Elon Musk’s SpaceX to pursue IPO far above $38.9 billion in biggest listing ever: Sources

San Francisco - SpaceX is moving ahead with plans for an initial public offering (IPO) that would seek to raise significantly more than US$30 billion (S$38.9 billion), people familiar with the matter said, in a transaction that would make it the biggest listing of all time.

SpaceX’s management and advisers are pursuing a listing as soon as mid-to-late 2026, said some of the people, who declined to be identified because the matter is confidential. The timing of the IPO could change based on market conditions and other factors, and one of the people said the timing could slip until 2027.

A representative for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Bloomberg and other media reported last week that SpaceX is exploring a possible IPO as soon as late 2026. Mr Musk and the company’s board of directors advanced plans for the listing and fundraising – including hiring for key roles and how it would spend the capital – in recent days as SpaceX firmed up its latest insider share sale, one of the people said.

SpaceX’s faster path to public markets is in parts fuelled by the strength of its fast-growing Starlink satellite internet service, including the promise of a direct-to-mobile business, as well as the development of its Starship moon and Mars rocket.

The company is expected to produce around US$15 billion in revenue in 2025, increasing to between US$22 billion and US$24 billion in 2026, one of the people said, with the majority of sales coming from Starlink. 

SpaceX expects to use some of the funds raised in an IPO to develop space-based data centres, including purchasing the chips required to run them, two of the people said, an idea Mr Musk expressed interest in during a recent event with Baron Capital.

In the current secondary offering, SpaceX has set a per-share price of around US$420, putting its valuation above the US$800 billion previously reported, people familiar with the discussions said. The company is allowing employees to sell around US$2 billion worth of stock and SpaceX will participate in buying back some shares, two of the people said.

The valuation strategy is designed to level-set the company’s fair market valuation in a precursor to the IPO, one of the people added. 

“SpaceX has been cash-flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors,” Mr Musk said in a post Dec 6 on his social media platform X. 

“Valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink and securing global direct-to-cell spectrum that greatly increases our addressable market,” he said. 

SpaceX executives have repeatedly floated the idea of spinning off the Starlink business into a separate, publicly traded company – a concept president Gwynne Shotwell first suggested in 2020. 

However, Mr Musk cast doubt on the timing over the years and chief financial officer Bret Johnsen said in 2024 that a Starlink IPO would be something that would take place more likely “in the years to come.”

The biggest long-term investors in SpaceX are venture firms like Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, 137 Ventures and Valor Equity Partners. Fidelity also is a significant investor, as is Alphabet’s Google.

If SpaceX sold 5 per cent of the company at that valuation, it would have to sell US$40 billion of stock – making it the biggest IPO of all time, well above Saudi Aramco’s roughly US$29 billion listing in 2019. That company sold just 1.5 per cent of ownership in that offering, a much smaller slice than the majority of publicly traded firms make available. BLOOMBERG