SpaceX Preparing to Sell Stock at Interplanetary Valuation

Good God.

Moon Shot

SpaceX stock, to invoke a crypto — but aptly spacefaring-related — cliche, is going to the Moon.

The Elon Musk-owned space company is currently in talks to sell off private shares held by employees and other insiders at an even higher than expected price that would skyrocket the venture’s valuation to $350 billion, Bloomberg reports, in a deal known as a tender offer. The predicted price had previously been around $255 billion.

This would put SpaceX, already one of the most valuable private companies in the world, into an entirely different galaxy from its peers. The next closest private organization in terms of market cap would be TikTok parent company ByteDance, at $300 billion, and nothing in the private space sector would even come close.

The news comes as Musk, who owns a 42 percent stake in SpaceX, has dramatically aggrandized not only his business empire, but his equally formidable personal fortune following the election of presidential candidate Donald Trump, whom he backed with hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money. Musk’s net worth now stands at nearly $350 billion — or just about one SpaceX, now that you mention it.

Keeping Space

As with many Musk ventures, the hype with SpaceX is unreal.

This results in a significant gulf between its perceived value and its revenue — the money it actually makes — which topped at “just” an estimated $8.7 billion in 2023 (though it’s expected to be higher for this year). The comparably-sized ByteDance, for comparison, had a revenue of around $110 billion last year.

SpaceX remains an indispensable launch provider in the US. Most of all, NASA relies on its Falcon 9 rocket and its Crew Dragon spacecraft to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station.

The space agency will also be counting on SpaceX’s flagship rocket, Starship, to play a headlining role in its ambitious mission to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in over fifty years.

Besides government contracts, SpaceX generates billions of dollars in revenue through Starlink, its satellite-based internet service, which it can maintain using its own rockets.

Money Talks

SpaceX’s jump in value is a testament to the resilience of Musk’s brands, even though his personal image has sullied among some in recent years with his ardent support for far-right politics.

Whatever its owner’s cultural cachet, SpaceX is set to be more valuable than any other private company on Earth, and Tesla’s stock is up nearly 45 percent in the past month, following the election.

Despite the undeniable successes of both ventures, they still have some major proving to do. SpaceX is yet to perfect Starship and show that it’s reusable and thereby cost effective. Tesla, meanwhile, is weathering the controversy surrounding its shoddy Cybertruck and self-driving tech, and is also in the middle of making a huge gamble with its robotaxi pivot.

For now, though, there’re no brakes on the hype train.

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