Why is SpaceX finally preparing to go public?

SpaceX plans to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, multiple outlets have reported, and Ars can confirm that. This represents a major change in the thinking of the world’s leading space company and its founder. Elon Musk.

The Wall Street Journal and Information First reported on the potential IPO last Friday,… Bloomberg continued That rose Tuesday evening with a report suggesting the company will target a $1.5 trillion valuation. This would allow SpaceX To raise more than $30 billion.

This is an enormous amount of funding. The largest IPO in history occurred in 2019, when the state-owned Saudi oil company went public trading as Aramco and raised $29 billion. In terms of revenues, Aramco is among the top five companies in the world.

Now SpaceX is poised to match or exceed that value. It’s no surprise that SpaceX is attractive to public investors, as it is the world’s dominant space company in the areas of launch, space communications, and more. For investors looking for unlimited growth, space is the final frontier.

But why is Musk going public with SpaceX now, at a time when the company’s revenues are rising thanks to the growth of the Starlink internet constellation? This decision was surprising because Musk had long resisted going public for SpaceX. He did not enjoy public scrutiny of Tesla, and feared that shareholders’ desires for a financial return would not be consistent with his ultimate goal of colonizing Mars.

Data centers

Ars spoke with several people familiar with Musk and his way of thinking to understand why he wanted to take SpaceX public.

A big shift in recent years has been the rise of artificial intelligence, which Musk has been involved in since 2015, when he co-founded OpenAI. He later fell out with his co-founders and created his own company, xAI, in 2023. At Tesla, he has been pushing forward intelligent driving technology and recently focused on robotics. Musk sees a convergence between these technologies in the near future, which he believes will profoundly change civilization.

Raising significant amounts of money in the next 18 months will allow Musk to have significant capital to deploy at SpaceX as it influences and participates in this technology convergence.

How can SpaceX play in this space? In the near term, the company plans to develop a modified version of the Starlink satellite to serve as a basis for building data centers in space. Musk said as much On his social network, X, in late October: “SpaceX will do this.”