SpaceX did not simply rewrite the playbook for aerospace and protection, it helped delivery a brand new house financial system.
Now Elon Musk’s firm is tackling a unique sort of moonshot: going public.
“I wasn’t positive we might go public,” SpaceX Chief Working Officer Gwynne Shotwell advised CNBC in an unique interview, simply earlier than the corporate began its investor roadshow. “It really appears like the appropriate time now.”
Talking from a walkway overlooking the Starship manufacturing facility at SpaceX’s quickly increasing headquarters within the firm city of Starbase, Texas, Shotwell stated the rocket maker wanted to be non-public with a view to concentrate on long-term objectives moderately than quarterly financials.
“As we speak, throughout SpaceX’s varied companies, the constructing blocks of a publicly traded firm at the moment are in place,” she stated. Eight years in the past, Shotwell stated an preliminary public providing in all probability would not occur till SpaceX was doing common missions to Mars.
Shotwell is SpaceX’s high govt beneath Musk, the founder, CEO, know-how chief and board chair, and the particular person whose said aim is to make life multiplanetary. Musk focuses on high-level technique and deep dives into the technical growth of the long run.
Making the enterprise work on Earth is the job of these round him, particularly Shotwell. An early worker recruited in 2002, SpaceX’s first yr, Shotwell oversees the day-to-day operations of a 22,000-person full-time workforce. She’s managed all the pieces from rocket growth to the creation of Starlink and, extra lately, the combination of xAI. She additionally talks to prospects, regulators and, beginning now, public buyers.
“Elon jokes that we make the inconceivable, we simply make it late,” stated Shotwell, who can also be one of many firm’s eight board members. “Take a look at our observe report, take a look at our historical past. We do actually tough issues. We do convey them to product stage. In reality, xAI is certainly beginning to be product-focused.”
Engineering superior know-how to deal with robust enterprise instances others have deemed unviable, after which commercializing them, is the SpaceX playbook.
With rocketry, the corporate underbid opponents for launch contracts, carried out reusable boosters and drastically drove down the price to fly to house. Making Starlink work concerned sending satellites to low Earth orbit and doing so economically. Now, with synthetic intelligence infrastructure, SpaceX has its sights set on constructing a vertically built-in tech stack stretching into house and encompassing all the pieces from chips to AI functions.
With a report $75 billion IPO, SpaceX carries a stratospheric valuation of almost $1.77 trillion. At that market cap, SpaceX would debut because the seventh-most useful firm within the U.S., surpassing Meta and Musk’s different public firm, Tesla. It will even be price greater than the complete S&P 500 aerospace and protection group.
Skeptics on Wall Road are questioning the maths. The valuation suggests an estimated 2026 income a number of of 40 and an adjusted earnings a number of of 175.
SpaceX desires to turn into the final word product-driven infrastructure firm, a modern-day railroad for the brand new industrial revolution. However in contrast to Union Pacific within the nineteenth century, SpaceX can also be seeking to personal the availability chain and at the very least among the factories alongside the route.
Musk has offered buyers on arduous issues up to now. In Tesla’s 16 years as a public firm, he is pushed the market cap up on a promise of humanoid robots and self-driving automobiles.
“We have been feeling over the previous couple of years plenty of stress from on a regular basis People and our buddies that needed to purchase inventory, and there was simply no method for these of us to get in,” stated Shotwell.
Convergence of house and AI
Shotwell harassed that SpaceX’s horizons are very long run.
“I don’t need to concentrate on quarterly earnings,” she stated. “I am not saying we’re not going to do proper by our buyers, however what of us who put money into SpaceX have to know is that what we’re doing may be very futuristic.”
SpaceX’s clearest moat is in rocket launching. Its Falcon fleet presently dominates that market, accounting for roughly 80% of worldwide mass launched to orbit since 2023. Final yr SpaceX launched 165 orbital missions, with 157 of these using reused rocket boosters. The fee to ship cargo to low Earth orbit has fallen by greater than 90% from the Area Shuttle to the Falcon 9.
Most of these launches, have been by SpaceX for SpaceX, as the corporate quickly deploys its Starlink broadband constellation. With greater than 10 million subscribers accessing the web by way of a constellation of roughly 9,600 satellites and rising, Starlink is the corporate’s revenue engine. The connectivity section additionally contains the nascent Starlink Cellular direct-to-cell enterprise and Starshield, which navy specialists say is reshaping warfighting.
Connectivity touts excessive margins and generates money for heavy investments in different elements of the corporate. That is particularly necessary for the AI section, which is primarily xAI after SpaceX acquired that a part of Musk’s empire earlier this yr. SpaceX stated capital expenditures for AI totaled $12.7 billion in 2025 and $7.7 billion within the first quarter of 2026.
With xAI comes the Grok giant language mannequin and X, previously generally known as Twitter. And to entice builders, the corporate struck a take care of AI coding upstart Cursor, with an possibility to purchase the enterprise for $60 billion in inventory.
Then there’s the Terafab semiconductor fab and computing mega challenge that it is collectively growing with Tesla. Intel lately signed on as a associate and provider. The price of Terafab is anticipated to finally run into the a whole bunch of billions of {dollars}.
And in and round Memphis, Tennessee, SpaceX has the Colossus information facilities. SpaceX has lately been putting multibillion-dollar offers, first with Anthropic after which with Google, to supply them with spare compute capability. The month-to-month funds, so long as they exist, will assist SpaceX offset its hefty capital spending.
“I see us not solely constructing the tech stack required for AI and working the X platform, however we’re builders of knowledge facilities, each right here on Earth and in house,” stated Shotwell. “I imagine we are going to proceed to supply that functionality to others really. We’ll by no means promote compute capability that we really need, which is why we needed the power to have these contracts be brief time period if needed.” Cloud infrastructure is a extremely aggressive enterprise. SpaceX is betting it strikes into orbit, fixing for quite a lot of huge earthy points like shortage of energy, land and water preservation, and neighborhood pushback.
Musk has stated it’ll occur within the subsequent two to a few years. Different house entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Planet Labs’ Will Marshall and Voyager Applied sciences’ Dylan Taylor, have lately argued it’ll take longer. There are technological challenges and manufacturing hurdles, and launch costs nonetheless have to fall dramatically.
But, SpaceX’s prospectus says that as quickly as 2028, it’ll start deploying AI compute satellites. Studies surfaced this week that the primary demonstrations may head to orbit earlier than the tip of 2027.
“The AI satellites are, to some extent, less complicated than the next-gen V3 Starlink satellites,” stated Shotwell. “I am not saying it is a slam dunk by any stretch however I am not anxious concerning the growth of the AI satellites.”
The availability chain, she acknowledges, is a problem, whether or not it is investing in photo voltaic arrays or in constructing sufficient chips.
“I do not assume the chip producers are desirous about scaling in the identical ways in which we’re desirous about scaling,” Shotwell stated. “Or they do not imagine us.”
Starship is the launchpad for progress
A lot of SpaceX’s future hinges on Starship. It is one of many two autos contracted by NASA to supply the Artemis program’s human lunar touchdown methods. It is also the system that might someday carry cargo and folks to Mars.
Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation spaceship, taller then the Statue of Liberty and extra highly effective than another rocket constructed. In contrast to the workhorse Falcon 9, Starship is being designed to be totally reusable, the holy grail of house launch.
SpaceX lately accomplished its twelfth take a look at flight, debuting its latest model of Starship, generally known as V3, in what was a largely profitable mission. SpaceX carries out every take a look at aggressively, pushing its autos to the boundaries since management believes rather more information may be gleaned from failures than success, a technique generally known as “productive failure.”
When Starship comes on-line, it’ll exponentially enhance mass to orbit whereas slashing launch prices, a needed equation to make potential information facilities in house. The expectation is Starship will allow a 95% drop in launch prices in contrast with Falcon 9.
Strolling by way of the manufacturing facility, Shotwell identified Starships and Tremendous Heavy boosters in varied levels of manufacturing. At present SpaceX is popping out one totally assembled Starship per thirty days. Shotwell desires to get to 2 ships produced per week.
She expects Flight 13 to occur in a couple of month, with common flights month-to-month to comply with. Lots must go proper, although, and far of that timeline is dependent upon the regulatory blessing of the Federal Aviation Administration. Orbital flights are anticipated by the tip of this yr.
“We’ve accomplished an in-space Raptor lighting, so we really feel fairly comfy,” Shotwell stated. “However we wish one other sub-orbital shot on the subsequent flight, after which I hope we at the very least try an orbital injection on Flight 14.”
Starship has value $15 billion to this point, cash spent on technical growth, ramping up the manufacturing line, building prices at Starbase and the launch pad in addition to pure fuel pipelines and wells. SpaceX develops propellant in-house.
Shotwell stated SpaceX’s historical past of heavy funding in new know-how permits it to endure this “next-level” cycle with confidence.
“If I have been to return to the penurious days of Falcon 9 and Dragon, and we have been to speak concerning the capital investments for that program in comparison with what we’re doing in AI, it could be a complete thoughts blow scenario,” she stated.
The increasing Musk universe
In its first 23 years, SpaceX did little or no deal-making. That started to alter final yr when SpaceX agreed to accumulate Echostar’s 65 megahertz of spectrum for $17 billion to assist propel Starlink Cellular. Then got here the deal for xAI at a $250 billion valuation and the Cursor settlement, which carries a possible price ticket of $60 billion.
“It is a new thrilling world for us,” stated Shotwell. “I do assume M&A is sooner or later, particularly once you take a look at the AI world.”
In an amended IPO submitting SpaceX stated it might challenge “important fairness” to fund future transactions. That sparked extra hypothesis {that a} merger between SpaceX and Tesla may finally be within the playing cards.
Shotwell quipped that such a deal “may make Elon’s life somewhat simpler.”
“There isn’t any query that there are synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures,” she stated. “There is a convergence of what we’re all making an attempt to perform sooner or later, however proper now I am targeted on retaining the lights on right here, retaining rockets in manufacturing, flying rockets, flying folks, attending to the Worldwide Area Station, and critically offering broadband to of us that do not have entry.”
Tesla holds an possession stake in SpaceX. Starlink mini is a vital part for Tesla’s rising Cybercab fleet. Tesla through the years has shared manufacturing improvements with SpaceX. And now the 2 are collaborating on Terafab. SpaceX even spent $131 million on Cybertrucks in 2025.
The merger chatter has been fueled partly by SpaceX’s unconventional, and a few specialists say, unprecedented, governance construction. Musk has supermajority voting rights, with greater than 80% management. And with energy over the board, he even has ultimate approval relating to his personal removing.
Shotwell argued it is the easiest way to manipulate as a result of no person else can run the corporate.
“The corporate wouldn’t collapse, clearly, with out Elon, however it could certainly not be the identical,” she stated. “It is extremely necessary that he’s the CEO, and that we’ve the governance construction that we have set forth.”
The final word aim, for Musk, stays Mars.
Musk’s compensation bundle includes 1 billion performance-based shares when sure milestones are met, together with the institution of a everlasting human colony of at the very least 1 million people on Mars.
“I am positive there’s at the very least that many people that need to go there,” stated Shotwell.
Within the meantime, SpaceX and its new public buyers will concentrate on the IPO moonshot that can make its personal sort of human historical past.
Correction: This text has been up to date to replicate that SpaceX is reportedly seeking to launch demonstrations of AI compute satellites by the tip of 2027. An earlier model of this story misstated the yr.
