Will SpaceX become the richest person in history – who will laugh next?
Is SpaceX peak crazy?
Will SpaceX become the richest person in history – who will laugh next?
Andreas Cervenka
Reporter and economic commentator
This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are those of the writer.
Published 19.11
When SpaceX goes public, it is a jackpot for founder Elon Musk: he brings in cheap money, becomes the richest person in history, increases his army of devoted followers and secures power over his empire.
But the listing may be seen as a symbol of a time when the AI hype went off the rails.
On Friday afternoon Swedish time, the space company SpaceX will make its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York.
It is one of the most hyped listings ever and by far the largest.
SpaceX is selling new shares for a total of $75 billion, SEK 712 billion. The second largest listing was when Saudi Arabia's state oil company Saudi Aramco went public in 2019. That time, the company raised $29 billion.
Investing in shares should normally be something that is primarily done with a calculator in hand. But everyone who buys shares in SpaceX must above all use their imagination.
The price of $135 per share means that SpaceX's market capitalization lands at $1,770 billion (just under SEK 17,000 billion) or almost 95 times last year's turnover.
As recently as March 2020,SpaceX was valued at SEK 340 billion. The value development since then makes the company's own rockets look like damp-damaged Chinese puffs.
It is also a valuation that defies gravity. Recently, AI competitor Alphabet raised a total of $85 billion from investors through a new share issue, a record for a company that is already on the stock exchange.
Alphabet is valued at around ten times sales.
If the stock market comet Nvidia, which is growing significantly faster than SpaceX and is more profitable, were valued at the same level, the company would be worth SEK 195,000 billion instead of today's SEK 46,000 billion, which is already a staggering figure.
SpaceX has a profitable core consisting of the Starlink satellite business, but anyone who buys shares must also pay for many businesses that so far only exist in Elon Musk's head, such as passenger transport to Mars and mining on the moon.
People are lining up for this.
According to the news agency Bloomberg, SpaceX's listing is already oversubscribed. Buyers want four times more shares than the company is offering.
But selling dreams is also one of Elon Musk's superpowers. It's been a long time since the valuation of Tesla, with a market capitalization of 11,000 billion, was about cars. It's based almost entirely on Elon Musk's promises of robots and self-driving taxis.
It's mainly smaller investors, ordinary people, who worship Elon Musk. SpaceX has also made a point of targeting precisely such buyers. When SpaceX goes public, the company will thus have an enormous and loyal following all over the world.
And of course, Elon Musk's visions are a bit ticklish. The SpaceX prospectus is like something out of a sci-fi book and is largely about how humans will conquer space and humanity will become "multiplanetary".
The business idea is described as “understanding the true nature of the universe and bringing the light of consciousness to the stars”.
Given the rather dark times that prevail on Earth, it is not surprising that many are attracted to looking up at the stars instead.
For Elon Musk himself, the listing is something of a stroke of genius.
- He is taking advantage of the incredible hype surrounding AI by filling SpaceX’s war chest with what is essentially free money, given the high valuation.
- Elon Musk’s own shareholding is valued at $866 billion in the listing, which together with his other assets in Tesla, among others, pushes his fortune up to over $1 trillion.
- Thousands of SpaceX employees are becoming dollar millionaires, not just engineers but also welders and others with simpler jobs. A large number are becoming billionaires, at least in kronor. Their loyalty to Elon Musk can be assumed to be great.
- By introducing a new class of shares in the company with higher voting rights, Elon Musk gains total control and cannot be removed.
- Even those who do not believe in the visions will be forced to join the dream as SpaceX becomes large enough to end up in the portfolios of all the funds and pension managers around the world that shadow the index. Millions of people will thus become part owners of the company.
The effective marketing of SpaceX and the belief in Elon Musk mean that the stock could very well rise on the first day of trading. Anything else would also be a failure for the advisors involved.
The question, of course, is what happens next. In recent days alone, there has been more nervousness around AI stocks. Companies are worried about the high costs of letting their employees use AI without restrictions. There have also been several studies that indicate that AI investments have not yet generated as much new revenue as previously thought.
And the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that OpenAI is planning to lower its price in order to compete with Anthropic. Price wars are usually not very good for profitability.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to go public this year, with valuations in the order of $1 trillion each.
One thing should be said: anyone who has bet against Elon Musk so far has lost a lot of money. Tesla, which was close to bankruptcy for a while, is today one of the world's ten largest companies measured in market capitalization.
Perhaps all visions will come true and SpaceX will be the starting point for a new era in humanity.
But it may very well be that we look back on 2025 and 2026 as a crazy time where many lost their footing. Something to laugh at in retrospect.
“Do you remember the SpaceX prospectus? Elon Musk would get a bonus of 1200 billion if he put a million people on Mars”.
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