(May 18): Elon Musk said he is back in Texas working on plans for an initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX as the rocket and artificial intelligence (AI) company gears up for the largest listing of all time.
“We have got to get the SpaceX IPO stuff going here pretty soon,” the billionaire said, giving a reason for appearing virtually, instead of in person, at the Samson International Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv on Monday.
Musk’s SpaceX, which has grown into one of the most influential companies in the space industry with billions of dollars in government contracts and considerable political sway, could file for an IPO as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter said. The rocket, satellite and AI company is seeking to raise as much as US$75 billion ($95.94 billion) on a valuation of more than US$2 trillion, Bloomberg previously reported. That would make it the largest IPO of all time.
SpaceX is one of the companies helping to build out US President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome. The US Space Force has awarded US$3.2 billion for prototypes of space-based interceptor prototypes — technology intended to destroy incoming missiles from orbit — to companies including SpaceX, Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp, RTX Corp and Anduril Industries Inc.
Musk was one of the executives who travelled with Trump to China last week to join talks with Xi Jinping.
Tesla Inc, Musk’s electric car company and one of the most expensive stocks on the S&P 500, has pledged to spend more than US$25 billion this year to help build up “physical AI” for automobiles and robotics.
See also: GIC-backed JustCo aims to raise $100 mil from IPO to fund expansions
Musk said on Monday that he sees driverless cars with no safety monitors operating “widespread in the US by the end of this year”.
“And hopefully in Israel too,” he said.
Musk said on an earnings call last month that Tesla wants to have “unsupervised” Robotaxis operating in “a dozen or so states by the end of this year”. Tesla has said the nascent ride-hailing business is on track to expand to Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Las Vegas in the first half of this year.
See also: Meet the biggest winners of Bursa’s IPO boom
On the earnings call, Musk said the recent approval of Tesla’s controversial Full Self-Driving or FSD driver-assistance product in the Netherlands sets the company up for “European Union (EU)-wide approval” later in the second quarter. Tesla’s FSD software doesn’t render its vehicles autonomous and requires constant human supervision. In the announcement, the Dutch regulator noted the system approved in Europe is not the same version of FSD used in the US.
Musk is aiming for two expansions of his FSD software: The US expansion of FSD in Robotaxis under no supervision, and the use of FSD software in EU Tesla models, where the driver is alert and able to take control of the vehicle.
Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee
