The long-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) by Elon Musk’s aerospace and satellite giant SpaceX is grabbing eyeballs. If the company sticks to its deadline of going public this year at a valuation over USD 1 trillion, it will break the existing listing records. Reports suggest about the private space giant confidentially filed paperwork, targeting a valuation over USD 1.75 trillion and potentially raising USD 75 billion. Most importantly, 30% of the shares will be reserved for the retail investors.
While SpaceX aims to surpass Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record of USD 25.6 billion, a regulatory filing confirmed that the company secured a USD 20 billion bridge loan to manage existing debt. SpaceX will have to repay the loan using IPO proceeds if it does not secure other funding sources within six months after the offering.
Double-edged sword for Elon Musk
Elon Musk was never fully in favour of taking SpaceX public, mainly because he believed “market pressure could distract from long-term goals like Mars missions and deep-space exploration.” However, the company has grown massively. Rising costs from Starship, along with strong revenue from Starlink, have changed the situation.
By late 2025 and into early 2026, SpaceX quietly began gearing up for an IPO through early filings and discussions with big banks. However, the same IPO for which the private space giant is planning a roadshow in June can be troublesome for Musk.
The tech maverick has much of his wealth tied to company shares, including those of Tesla. Converting shares into cash for short-term gains is generally not advisable, as it triggers taxes and reduces an entrepreneur’s net worth. A recent report from The New York Times stated that Musk took out personal loans totalling USD 500 million from SpaceX.
The world’s richest man is treating his companies like money plants to bail out his other businesses. In 2008, to save Tesla from the financial crisis, Musk took USD 20 million from SpaceX. In 2015, SpaceX bought renewable energy company SolarCity’s debt. After SpaceX spent USD 255 million, Tesla bought SolarCity for the equivalent of USD 2.6 billion. The electric vehicle maker then repaid SpaceX for all that debt.
In 2018, Musk took out a nearly USD 100 million loan from SpaceX. From there, he borrowed more and ended up securing USD 500 million in personal debt. In 2021, he paid back the amount plus USD 14 million in interest. In 2023, Tesla, a public entity by then, limited loan amounts by large shareholders, including Musk, if they used the EV maker’s stock as collateral.
In 2024, a pension fund that reportedly held Tesla stock filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk. The lawsuit accused him of harming the electric vehicle manufacturer by diverting company resources to his tech startup, xAI.
Additionally, X (formerly Twitter) was a public company until Musk acquired it in 2022. After the acquisition, the popular microblogging platform became part of xAI. By 2026, xAI was integrated into SpaceX, and a successful initial public offering (IPO) would allow X to go public again.
Starlink: The Real Engine Behind The IPO
SpaceX is primarily a rocket company, but Starlink, its satellite-based internet network, generates most of its revenue and is growing faster than its launch business, now serving millions of users across the globe. Analysts see the IPO as essentially a Starlink story inside the broader SpaceX narrative, with the satellite internet division driving much of the valuation growth and rocket development and Mars ambitions as long-term bets.
Several factors are driving SpaceX to public markets: capital intensity. Starship, orbital infrastructure, and global satellite expansion are capital-intensive projects that cannot be financed indefinitely through private markets.
SpaceX now has something closer to a steady income. Starlink’s user base has grown fast, and its margins have been improving, which gives the company a much more reliable earnings base than it had before. Big institutions, on the other hand, have been trying to get exposure to SpaceX for a while now, especially as its valuation in private markets kept climbing higher and higher.
Finally, strategic expansion. As SpaceX looks to expand into new areas, such as AI infrastructure in orbit and advanced space systems, it will need long-term financing at scale.
Risks And Market Uncertainty
However, several risks are associated with SpaceX’s IPO. The company’s riskiest projects, like Starship, lunar infrastructure, and orbital AI data centers, are not proven at commercial scale. Internal filings have shown technical complexity and long development timelines. Furthermore, there is concentration risk, as a significant amount of the valuation hinges on Starlink growth and regulatory access to global markets, which could be affected by a slowdown in subscriber growth or increased competition, geopolitical tensions, launch failures, or delays in Starship development.
The SpaceX IPO is likely to have ripple effects in the space and tech industries, with potential to catalyse a wave of space-related listings and unlock liquidity in the private tech ecosystem. Investor interest in space companies is already surging in anticipation of the SpaceX IPO and comparisons are already being made between SpaceX and other Elon Musk companies like Tesla, which may shift capital flows in the broader tech sector once SpaceX is public, according to some analysts.
What Investors Should Watch
The long-awaited IPO is a big deal, but when the dust settles and the listing is complete, investors will zero in on the handful of metrics that capture the company’s drivers: launch services, satellite internet, and deep-space infrastructure. This is why it is important to understand the different aspects of a business.
For investors, the key will be the performance of Starlink, which started as an experimental network and became a global broadband provider with millions of residential, maritime, aviation, and government subscribers, and which is expected to be the main revenue engine behind SpaceX’s public-market valuation.
The first metric that investors will examine closely is subscriber growth, especially growth in rural and underserved regions, which were central to the original value proposition. But growth will not be sufficient; profitability will also be essential.
Starlink is a capital-intensive business that needs to continue launching satellites, expanding ground infrastructure, and manage spectrum; investors will monitor whether the division can move from hypergrowth to healthy margins and whether it will face any pricing pressure, customer churn, or high operational costs.
The second focus is competition, as traditional telecom companies, satellite competitors, and government-backed broadband projects compete for market share, and investors will seek to understand whether Starlink has sustainable pricing power or will become a commoditised provider of connectivity.
Another big focus is Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation reusable rocket system. While Starlink is already bringing in most of the revenue, Starship is really about the long game, cutting the cost of going to space and opening the door for much bigger ambitions down the line. Even as SpaceX has made its reusable Falcon 9 rockets operational, Starship is still in the testing and development phase. Failures could greatly impact market confidence as the scale of the expectations for the system is immense.
The other major focus of SpaceX is its government and defence customers. It is already a major launch provider of satellites for NASA, the US Department of Defence, and allied governments, and an emerging secure communications infrastructure provider through Starlink government services.
Investors will watch for these contracts to scale and stabilise post-IPO, long-term government agreements, which are a source of predictable revenue and stabilisation against commercial volatility, as well as strategic importance, which can enhance competitive position, while introducing political and regulatory risk.