Phil Haslett, co-founder and chief strategy officer at EquityZen, one of the largest platforms for pre-IPO shares - weighs in on Bloomberg's exclusive report that SpaceX is moving ahead with plans for an IPO that would seek to raise significantly more than $30 billion, maybe the largest IPO ever.

Texas

SpaceX is reportedly considering an initial public offering (IPO) for the entire company, potentially as early as 2026. The anticipated IPO could value the company at $800 billion or more, with some speculation suggesting it could reach $1.5 trillion, making it one of the largest public offerings ever.

Current ownership of SpaceX is concentrated among a small group of investors and employees, but the company has used secondary offerings to provide liquidity without diluting control. The IPO may be driven in part by regulatory limits on private shareholders and the need for new capital to support future investments. Key details, such as the percentage of the company to be offered and the structure of the IPO, remain unknown.

SpaceX said to pursue 2026 IPO, raising far above $30 Billion

There's a lot that you and I have to cover on a potential space X IPO which we've reported is for the entirety of the business right. Not just Starlink but actually important to start with. You would note that space X is is the private company that users of your platform are most interested in in quantifying that for us. Just transparently explain what equities and relationship to space X is private market shares is. Sure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. You you hit the nail on the head. Space X is the most popularly requested private company on equities and it's been that way for probably our entire existence as a business over the last 13 years. And that really just means that there is retail exuberance about investing in space X. You know the company is 23 years old. It's older than a lot of my employees. It has garnered interest. It's had success. It's out in the public. People have done incredibly well with Tesla as public market investors. And so there is a lot of enthusiasm to invest in the company while it's private. And what seems to be now an opportunity to invest in it while it's public and maybe even less than a year which is pretty surprising. There is of course a lot that we don't know. What percentage of the company is space X going to offer. What is the structure of the IPO going to be. But in reporting this story Phil one of the things I reflect on is that existing space X shareholders aren't that diverse. You have founders fund fidelity Google through Google ventures and through Corp Dev 1 3 7 ventures and then like others in the world of venture capital and strategics. But my point is that quite a lot of the company is owned by quite a small group. And then there's the Elon Musk factor as well. How does that translate in an IPO environment for anyone that wanted to get into the company. Well there's a couple other things to think about which is that a 23 year old company has had a lot of employees come stay leave. Right. And so you have a wide swath of shareholders kind of like a long tail of ownership. And so sure there's some concentration in some of their biggest investors and in the founders shares. But this thing is pretty widely held. I'd go so far as to say that an IPO might also be a solve for the fact that the company is a private entity and can only have 2000 shareholders. That is a requirement before they have to start filing financials. That may actually be a bit of a driver here as well. But as far as what the IPO is going to look like this is uncharted waters right. Saudi Aramco Alibaba. Those would actually be smaller than these IPOs. Right. And we don't know or than this IPO. And we don't know if it's going to be primarily secondary liquidity to existing. If it's going to be new capital though I would posit it's probably going to be new capital based on a lot of your reporting as well because there's going to be need to be investment from SpaceX into new computing and processing power. So to a big portion of the Bloomberg tech audience that work in the world of technology tenders and the secondary market is something they'll be familiar with. Loads of people will not be familiar with that. And so what usually happens with a big IPO is in late stage growth primary rounds where the company raises money issues new equity. You get these kind of anchor investors that come in ahead of an IPO might be a year in advance. In this case what we're reporting is the tender is confirmed. Eight hundred billion dollar valuation four hundred twenty one dollar share price. Could you explain that dynamic ahead of a big IPO how that isn't any new primary round not raising new money which as you know Elon Musk has been at pains to point out on eggs. Sure. In its simplest form if you're a business that's profitable and you don't need new capital to continue growing why dilute yourself by taking a new investment injection through a primary a secondary liquidity offering as a way to reward employees or perhaps early investors by getting them liquidity for their shares without diluting ownership overall for everybody else. And this is something that SpaceX has elected to do over the past few years. I believe kind of semi annually in a way to provide liquidity not dilute themselves. Also set a new kind of external price for their shares but still maintaining an immense amount of control. And the only thing I would call out here is that obviously two billion dollars liquidity is a big number but it's actually only right to 5 percent of the valuation of this company. And so I hesitate to kind of identify that eight hundred billion is the new market price for SpaceX more so that it is the market price that SpaceX has decided is out there. Yes. Yeah. The tender was capped at two billion dollars. That's what I reported. We just have 30 seconds valuation IPO one point five trillion dollars. What do you make of that. That I think would put it in uncharted waters. Right. You've got three public companies that are worth north of three trillion dollars. Where is the upside from one point five. I'm not sure. At the same time the bull in me says Palantir had a robust retail investor audience. It trades at north of 100 times revenue. So the art of the possible is somewhere in between those numbers. I do know that this would probably be literally the most exciting IPO we've ever seen.

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Breakdown