SpaceX has chosen Goldman Sachs as the lead underwriter for its blockbuster initial public offering (IPO), according to sources familiar with the matter. Morgan Stanley will serve as the second lead, followed by Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase. The rocket company could make its prospectus public as early as June 19 after confidentially filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.
How does SpaceX get to select Goldman Sachs for its IPO?
The IPO follows Elon Musk’s February merger of SpaceX with his artificial intelligence startup xAI, which valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. After that, SpaceX is now seeking to raise around $75 billion at a valuation above $2 trillion, assuming that would make it the largest tech IPO in history. In the past, only two tech companies, Facebook and Alibaba, have ever been valued at $100 billion or more after their first day of trading on U.S. exchanges.
The timing is quite notable. You see, the prospectus is expected to land just days after Musk suffered a legal defeat in his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. An advisory jury in Oakland ruled that Musk waited too long to sue over claims that OpenAI broke its nonprofit promise. Musk called the decision a “calendar technicality” and has vowed to appeal.
Post-IPO plans: Acquiring Cursor for $60 billion
Following its IPO, SpaceX is planning to acquire AI coding startup “Cursor” for around $60 billion, with the deal expected to close 30 days after the company begins trading publicly. The post-IPO acquisition would deepen SpaceX′s AI coding capabilities following its merger with xAI. To this point, SpaceX has agreed to pay Cursor a $10 billion cash breakup fee if the deal fails to close. Cursor recently released its latest model, Composer 2.5, trained using xAI’s Colossus 2 data center.
What other companies are involved
Big names are all in. The underwriting syndicate includes, let’s say, a who’s who of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs (lead left), Morgan Stanley (second lead), Bank of America (BoA), Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase. There’s a sort of anxiety in the investor community. The offering is expected to draw massive institutional interest, as SpaceX has been one of the most sought-after private companies for years.
What Elon Musk says
Musk has not publicly commented on the IPO details yet, but the move reflects his long-standing goal of taking SpaceX public. The last time Musk took a company public was Tesla in 2010, and Goldman Sachs led that offering as well. The hype is there, and it will be possible to bet against the IPO in Polymarket’s new prediction markets on private companies.
