Elon Musk is taking SpaceX public on June 12 and it could be the largest IPO in the history of financial markets

Elon Musk has been telling anyone who would listen that SpaceX is worth more than people think. On June 12, the market gets to decide.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. filed its S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on May 20, targeting a Nasdaq listing under the ticker symbol SPCX with pricing expected June 11 and first-day trading on June 12. The company is seeking a valuation of between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion, with a capital raise of up to $75 billion. That raise alone would be more than twice the previous record set by Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion IPO in 2019.

Twenty-three financial institutions are underwriting the deal, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Securities, Citigroup and JPMorgan. A 30% retail allocation has been routed directly through Robinhood, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, the largest direct-to-retail carve-out any IPO of this scale has ever extended.

The financial picture inside the S-1 is more complicated than the headline valuation suggests. SpaceX reported revenue of $18.6 billion in 2025, up from $14 billion the previous year, but suffered a net loss of $4.9 billion. In the first quarter of 2026, the company posted $4.7 billion in revenue against a net loss of $4.3 billion. Analysts have attributed a significant portion of those losses to the February 2026 merger with xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company, which was valued at approximately $80 billion in the transaction and is burning cash at scale. The Q1 loss included a $2.5 billion deficit in the AI business and $662 million in losses from the rocket-launching division as SpaceX ramps capital expenditure for orbital data centers and the next-generation Starship rocket.

The business that holds the entire IPO thesis together is Starlink. The satellite internet division, the only profitable segment in the prospectus, generated $3.26 billion in Q1 2026 alone, serving 10.3 million subscribers and accounting for 69% of total company revenue. Starlink's operating profit stood at $1.2 billion in the quarter. It is the asset that justifies asking the public market to absorb a $1.75 trillion valuation on a company losing billions at the consolidated level.

Musk holds a 42% economic interest in SpaceX and will retain 85.1% of the company's voting power through a dual-class share structure in which certain shares carry 10 votes each. That control level exceeds what Mark Zuckerberg holds at Meta, where he commands roughly 61% of votes, and far exceeds Warren Buffett's approximately 35% voting power at Berkshire Hathaway. Shareholders who buy SPCX on June 12 will own a piece of the company but will have virtually no say in how it is run. Musk has publicly pledged not to reduce his stake.

The S-1 also disclosed a compensation structure tied to Mars colonization: if Musk establishes a human settlement on Mars with at least one million residents, he will receive additional equity awards valued at over $700 billion.

The valuation at $1.75 trillion would make SpaceX the world's ninth-largest company by market capitalization at the moment of listing, overtaking Tesla, which currently trades at approximately $1.57 trillion. Prediction markets assign roughly a 72% chance that SpaceX clears the $2 trillion mark in early trading.

The prospectus sets out SpaceX's stated mission to make life multiplanetary and establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, alongside its ambition to use SpaceX to understand the true nature of the universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars.

Musk will walk into June 12 with a 42% stake worth more than $735 billion at the $1.75 trillion target valuation, on top of his Tesla and xAI holdings. Most wealth trackers currently put his net worth at approximately $800 billion. The IPO, if it clears at target, will reposition that number well above $1 trillion.

The global roadshow begins June 4.