SpaceX is preparing for one of the biggest stock sales ever by taking the company public, Elon Musk said Wednesday, laying out details in a U.S. filing that show a business still deep in losses even as it targets ambitious space projects. The filing also offers a glimpse of how Musk’s compensation and investor influence would be tied to specific milestones, including governance features intended to shape shareholder power.
According to the prospectus, SpaceX formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. said it would use proceeds to help finance projects aimed at putting people on the moon and Mars. It frames that effort as part of a broader push that also underpins its corporate story for investors, while the filing’s language includes a warning that “We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs.”
The filing provides a snapshot of SpaceX’s current financial profile, showing that the company lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue. It also indicates losses continued to build at the start of this year. The prospectus did not put a specific dollar figure on how much Musk hopes to raise, but the AP report said various media estimates have put it at about $75 billion—an amount that would surpass the size of Saudi Aramco’s IPO, which raised $26 billion in the 2019 offering.
Starlink, SpaceX said, is a major cash generator. In the prospectus, Starlink produced $4.4 billion in operating income last year, and the report said the unit operates with 10,000 satellites in low orbit to provide internet service to about 10 million people across 150 countries and territories. The filing also describes other businesses within SpaceX’s broader portfolio, including ventures that have struggled.
Among the struggling units, the prospectus details that SpaceX’s artificial intelligence business lost $6.4 billion in operations last year, according to the AP report. It also points to questions raised by investors about recent acquisitions that include Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and xAI, which some SpaceX investors criticized as bailouts because the businesses are large money losers.
The filing additionally highlights how SpaceX’s space-launch business has benefited from government contracts, an area that watchdogs and ethics lawyers have asked about. The AP report said SpaceX has won contracts worth $6 billion from NASA and the Defense Department and other government agencies in the past five years, citing USAspending.gov data. The company also said in its filing that about a fifth of its revenue last year came from the federal government, while the report noted the scrutiny that can follow from Musk’s relationship with the Trump administration.
Corporate governance and executive incentive terms are another focal point in the prospectus. The filing says Musk’s compensation would extend beyond his annual salary, which the report said was $54,080 in 2025 and unchanged since 2019. It describes stock awards that would be granted in 15 slices of about 67 million shares each, with vesting tied to preset market-cap goals, including a condition in which SpaceX would reach a valuation of $7.5 trillion to allow Musk to receive the full award.
The filing also says Musk and certain other shareholders would receive a special class of stock that carries 10 votes per share. SpaceX warned prospective investors that this structure would “limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters and the election of our directors,” according to the AP report.
Finally, the prospectus sets out the timing for investor outreach once the company files publicly. The report said SpaceX can pitch the offering in a Wall Street “road show” 15 days after making its prospectus public, which would put the outreach on a path to June 4.