SpaceX Is Going Public. Big Numbers. Huge.

Timeline: SpaceX publicly filed its S-1 registration statement with the SEC on May 20, 2026.

Ticker and Exchange: SPCX, Nasdaq.

Bankers: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will lead the IPO, with Bank of America, Citigroup, and about 20 other banks.

Valuation: The company is targeting a valuation between $1.75–$2 trillion. For context, the record (worldwide) is Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion IPO from 2019.

How Shares Will Work

SpaceX is issuing two classes of stock:

Important detail: Public investors don't have real control over the company.

Important math: Elon Musk owns 12.3% of Class A shares and 93.6% of Class B shares (these have 10x more voting power), which gives him 85.1% of the total voting power in the company. After the IPO, he'll remain CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the Board. The company will also claim "controlled company" status, meaning SpaceX can tell Nasdaq that Musk controls more than half the voting power, which lets the company avoid the usual rule requiring most board members to be independent (not employed by the company).

So: Public shareholders, no matter how many shares they gather, will not be able to influence company decisions or remove the CEO. This is more concentrated control than most major public listings usually have. The company also does not expect to pay dividends (payments to shareholders from profits) to Class A shareholders in the foreseeable future. So you're basically paying for a vision.

The Numbers (Revenue, Losses, Cash Cow)

When you file for an IPO, your books become public. Here are their Q1 numbers:

Revenue: $46.94 billion, up 15% from $40.7 billion a year ago.

Net loss: The catch. $42.8 billion, compared to a $528 million loss a year ago. Probably due to heavy AI spending after the xAI merger. Steep.

Cash cow: Starlink. Its 10.3 million subscribers brought in $11.4 billion as of March.

Space (rockets): $619 million with a $662 million operating loss, down from $4 billion and a $657 million loss a year ago.

The Anthropic Compute Deal

We've seen Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, even Infrastructure as a Service. SpaceX is offering "AI Compute as a Service" to Anthropic, at $1.25 billion per month. That's $15 billion per year and roughly $45 billion for the three-year period.

Wonder what this looks like on the accounting side.

Under the terms disclosed in SpaceX's IPO filing, the deal will last until May 2029 for access to computing power at SpaceX's Colossus (sound familiar?) data centers. Anthropic's payments will also be reduced over the next two months while they ramp up capacity. Either company can terminate the deal with 90 days' notice.

Vision For Sale

Here's Musk's vision for the company:

• Starships lifting satellites that deliver Starlink internet to phones
• Orbital data centers (harnessing solar power in space)
• Factories on the moon building these data centers
• Eventually, a civilization on Mars

Whether any of that is actually doable is an open question.

What Else?

There's some pushback. Big investors think the dual-class share structure is too concentrated, and have publicly called for a revision. We'll see. But 85.1% voting control means public shareholders effectively have no way to remove the CEO, and dividends aren't coming anytime soon.

Musk is selling a vision, not just a rocket company, and without dividends, you're basically buying a ticket to ride his vision. Strap in.