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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk owns a stake in his reusable rocket maker that’s worth $866.5 billion on paper, according to the company’s updated IPO prospectus published on Wednesday. SpaceX said it plans to price its upcoming IPO at $135 a share for a valuation of about $1.77 trillion.
For the 54-year-old Musk, the SpaceX offering, which is expected next week, comes 16 years after he took Tesla public. Now he owns stock in the electric vehicle maker that’s worth about $355 billion, and has options that could add more than $100 billion to that number.
Musk’s voting control of SpaceX after the offering will be north of 82%, according to Wednesday’s filing. However, he has to hold onto all of his shares for a year.
“We believe that Mr. Musk’s substantial ownership interest in us provides him with an economic incentive to assist us to be successful,” SpaceX said in the risk factors section of the prospectus. After the 366-day lock-up period, “Mr. Musk will not be subject to any obligation to maintain his ownership interest in us and may elect at any time thereafter to sell all or a substantial portion of or otherwise reduce his ownership interest in us,” the filing says.
Musk’s net worth has been steadily building for well over a decade, with Tesla’s stock starting to pop in a big way in 2013. He first became the world’s wealthiest person in 2021, passing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But Tesla’s stock sank 65% in 2022, before again soaring to new heights in the years that followed.
Forbes currently lists Musk’s net worth at $826 billion, way above Google co-founder Larry Page, who sits in second place just below $300 billion.
Assuming SpaceX hits the Nasdaq next week at or near its expected valuation, Musk will oversee two of the eight most valuable U.S. companies. SpaceX would be ahead of Tesla and Meta among the trillion-dollar names.
But by revenue, SpaceX is much smaller than those megacaps. Last year, SpaceX generated sales of $18.67 billion. Meta, meanwhile, topped $200 billion in revenue, and Tesla recorded sales of almost $95 billion.
Some investors have speculated of late that Musk’s ultimate plan could be to merge SpaceX and Tesla as a way to consolidate artificial intelligence resources and to streamline future capital raises. He has lucrative economic incentives at each company that include some far-out benchmarks.
SpaceX has linked Musk’s compensation rewards to two milestones: achieving a $7.5 trillion market cap and colonizing Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders approved a pay plan late last year that consists of 12 tranches, with each payout tied to market-cap gains and operational achievements.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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