The three hard-tech moonshots fueling SpaceX's unbelievable IPO
SpaceX priced the largest IPO on record at $135 per share, valuing the rocket maker near $1.77 trillion and raising about $75 billion through the sale of roughly 555.6 million shares. Most of that price rests not on today's rocket and Starlink business but on three unproven hard-tech bets: fully reusable Starship rockets, mass-produced AI satellites, and a chip foundry. Independent analysts value the company far lower, with Morningstar at $825 billion, treating the gap as a wager on space-based data centers.
Key Takeaways
- Most of the value in SpaceX's IPO is effectively a call option on the company's ambitious space data center plans.
SpaceX is coming to market on Friday, and investors can barely contain their excitement.
- But a dispassionate look at SpaceX's financial plans can still tell us a lot about what they're betting on: A business centered around orbital data centers that emerged in the last 18 months as Musk sought a vision that would unite his conglomerate ahead of its IPO.
In true Musk style, it's a bold scheme, and one that requires at least three near-impossible feats of engineering: a reusable rocket, a brand-new American chip foundry, and a sprint to build satellites faster than ever before.
- The significant difference is, in many ways, the result of bolting a world-beating space monopoly to a far riskier AI business.
- SpaceX assessed the total market for that business as $22.7 trillion, compared to $2.4 trillion for AI infrastructure and just under $2 trillion for the company's space efforts.
But that contradicts the company's recent deals to sell significant amounts of compute to Anthropic and Google , ostensible competitors in the model business.
- Any competitor not rushing ahead is likely to fall behind, although the rising abilities of cheaper open source models might undermine that dynamic.
Stats & Key Facts
- #SpaceX priced the largest IPO on record at $135 per share, valuing the rocket maker near $1.77 trillion and raising about $75 billion through the sale of roughly 555.6 million shares.
- #Independent analysts value the company far lower, with Morningstar at $825 billion, treating the gap as a wager on space-based data centers.
- #The $75 billion stock offering is reportedly deeply over-subscribed , with some institutional investors ponying up for $10 billion blocks of Elon Musk's empire.
- #Both exercises find SpaceX significantly less valuable than the nearly $1.8 trillion assessment proffered by the company's bankers.
Most of the value in SpaceX's IPO is effectively a call option on the company's ambitious space data center plans. SpaceX is coming to market on Friday, and investors can barely contain their excitement. The $75 billion stock offering is reportedly deeply over-subscribed , with some institutional investors ponying up for $10 billion blocks of Elon Musk's empire.
There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the investment - big IPOs tend to sink, the company is losing money, and Musk's erratic online behavior would be terrifying coming from any other tech CEO - but it doesn't seem to be slowing anyone down. Tech investors have learned to never bet against Elon, whatever the business logic indicates. But a dispassionate look at SpaceX's financial plans can still tell us a lot about what they're betting on: A business centered around orbital data centers that emerged in the last 18 months as Musk sought a vision that would unite his conglomerate ahead of its IPO.
In true Musk style, it's a bold scheme, and one that requires at least three near-impossible feats of engineering: a reusable rocket, a brand-new American chip foundry, and a sprint to build satellites faster than ever before. That kind of business plan can be difficult to score. This week, two analyses tried to offer a more a sober assessment of SpaceX's plan - one from Morningstar, the financial research firm, and another from Aswath Damodaran, a New York University finance professor who takes a special interest in corporate valuation.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
Continue Learning
Comments
Comments appear only after moderation. Your email identifies your submission to the moderator and is never displayed here.
No approved comments yet.