SpaceX Rocket Test Sets Stage for Record IPO

On Monday, a California jury unanimously threw out Elon Musk’s high-profile lawsuit challenging OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit company. The issue: He filed his claims after the statute of limitations expired. Whoops.

Here’s betting the paperwork for the highly anticipated, soon-to-be-realized initial public offering of Musk’s SpaceX will be handled more smoothly. In fact, traders could be saying hello to the new publicly traded megacap stock in less than a month. That might prove thorny for Musk’s other company and its megacap competitors.

SPCX Marks the Spot

SpaceX confirmed it was headed for a 2026 IPO in December, confidentially filed its S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in April, and reportedly plans to disclose its prospectus as early as this week. That would clear the way for a roadshow planned to kick off June 8, and for shares to start trading by June 12, which The Wall Street Journal reported is the company’s preferred date for metaphorical lift-off.

As for its literal lift-offs, Wednesday is a potentially auspicious day for the spacecraft company: SpaceX is scheduled to hold a crucial flight test of its latest Starship rocket prototype, which is being developed as part of NASA’s Artemis program. Not only is the outcome of the test a big deal, but also the activity expected when SpaceX begins trading could be big enough to cause gravitational shifts:

• SpaceX will reportedly seek to raise up to $75 billion, more than three times the US IPO record of $22 billion set by China’s Alibaba in 2014. Bloomberg reported SpaceX told its current investors that it will carry out a 5-for-1 stock split this week, reducing the market value per share from roughly $527 to $105.
• Noting that retail traders held 40% of Tesla’s pricey shares, BNP Paribas analysts warned in April that the “pro-Musk retail shareholder base” could soon be split, weighing on one or both stocks.

Hoping for a Repeat: Tesla debuted in 2010 with a market cap of roughly $1.7 billion and rose 40% on its first day. It is now worth roughly $1.5 trillion, making it the 10th-most valuable company in the world as of Monday.