SpaceX closed its IPO filing on Wednesday, opening the books of a company that has already revolutionized rocket technology, with big ambitions to colonize Mars and build AI data centers in space.

The listing is poised to become the first trillion-dollar US market debut and could set the stage for a number of monumental IPOs in the coming months, including technology giants OpenAI and Anthropic as possible. The sale will immediately cement SpaceX as one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies, pushing Elon Musk’s expanding business empire past $1 trillion in market value.

Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has grown into the world’s largest space business, launching thousands of Starlink Internet satellites. Its pioneering use of reusable rockets has changed the economics of space, forcing competitors like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to play catch-up.

A successful sale could value the company at a record-setting $1.75 trillion, putting its founder on track to become the first trillionaire in history, validating years of defying accepted logic through the development of rockets that can land and take off again.

The company’s regulatory announcement comes during a critical week for the rocket maker, which is preparing to begin test flights of its next-generation Starship rocket.

Musk’s plans for Moon and Mars missions and to expand his Starlink satellite Internet business depend on the new rocket. The test launch, originally scheduled for Tuesday, is now expected later this week.

The board has given Musk control of the company, but ties much of his compensation to the ambitious goals of establishing a permanent human colony on Mars and building a space data center with computing capacity powered by 100 terawatts, or the equivalent of a 100,000 gigawatt nuclear reactor.

‘Halo Effect’

Musk’s CEO celebrity persona may be more important to some investors than SpaceX’s underlying business fundamentals, analysts and academics said, because there are no other comparable companies against which to benchmark its valuation.

“There’s somewhat of a halo effect around Musk and his unconventional vision,” said Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor at Georgetown University. “It is difficult to value such companies because there is no peer group for comparison.”

The $1.75 trillion valuation target, if achieved, would eclipse Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering, which set the record for the world’s largest IPO when it debuted on the Riyadh exchange at a valuation of $1.7 trillion. SpaceX had planned to try to raise more than $75 billion in the offering, Reuters previously reported.

The scale of the offering has drawn attention to the increasingly interconnected structure of Musk’s business empire, often referred to as the “musconomy,” which includes leading electric vehicle company Tesla, as well as his businesses in artificial intelligence and brain-chip implants.

SpaceX merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in a deal that valued the rocket company at $1 trillion and the developer of the Grok chatbot at $250 billion.

Concerns about Musk’s ability to juggle multiple companies with combined market values ​​of more than a trillion could weigh on investor sentiment, analysts said.

Space Race

The race to commercialize space has intensified as private companies led by SpaceX and Blue Origin compete to lower launch costs, deploy satellite networks and secure government contracts.

The sector, once dominated by state agencies such as NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos, is now attracting billions in private capital.

SpaceX’s revenue is driven by Starlink, the world’s largest satellite operator. A network of nearly 10,000 satellites provides broadband Internet to consumers, governments and enterprise customers. But the company’s expanding footprint in aviation, maritime and enterprise markets is helping turn capital-intensive space projects into recurring revenue engines.

IPO push and pull

High-profile AI firms including OpenAI and Anthropic are also exploring a possible public listing after 2026. Demand for SpaceX’s listing could influence the timing and appetite for other upcoming IPOs.

SpaceX plans to set aside a significant portion of the shares for retail investors and will host about 1,500 of them at an event in June after the IPO roadshow launch, Reuters reported in April.

The company is expected to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ‘SPCX’.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan are the bookrunners.