's AI division alone exceeds the combined total of both. While its spending is aggressive, xAI lags far behind its two major competitors in terms of revenue scale and growth rate.
What deserves more attention is the valuation multiple.
SpaceX's IPO targets a valuation of $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion, which is approximately 266 times its EBITDA. For comparison, Meta's valuation multiple is 16 times, Alphabet's is 25 times, Nvidia's is 36 times, and even Tesla, known for its high valuations, is only 119 times.
SpaceX's listing on the public market with a valuation more than twice that of Tesla raises the question of whether it represents value discovery or a bubble narrative. This will be the first test the market will present after the IPO.
The prospectus explicitly states that there are no plans to pay dividends to Class A shareholders in the foreseeable future. This means investors can only gamble on a rising share price—it's a pure growth stock with no fallback option.
02 85% Voting Rights: Musk's "One-Man Dynasty"
SpaceX employs a multi-class share structure. The company issues Class A common stock (1 vote per share) to public investors, while Class B common stock (10 votes per share) is held by Musk and insiders.
Shareholding of Management and Directors
According to the prospectus, Musk holds approximately 42.5% of SpaceX's equity, but through his Class B super voting rights, he controls approximately 84% to 85.1% of the total voting rights. This means that after the IPO, regardless of how many shares are purchased by public investors, Musk alone can decide on the composition of the board of directors, major mergers and acquisitions, and even amend the company's bylaws.
The prospectus also discloses that Musk will continue to serve in the three key positions of CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the Board, and will have the right to unilaterally remove or fill Class B director seats. SpaceX will also apply for a "controlled company" exemption, which would exempt it from the governance rule requiring a majority of independent directors.
Aside from Musk, the prospectus discloses that no other shareholder holds more than 5% of the shares. However, SpaceX's shareholder list still includes several well-known institutions: Alphabet (Google's parent company), as an early strategic investor, currently holds approximately 5%; Fidelity Investments holds approximately 2%; Silicon Valley venture capital firms Valor Equity Partners, Founders Fund, and Sequoia Capital collectively hold approximately 10% of the shares; in addition, there are hedge funds such as D1 Capital and Darsana, as well as Middle Eastern sovereign capital. SpaceX has also established a large stock option pool for its employees to incentivize its core technology team.
Multiple shareholding structures are quite common in Silicon Valley. According to Fenwick's 2025 Corporate Governance Survey, 27.3% of the top 150 tech companies in Silicon Valley still employ multiple shareholding structures, a figure far exceeding the 10.1% of S&P 100 companies. However, the designs vary from company to company.
But SpaceX has taken this control mechanism to an unprecedented level—concentrating 85% of the voting power in the hands of one person, making it stand out when facing other tech giants.
Turning our attention back to Tesla, another publicly traded company owned by Musk, the situation is quite different. Tesla operates on a "one share, one vote" principle, without super voting rights, so Musk frequently faces questions and challenges from activist shareholders.
03 xAI Merger: A "Narrative Engine" Valued at 2.5 Trillion
The "COLOSSUS II" facility located in Memphis, Tennessee
In February of this year, SpaceX completed its acquisition of xAI at an overall valuation of $1.25 trillion, with xAI valued at $250 billion. Prior to the merger, SpaceX's standalone valuation was approximately $1 trillion, and the AI narrative added a premium of about $250 billion to its valuation.
This deal has two direct effects. First, it has increased revenue; in the first quarter of 2026, the AI business contributed $818 million in revenue. Second, it has upgraded the narrative—SpaceX has transformed from a "space company" into a "AI + space" hybrid.
Wall Street's valuation of SpaceX has been revised from $1.25 trillion to between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion.
The prospectus also revealed even more ambitious long-term plans. SpaceX intends to deploy its first orbital AI computing modules by the end of this decade, operating AI computing facilities in space.
xAI Business Highlights
Musk's assessment is that producing AI computing power in space is cheaper than on Earth.
At the same time, SpaceX also mentioned its "space mining" business, which involves extracting metal resources from near-Earth asteroids. These projects currently generate no revenue, and don't even have a technology prototype, but they constitute some of the most intriguing pages of the prospectus, and are also the part with the most divergent valuations.
04 Terafab, Cursor Acquisitions and Financial Business: Musk's "Ecological Synergy"
The prospectus also contains several easily overlooked strategic elements.
Among them, SpaceX and Tesla jointly announced the Terafab project, which aims to integrate all stages of semiconductor production into a single system to produce two types of chips: one is an edge inference processor optimized for Tesla's Full Self-Driving system, Optimus humanoid robots, and Robotaxi fleet, and the other is a radiation-resistant high-power space chip.
According to publicly available information, the project's total investment could reach up to $119 billion, and it will utilize Intel's 14A process technology, with the goal of allocating 80% of its computing power to space-based AI data centers.
In addition, SpaceX plans to acquire Cursor in exchange for Class A common stock after the IPO, with the transaction implying an equity value of $60 billion. SpaceX has obtained an exclusive option to acquire Cursor at a valuation of $60 billion, which can be initiated 30 days after the IPO, with a reverse break-up fee of up to $10 billion. Several members of Cursor's core engineering team have already joined xAI.
The company also plans to launch a financial product that covers payments, banking and other services, extending its reach into the financial services sector.
These businesses have in common that they are all in their early stages, require a lot of money to burn, and rely on SpaceX's fundraising capabilities and Musk's storytelling abilities.
05 Market Divergence: Investment Banking Dream Teams and Doubts Coexist
The unexpected reversal in the underwriter lineup reflects the divisions on Wall Street.
Morgan Stanley, which has long maintained close cooperation with Musk, was overtaken by Goldman Sachs as the lead underwriter, a result that surprised some market participants, given that Morgan Stanley had previously led Tesla's IPO and Twitter's acquisition financing.
University of Florida scholar Jay Ritter, known as "Mr. IPO," has stated that if SpaceX's valuation reaches $2 trillion, he will short the stock once it goes public. Ritter further points out that newly listed stocks with inflation-adjusted revenue exceeding $100 million and a price-to-sales ratio exceeding 40 significantly underperform the market on average in the three years following their IPO.
An even greater concern stems from the losses in the AI business—xAI is projected to lose $6.4 billion by 2025, a deficit that Starlink's $4.4 billion in earnings will be far from covering. If AI continues to burn through cash and commercialization falls short of expectations, SpaceX's overall profitability pressure will increase dramatically.
BNP Paribas analyst James Picariello bluntly stated that SpaceX's IPO will "split" Musk's retail investor base, putting pressure on Tesla's stock price.
UBS analyst Joseph Spak, in an earlier commentary, cautioned clients that the massive investments in hardware AI may only be the beginning. Meanwhile, the question of whether Musk's simultaneous leadership of multiple companies—Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and X—is diverting his attention has become a recurring concern among institutional investors.
06 Conclusion
June 12th will be a national referendum to test the "Musk premium".
Starlink provides a solid cash cow, xAI provides a compelling narrative, and Musk provides absolute control. The good thing is extremely efficient decision-making; the bad thing is a lack of brakes.
Goldman Sachs called this IPO a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but some analysts likened it to buying a lottery ticket—the jackpot is Mars, and the consolation prize is Earth.
Cook handed Apple over to Tenus, a hardware engineer-turned-successor, while Musk has no intention of handing SpaceX over to anyone—going public simply adds a group of passengers without voting rights, while he remains the only one in the cockpit.
How should I put it? This is very Musk-like.
