As AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI race toward IPO, SpaceX has now filed publicly for its own listing, revealing big losses and Musk’s iron grip on ownership.
In a filing yesterday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SpaceX for the first time revealed its financial standing, with billions in losses reported. It reported a net loss of $4.28bn on revenue of $4.69bn for Q1, compared with a net loss of $528m on revenue of $4bn last year.
Notwithstanding those losses, the IPO is expected to be the largest listing in history if Musk can pull it off and raise the targeted $75bn, which would far exceed the 2019 listing of Saudi Aramco for $29bn, the current record holder for largest IPO.
The really striking element in the filing is the level to which Musk will retain iron clad control over the company, and how difficult it would be to remove him in the future.
As SpaceX’s “founder, chief executive officer, chief technical officer, and chairman of the board of directors” Musk’s class B shares will likely ensure board control for the foreseeable.
This concentration of voting power means SpaceX will qualify as a “controlled company” under Nasdaq’s corporate governance rules, and the company says it intends to rely on exemptions from certain corporate governance requirements that would otherwise apply.
As is fairly standard in these huge big tech IPOs, investors buying Class A shares get economic exposure to SpaceX but very limited governance rights. Musk retains effective veto power over all major decisions, including mergers, acquisitions, executive appointments, and strategic direction, regardless of how many shares the public holds.
Musk has consolidated various businesses over the past year to arrive at the its huge valuation. In February, SpaceX acquired xAI, which in March 2025 had acquired X.
Revenue growth from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband service is widely credited for the foundation of the valuation, something confirmed in the filing which shows that it accounted for some two thirds of sales in Q1 2026. Starlink currently dominates the global satellite internet service industry, with more than 9,000 satellites in orbit and roughly 9m customers.
The massive SpaceX IPO looks set to precede expected listings by duelling AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic in the near future. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI could confidentially file for IPO as early as tomorrow (22 May).
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