The rocket manufacturer is also open to facilitating a sale of shares by current employees and investors. SpaceX, the space rocket and satellite manufacturer controlled by Elon Musk, is once again calling on investors. The company is planning a new round of fundraising, with a valuation of $400 billion (approximately £341 billion).
This would exceed the valuation of £350 billion established last December during the previous share buyback operation and rival other technology companies such as OpenAI and ByteDance, owner of TikTok, for the record valuation of an unlisted company.
In addition, with this operation, the technology and space services company would reach the valuation of listed companies such as Home Depot and Palantir Technologies.
According to sources familiar with the process, cited by Bloomberg, SpaceX would initially sell new shares to current investors. As part of the process, the company is also considering a public offering to facilitate the sale of shares to current employees and investors. In any case, the valuation is still being negotiated between the company and investors.
SpaceX’s valuation has been steadily increasing since its founding two decades ago. The firm reached $100 billion in October 2021 and doubled that value just three years later.
SpaceX has raised nearly $12 billion in a total of 30 rounds of funding. Investors participating in these transactions include investment funds, financial institutions and large technology companies such as DFJ Growth, Google, Fidelity, Valor Equity, Bank of America, Baillie Gifford, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Sequoia, a16z and Intesa Sanpaolo, among others. Elon Musk has already undertaken multi-billion-dollar transactions with his companies in recent times.
At the end of 2024, his artificial intelligence company, xAI, raised $6 billion in a Series C funding round, in which Andreessen Horowitz, Blackrock, Fidelity, Lightspeed, Morgan Stanley, Sequoia, Valor Equity, AMD, Nvidia and Saudi Arabia’s own sovereign wealth fund, Kingdom Holdings, participated with a contribution of $400 million. In the transaction, xAI was valued at £45 billion.
Last March, Elon Musk, who has now reopened his controversial relationship with his former ally, US President Donald Trump, announced that he had sold X (formerly Twitter) to xAI in an unusual transaction. Under the agreement, which provided for payment in shares only, xAI was valued at £80 billion and X at £33 billion, below the £44 billion paid by the tycoon in 2022.
The space industry continues to attract the interest of investors. France’s Eutelsat announced in mid-June a €1.35 billion capital increase, with the aim of raising funds to finance its low-orbit satellite network and strengthen its role as a strategic operator in Europe, in a transaction backed by the French government, which will now hold a 30% stake in the company.
