SpaceX filing kicks off largest IPO process in history

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Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has confidentially filed to go public, firing the starting gun on what is expected to be the biggest initial public offering in history.

The Texas-headquartered company had this week filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the listing, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Confidential filings allow companies to advance their listing plans without publicly revealing their financials. SpaceX last month acquired Musk’s lossmaking AI start-up xAI for $250bn.

SpaceX was seeking to raise about $75bn and was targeting a valuation of around $1.75tn, according to people familiar with the matter. In the US, only Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon have higher market capitalisations. SpaceX was valued at around $90bn as recently as 2022.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The IPO, which would dwarf the $29bn raised by oil major Saudi Aramco in 2019, is expected some time in June, potentially coinciding — at Musk’s behest — with a rare planetary alignment and the billionaire’s 55th birthday.

This week’s confidential filing comes days after the Nasdaq stock exchange enacted sweeping changes to its index inclusion methodology that would direct billions of dollars in passive investments towards large newly public companies.

The exchange has removed one of the conditions for companies to join its Nasdaq 100 index of the biggest US tech stocks, which had required at least 10 per cent of a company’s shares to be on offer to the public.

Exchange traded funds that track the index manage about $520bn. SpaceX plans to float less than 5 per cent of its equity.

Nasdaq also said that large companies will be eligible to join the Nasdaq 100 after 15 days of trading, down from the current waiting period of three months. Critics argue that fast-tracking newly public companies on to widely followed indices could distort post-IPO price discovery.

SpaceX was toying with the idea of allowing some existing shareholders to sell down their stakes in the company on its first day of trading, according to people close to the deal.

This would do away with guidelines that typically prevent insiders cashing out of their positions for 180 days after a company’s market debut.