After years of resisting the idea, Elon Musk is expected to take SpaceX public in 2026. The IPO could be the largest IPO in U.S. history, and has the potential to raise $30 billion.
SpaceX is already NASA’s leading rocket contractor, with massive revenues. So why go public now?
Ars Technica senior space editor, Eric Berger, says Musk’s plans for the company includes building data centers in space, as well as his long-cherished dream of colonizing Mars. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, I mentioned SpaceX’s relationship with NASA, but can you put this company in context for us? How is SpaceX doing and what are its prospects, even if it does not go public?
Eric Berger: SpaceX is now 23 years old and the company is doing extraordinarily well. They launched more rockets this year than the rest of the world combined.
They put up 75% of everything that went into space this year. They operate a constellation of communication satellites that’s almost 10 times bigger than anyone else in the world. They’re the only way to get NASA astronauts into space right now.
And for the first time, they’re believed to be profitable, so they’re doing phenomenally well and certainly the most important actor in spaceflight globally.
Yeah, hard to believe it’s been more than 20 years. So you write that an IPO could raise $30 billion. What would SpaceX do with that kind of money?
Well, it’s not entirely clear and they haven’t made their plans public, but it would likely involve investing heavily in data centers in space. This would essentially be an orbital network of satellites that use solar energy to process and store and transmit data.
It would basically take the function of a data center here on Earth, massive computing infrastructure, and put it into space.
Is Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars dependent on government support, or would this large amount of money drive SpaceX’s ability to pursue that project independently?
There’s been a lot of debate about that. Some of the SpaceX purists believe that this is a setback for the Mars vision because for a long time Musk justified not going public on the basis that if he were beholden to shareholders, they would demand profits rather than spending on setting up settlement on Mars.
There really is no profit in settling Mars at this time. I think more broadly, it actually potentially accelerates Mars because if data centers work, it would significantly increase the revenue that SpaceX already receives.
Musk has a lot of business interests: Tesla, the social media platform X, xAI, and the Boring Company. Many of these have a significant presence in Texas, by the way.
Would a SpaceX IPO have an impact on these other companies? And would that even be allowed under U.S. law?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the way Musk looks at his business is that they’re all interrelated and he is sort of building companies he believes are building the future. I think as he’s considered the IPO, he has got Tesla which is now building robots in addition to cars and has fully autonomous driving software in development.
xAI is his AI company and so now SpaceX is kind of becoming part of that empire in the sense that they would build the infrastructure needed to support xAI data centers and potentially integrate with Tesla as well. So I think it’s all of one piece.
And so, yeah, the companies would absolutely work together. From a regulatory standpoint, I don’t know how that would work, but as we’ve seen with Tesla as a public company, Musk is still giving free rein to operate that business how he sees fit. And much of the value shareholders see in Tesla is wrapped up in the fact that Musk is the visionary running that company.
So what are you watching for going forward, especially since there was initially a lot of resistance to doing this?
Yeah. I think it’s going to happen. It seems pretty clear.
It’s going to be significant for the state of Texas. SpaceX already has a huge footprint here, and I can only imagine they would do a lot of their satellite manufacturing for these data centers in Texas in addition to what they’re already doing with Starlink satellites and engines for SpaceX rockets. So I think economically it would be a major boon for this state.
More broadly, I think it comes back to the Starship vehicle that SpaceX is building. That would be the backbone transportation to get these satellites into space.
They’ve been blowing some of those up in South Texas. If SpaceX’s Starship starts to have success during next year, I really think the IPO could meet those financial expectations, which would be the largest IPO in history.
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