Valued At $10 Trillion, The Largest IPO In History Is Coming As SpaceX Announces Listing Plan

Bloomberg reports that Elon Musk’s space technology company SpaceX is preparing for an initial public offering at an estimated valuation of about USD 1.5 trillion (approximately RMB 10.6 trillion), with a target fundraising amount that exceeds USD 30 billion (approximately RMB 211.89 billion). If completed, the offering would represent the largest IPO on record. Musk confirmed the impending listing on the social platform X.

SpaceX’s valuation reflects more than its rocket business; it also derives from the company’s role in establishing the infrastructure that enables human access to low Earth orbit. Musk stated that valuation expansion will depend on progress with the Starship and Starlink programs and on securing global direct‑to‑cellular spectrum, which he said would substantially enlarge the company’s addressable market.

Observers have noted the strength of SpaceX’s secondary and tertiary growth trajectories and raised questions about how Musk repeatedly translates expansive narratives into operational achievements, what motivates his continual boundary‑pushing, and which practical mindsets and operational principles can be learned from his experience. Li Shanyou, founder of Chaos, offered a detailed analysis of Musk and SpaceX.

Li framed Musk’s approach around first principles and a business model that reframes value. He argued that Musk consistently aligns grand strategic ambitions with pragmatic commercial execution, creating a dynamic in which audacious goals sharpen, rather than dilute, business discipline. Li described innovation in three stages—action, cognition and philosophy—and used a structured framework to examine four strategic questions central to business strategy.

Value modeling at SpaceX, Li explained, began by challenging the prevailing assumption that rockets are single‑use. By hypothesizing reusability, rockets were reconceived as transportation assets comparable to aircraft or trains, thereby creating a new value dimension. Drawing analogies from other industries, Musk introduced familiar engineering and production concepts into rocketry, producing outcomes that were previously regarded as improbable.

SpaceX’s initial commercial path focused on mastering launch capability and securing paying customers, notably NASA, which outsourced space transport after retiring the shuttle program. This alignment of early revenue generation with long‑term objectives allowed SpaceX to pursue commercialization while advancing toward its broader mission.

On costs, Li highlighted Musk’s shift from cost‑plus contracting to fixed‑price arrangements, which created incentives to reduce expenses. Musk targeted a tenfold reduction in rocket costs by applying first‑principles analysis to decompose products to their elemental components and identify disproportionate optimization opportunities. This approach, which Li characterized as a physics‑based mindset, underpinned engineering rigor across SpaceX and related ventures.

Li described a five‑step operational method—question, remove, simplify, accelerate and automate—that SpaceX applied to redesign critical systems such as the Raptor engine. By replacing complex materials with simpler alternatives and streamlining component design, the company achieved substantial cost and performance improvements. The result, Li noted, is a dramatic narrowing of per‑kilogram launch costs: from roughly USD 50,000 per kilogram for the shuttle to about USD 3,000 for Falcon 9, with Starship projected to reduce costs further. Reusability at scale, Li argued, is the decisive factor in driving unit‑cost collapse.

SpaceX’s history includes early failures and a pivotal breakthrough on December 21, 2015, when the company achieved the first successful recovery of a reusable rocket. That milestone, Li observed, opened a new operational window for human activity beyond Earth and marked a turning point in private‑sector spaceflight. By 2024, Falcon 9 had completed 138 launches, with individual boosters reused up to 24 times, establishing SpaceX as a distinct category within the launch industry.

Li characterized SpaceX’s growth as a sequence of curves. The initial curve comprises launch services and space transport, which matured through contracts and operational capability. The second curve is Starlink, a low‑Earth‑orbit satellite broadband initiative that, after organizational restructuring and design simplification, achieved substantial cost reductions and rapid deployment. By December 2024, Starlink had launched 7,236 satellites and generated USD 7.7 billion in revenue, with projections that the network could expand to tens of thousands of satellites and generate significantly larger revenues over time. The third curve centers on Starship and the prospect of large‑scale human transport to Mars, which Musk envisions as the company’s ultimate mission and a potential source of transformative commercial activity.

Li emphasized that Musk’s work is driven by ideals as well as engineering. He quoted Musk’s stated purpose of using wealth to enable humanity to become a multi‑planetary species and described how that conviction shapes long‑term priorities and risk tolerance. Li argued that such a mission‑level commitment sustains focus through setbacks and aligns commercial initiatives with a broader, existential objective.

SpaceX’s proposed IPO, with the valuation and fundraising targets reported, therefore represents both a financial milestone and a manifestation of a strategic vision that integrates technological innovation, cost transformation and an expansive mission to extend human presence beyond Earth.