SpaceX targets history's largest IPO as Musk prepares to take his rocket and AI empire public

Proactive

Mon, May 18, 2026 at 9:10 AM EDT 2 min read

It would be too cynical to ask whether, after a bruising courtroom face-off with Sam Altman over the future of OpenAI, Elon Musk needed a bit of good news.

So, we won't go there. Instead, we'll focus on the reportage: SpaceX is said to be preparing to list on the Nasdaq as early as 12 June at a target valuation of $1.75 trillion.

With that price tag, it would be the largest initial public offering in history, dwarfing Saudi Aramco's record $29.4 billion raise in 2019.

The company plans to raise up to $75 billion from the offering and could announce the deal formally as early as 4 June, with pricing expected the day before trading begins.

What investors will be buying is no longer simply a rocket company.

SpaceX absorbed Musk's artificial intelligence venture xAI in February in a $1.25 trillion all-stock merger that bundled the Grok AI chatbot and the X social media platform into the same corporate entity as the Falcon and Starship rocket programmes and the Starlink satellite internet constellation.

Starlink is the financial engine that underpins the valuation.

The satellite broadband service generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025 with operating margins of around 63%, and now serves more than 10 million subscribers across 160 countries, making it comfortably SpaceX's largest and only consistently profitable division.

Total group revenue for 2025 was approximately $16 billion, which means the $1.75 trillion target implies a price-to-sales multiple north of 100 times, a figure that has raised eyebrows even among sympathetic analysts.

Scottish Mortgage, the Baillie Gifford investment trust that is one of SpaceX's most transparent public shareholders, valued the company at $1.25 trillion as of March, a 40% discount to the IPO target.

Musk has framed the xAI merger around a vision for solar-powered orbital data centres, arguing that AI's energy demands will eventually outstrip what can be sustainably provided on Earth.

The timing is notable: the IPO roadshow is expected to begin the same week that the jury in Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman begins deliberations in Oakland, California, where Musk is seeking to unwind OpenAI's for-profit conversion and has previously claimed up to $134 billion in damages.

BlackRock is reportedly considering an investment of between $5 billion and $10 billion in the offering.