The paperwork sheds new light on the company that will soon trade as SPCX.
As expected, SpaceX’s accelerated IPO plans are beginning to take shape. The rocketship/AI/social media company has publicly filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC) outlining its plan to trade as SPCX on the Nasdaq.
The company previously had filed confidentially, but its S-1 filing has now been made public. The document sheds new light on finances of Elon Musk’s web of companies. For example, it states that Anthropic will pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 as part of its recently announced deal to let the AI firm use xAI’s data centers.
It also offers some new details about just how much X’s advertising revenue was affected by its volatile relationship with the ad industry. X saw a $595 million decrease in ad revenue in 2024 due to a “loss of advertising partners,” the filing says.
The paperwork makes numerous references to SpaceX’s ambition to build orbital data centers, including some lengthy “risk factors” related to those plans. “Our plans to deploy large-scale orbital infrastructure, including orbital AI compute systems, will require the operation of very large satellite constellations, potentially numbering up to one million satellites,” it says. “These plans will depend on obtaining a wide range of domestic and international approvals, including spectrum authorizations, orbital debris mitigation approvals, and coordination and authorization requirements relating to space situational awareness and international regulatory regimes, and there can be no assurance that such approvals will be obtained on acceptable timelines, terms, or at all.”
Another risk factor detailed in the paperwork are the numerous “investigations and inquiries” facing the company, including those related to allegations that Grok created “nonconsensual explicit images or content representing children in sexualized contexts, and similar matters.” The “risk factors” section confirms another notable, though not surprising detail: that the company plans to utilize dual class shares, which “concentrates voting control with Mr. Musk and other holders of our Class B common stock.”
The S-1 doesn’t give details on how much the IPO will value SpaceX at, but it’s widely expected to the largest-ever public offering that could result in Musk becoming a trillionaire.
