News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Elon Musk eyes world's first trillionaire status as SpaceX moves to historic IPO - Businessday NG
Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur, could become the world's first trillionaire as SpaceX, his aerospace company, moves closer to a record-breaking initial public offering (IPO) that could value the company at as much as $2 trillion. The planned IPO, expected later this year, is already being described as one of the most ambitious public listings in corporate history. SpaceX is targeting a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion, which potentially surpasses the historic market debut of Saudi Aramco and instantly makes the company one of the world's most valuable publicly traded firms. The development would significantly boost Musk's personal fortune, which is already estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars through his holdings in SpaceX, Tesla, X, and xAI. A successful IPO could push Musk's net worth beyond the $1 trillion mark for the first time in modern history. SpaceX's rapid growth has been driven largely by its Starlink satellite internet business, which has expanded globally and generated billions in revenue. The company has also maintained dominance in the commercial rocket industry through reusable launch systems and major government contracts with NASA and the U.S. military. However, the company's ambitions extend far beyond rockets and satellite internet. Recent filings reveal that SpaceX is investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure, orbital data centers, and next-generation space technology powered by its Starship rocket system. Musk has repeatedly stated that his long-term goal is to make humanity a multi-planetary species by establishing colonies on Mars. Financial disclosures linked to the IPO show that while SpaceX generated nearly $19 billion in revenue last year, it is also spending aggressively on expansion projects, AI systems, and spacecraft development. The company reportedly posted multibillion-dollar quarterly losses as it continues to scale its futuristic ventures. Despite those losses, investor confidence in Musk remains strong, fueled by his history of transforming industries ranging from electric vehicles to private space exploration. The IPO reflects growing market belief that SpaceX could become a central player in the future of artificial intelligence, global internet infrastructure, and commercial space travel. The IPO is expected to attract massive global investor interest and could reshape the technology and financial markets in the same way major tech listings once did for companies like Facebook, Alibaba, and Saudi Aramco.
SpaceX IPO bets $2 trillion on Musk's ambitious rockets-to-AI vision
Investors buying into SpaceX's nearly $2 trillion IPO are making a high-stakes wager that CEO Elon Musk can turn a fast-growing satellite business into something far bigger, using an unproven rocket to unlock an ambitious push into AI. Musk has grown SpaceX into the world's largest rocket business by launching thousands of Starlink internet satellites and pioneering reusable rockets that have transformed the economics of space. But the company is seeking to be valued not just on those laurels but on the juggernaut it might become if Musk's ambitious bets to colonise Mars, put data centres in space and become a leading AI company pay off. At the heart of those bets is an assumption that a set of events will unfold in the right order, with each step unlocking the next level of funding and expansion: Starlink will generate the cash to bankroll the next-generation Starship rocket, Starship will slash launch costs to expand the market, and that expanded market will ultimately support the new AI business, currently a money guzzler. "The risk isn't whether SpaceX is a real business; it clearly is," said Josh Gilbert, analyst at eToro, a trading platform where the stock will be available on the day of debut. "The risk is whether a $1.75 trillion valuation adequately prices in the execution challenges that come with being part rocket company, part internet provider, part AI venture, and very much driven by the vision of one individual." SpaceX is testing investor patience with huge losses it disclosed in its initial S-1 IPO filing on Wednesday: $4.28 billion in the three months ended March 31, an eightfold increase from a year earlier. Those losses alone will force investors to rely less on traditional metrics to value SpaceX, and more on the belief that Musk will execute what he has pledged. IN MUSK INVESTORS TRUST From building a trillion-dollar EV company that helped drive a global shift to clean cars to leading SpaceX as the first private firm to fly NASA astronauts, Musk has repeatedly turned high-risk engineering bets into dominant businesses, fuelling investor belief that even his most ambitious SpaceX assumptions may prove achievable. "You are not going to justify a $1.75 trillion or $2 trillion valuation for SpaceX using traditional fundamental metrics alone," Rainmaker Securities cofounder Greg Martin said on a video call. "Many investors ... believe SpaceX could become a $5 trillion to $10 trillion company over time." Musk's ventures often arrive later than promised: Tesla's Cybertruck, unveiled in 2019, did not begin deliveries until 2023; the Roadster 2, revealed in 2017, has yet to launch, and a more affordable EV platform as well as Optimus robots remain in development. Its Robotaxi rollout, which underpins near-term growth, has been sluggish after lofty promises. Still, investors, analysts and fund managers - Reuters spoke to 18 of them - are broadly bullish, with many saying the satellite and space businesses alone justify a near-$2 trillion valuation.
Kraken nears UAE launch after Dubai VARA approval
Kraken has moved closer to launching in the United Arab Emirates after its parent company, Payward, received preliminary approval from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. Payward received preliminary approval for a broker-dealer, investment and management licence from VARA. The approval gives Kraken a path toward offering regulated crypto services in Dubai once the remaining requirements are completed. The approval was granted on Thursday, May 21, moving Kraken closer to a full UAE rollout. The exchange has not confirmed a launch date, but plans to offer UAE dirham funding, margin trading, OTC trading and Kraken Prime access for institutional clients. The planned launch would give UAE users direct crypto market access through local currency rails. AED funding and withdrawals could reduce friction for traders who currently rely on foreign currency routes or third-party payment channels. Kraken also plans to offer institutional clients access to Kraken Prime. The service targets funds, trading firms and professional market participants that need deeper liquidity, execution tools and post-trade support. Kraken's move follows earlier regional work. The exchange received approval in 2022 to operate under Abu Dhabi's financial free zone framework, making the latest Dubai approval part of a broader UAE strategy. Dubai's public VARA register includes licensed crypto firms across exchange, broker-dealer, custody and lending activities. VARA says it regulates virtual asset services in and from Dubai, except in the Dubai International Financial Centre. Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi framed Dubai's rulebook as a reason for the move. He said that regulatory clarity has helped bring liquidity and institutional capital to the UAE. "Dubai wrote a rulebook for crypto before most jurisdictions even acknowledged the asset class," he said. Related crypto.news coverage shows Dubai has continued to expand regulated crypto payments and market access. Crypto.com recently received a UAE Stored Value Facilities license, allowing Dubai government fee payments through its regulated platform, with settlement in dirhams or approved stablecoins. Another crypto.news report said VARA issued guidance on token issuance in Dubai. The guidance clarified how virtual assets should be structured, disclosed and distributed, including rules for stablecoins and asset-referenced tokens. Kraken has also been expanding outside the UAE. Related coverage said Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for $600 million, strengthening Kraken's stablecoin payments and Asia strategy. The Dubai approval now gives Kraken another regulated growth path. The company is targeting local funding, professional trading tools and institutional access in one of the most active crypto markets in the Middle East.
Cerebras Just Got Fast-Tracked Into the S&P 500. Here's What It Means for Investors
AI chip stocks have been on a tear. Nvidia Corporation (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Broadcom (AVGO) have all ridden the artificial intelligence wave to staggering valuations. But this month, a new name burst onto the scene and stole the spotlight. Cerebras Systems (CBRS), the company behind the world's largest computer chip, went public on May 14 in the biggest IPO of 2026. The news came on after S&P Dow Jones Indices said it would fast-track the stock into eligible indices. CBRS shares opened well above the offer price as investors rushed to get in on the action. With an S&P Index inclusion now set for May 25, Cerebras is suddenly moving from a hot IPO to a must-watch AI stock. Here's what that could mean for investors. Cerebras Redefines AI Chips With Massive Wafer-Scale Architecture Cerebras builds a chip the size of a dinner plate. It packs four trillion transistors and 900,000 AI cores onto a single wafer. The company says its chip runs AI workloads 15 times faster than the competition. That kind of speed has won over OpenAI and Amazon (AMZN) as customers. Cerebras isn't just another Nvidia wannabe. It's betting on a fundamentally different architecture to win the AI inference race. Cerebras priced its IPO at $185 a share. It opened at $350 and hit an intraday high of $386.34. The stock closed its first day at $311.07, giving the company a market cap of roughly $69 billion. Since then, shares have pulled back to around $300 before bouncing on the index news. Cerebras trades at roughly 130 times trailing sales of $510 million. The semiconductor sector median price-to-sales ratio sits around 4. That's a staggering premium. But bulls point to the $24.6 billion backlog, which includes a $200 billion compute deal with OpenAI. On a forward basis, revenue is expected to roughly double in 2026. Investors are not paying for what Cerebras earned last year. They are paying for what it might earn in 2028 and beyond. What the Index News Means S&P Dow Jones Indices approved Cerebras for early entry into its indexes, effective May 25. Passive funds and ETFs that track the S&P 500 Index ($SPX) will be forced to buy the stock. This creates automatic demand regardless of valuation. The market liked the news, and shares jumped more than 7% while other AI chip stocks traded lower on Tuesday, May 19. Inclusion also brings legitimacy. Index membership signals that Cerebras is no longer a speculative upstart. It's a recognized player in the semiconductor industry. Cerebras Growth Accelerates on Strong Revenue Cerebras hasn't reported a full quarter as a public company yet. But its S-1 filing gives us a clear picture of the business. Revenue for fiscal year 2025 hit $510 million, up 76% from $290 million the year before. That's the kind of growth that gets Wall Street excited. Revenue comes from two main buckets. Hardware sales of its wafer-scale systems make up the bulk. Cloud services are a smaller but rapidly growing piece. The company's own data centers now sell AI compute directly to developers. That recurring revenue stream could be a game changer. Net income flipped to positive territory. Cerebras posted $237.8 million in net profit compared to a loss of $481.6 million in 2024. However, a big chunk of that profit came from a one-time accounting gain tied to a restructured deal with G42 in Abu Dhabi. Free cash flow was negative as the company poured money into data center infrastructure. Cash and equivalents stood at $701.7 million at year-end 2025. Although a decent cushion, Cerebras expects to burn roughly $3 billion across 2026 and 2027 as it scales to meet the OpenAI contract. CEO Andrew Feldman put it bluntly in an interview. "We built a chip the size of a dinner plate. It's 58 times larger than any chip previously built," he said. "In AI, bigger chips are faster." That's the pitch. Execution is now the test. For 2026, management guided to revenue of $900 million to $1 billion. That's roughly double the 2025 figure. Analysts expect full-year revenue around $950 million and an adjusted loss per share as the company invests aggressively in growth. What Cerebras Is Doing in 2026 Cerebras is moving fast. The company recently launched its first AI model running entirely on its own chips in partnership with OpenAI. Cathie Wood of ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) bought $46 million worth of shares within days of the IPO. Cerebras is also lobbying Washington to tighten chip restrictions on China while simultaneously pushing the Trump administration to open Chinese markets for its products. Meanwhile, the company rejected a pre-IPO acquisition offer from Arm Holdings (ARM) and SoftBank (SFTBY). Cerebras wants to stand alone. That takes guts, and it tells you management believes the best is yet to come. The Bottom Line Wall Street is still warming up to Cerebras. Because the stock is so new, formal analyst coverage is non-existent on Barchart. But in my opinion, Cerebras is still a young stock, but its huge chip, strong demand, and S&P 500 Index entry make it one to watch. The valuation is rich, yet the growth story is real. Investors now need to see solid execution.
SpaceX Eyes IPO, Tests New Starship Amid Eco Concerns
SpaceX is proceeding with two major milestones with consequences that could be, at a minimum, global. The company, owned by Elon Musk and valued at upwards of US$1.5 trillion , released its financial details on May 20, 2026 in advance of an IPO scheduled for June 12 and anticipated to be the largest in history. Meanwhile, as soon as this evening, May 21, SpaceX plans to test the latest version of its Starship rocket - also the largest of its kind in history - and designed to facilitate a human migration to the Moon and Mars. But underlying SpaceX's surges forward are tensions between the company's activities and concerns about the effects they may be having on the environment. These tensions were on display in April 2026 as protests by environmental activists took place outside Starbase, its development and testing facility in South Texas, while SpaceX was courting investors. The Starbase facility is located in a sensitive wetland area along the Gulf Coast that serves as a habitat for birds and a nesting site for sea turtles . Concerned about pollution and launch debris damaging these species and others, environmental groups have filed multiple lawsuits against the company . Federal and state agencies have also fined SpaceX for polluting local waterways . This conflict is a microcosm of a larger issue: whether the space ambitions of Silicon Valley and Wall Street are fundamentally at odds with the concerns of environmental activists. Space and conservation at odds? On the one hand, technologies developed for space often have benefits on Earth. And Musk has argued that SpaceX's long-term goal of building a city on Mars would help protect life , including humans and other species, by ensuring their survival in the event of an Earthly disaster. But space exploration can also do environmental harm, from space debris causing damage to marine or terrestrial ecosystems to rockets producing pollutants and greenhouse gases , which can contribute to climate change. As an evolutionary ecologist who spent years studying rainforest insects and more than a decade considering the consequences of space settlement , I can understand both sides of this argument. I've been to Starbase to watch a Starship launch and seen the sensitive wetlands surrounding the launch pad. But I've also studied the fossil record and understand how events like the asteroid impact 66 million years ago devastated many of the dominant life forms alive at the time, like most dinosaurs. So I understand the motivation to become a multiplanetary species to help avoid that fate. Environmental costs of space travel But does the very act of going to space cause more environmental harm than good? Depending on the type of fuel used, rocket launches can release pollutants such as black carbon, chlorine gas, methane and carbon dioxide that can contribute to ozone depletion and climate change. However, some liquid fuels like methane - which is what SpaceX uses for its massive Starship rocket - are cleaner-burning, producing mainly water and carbon dioxide as byproducts. There can also be local ecological impacts, including damage to nearby vegetation or harm to wildlife , such as the destruction of bird nests. Noise pollution from the sound of a launch can stress some animals or interfere with their natural behaviors . As the frequency of rocket launches increases, these potential impacts are becoming a greater concern. In 2025, there were a total of 324 launches worldwide , which sent a staggering 4,510 objects into space . Both were new records. And these numbers don't include suborbital launches - those that involve a shorter, up-and-down trajectory - or test launches, such as those for SpaceX's Starship. Benefits of space exploration But there can also be ways in which space exploration directly benefits people back on Earth. Technological innovations created for living in space have already directly benefited some sustainability efforts on Earth. These include methods for recycling water and managing waste . Space technologies such as satellites have also become essential tools for researchers who study and monitor our planet's ecosystems and how they are changing. NASA is working with SpaceX and other commercial space companies to build a base on the Moon within the next decade . Having people live on the Moon will require further technological developments that could have helpful spinoffs to use back on Earth. For example, finding ways to grow food in such an austere environment could lead to new ways to feed people in regions on Earth where agriculture has traditionally been limited by environmental constraints. Looking back at the Earth Another way space exploration could benefit conservation efforts is by motivating people to be more environmentally minded. The environmental movement that began in the 1970s was inspired in part by the perspective offered by the Earthrise photo taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. Seeing the Earth with your own eyes can be even more moving, according to those who have experienced it . They point out that borders between nations are largely invisible, but that human impacts on the planet like deforestation, wildfires and the bright lights of cities at night can be quite evident. Also visible from space is a thin, blue line that seems to hover just above our planet's surface: the atmosphere. It's a reminder that there is only a narrow zone that allows life on Earth to flourish, and that we must protect it. Astronauts frequently come back to Earth more motivated to protect the environment. Some, like Scott Kelly and Nicole Stott , became dedicated environmentalists after the experience of being in space. As space becomes more accessible and a greater number of people have these transformative experiences, there could be more support for conservation and sustainability. Do these benefits outweigh the environmental costs? Ultimately, whether going to space is a net benefit or a cost to the environment may come down to individual choices. The choice of rocket fuel matters. But so does the location of launch sites. Those near the coast are better for human safety because falling debris is more likely to come down over the ocean than a city. But some coastal locations host more significant wildlife habitats than others. What goes up... Decisions about what to send to space are also important. After all, what goes up must come down. Debris from space, such as defunct satellites, can burn up during reentry, but occasionally pieces reach the ground intact . When they do they can create litter, not to mention the potential for causing damage to people, property and wildlife. Objects that remain in orbit also contribute to concerns about polluting the space environment , potentially making it more dangerous to travel into space because of the risk of high speed collisions . Perhaps new technologies to help advance human pursuits in space, like living on the Moon, will help solve some of our environmental challenges. The increasing number of people who get the opportunity to travel to space may be so profoundly affected by the experience that they take actions with environmental benefits. As the space economy continues to develop, the balance between expanding humanity's presence beyond our home planet and concerns about protecting it will only intensify. Scott Solomon has received funding from the National Science Foundation. He is the author of the book "Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds" published by MIT Press. /Courtesy of The Conversation. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).
SpaceX rocket creates 'jellyfish' above Florida's Space Coast. See photos.
A predawn SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch created a photogenic "jellyfish" effect featuring illuminated plumes of exhaust gases in the sky on Thursday, May 21, above Florida's Space Coast. The rocket lifted off at 6:04 a.m. -- 24 minutes before sunrise -- from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. After reaching low-Earth orbit, SpaceX's Starlink 10-31 mission deployed another 29 broadband satellites. Looking ahead on the calendar, SpaceX has scheduled a Memorial Day morning launch from the Space Force installation. The four-hour launch window will last from 7:41 a.m. to 11:41 a.m. Monday, May 25, on another Starlink mission. Live FLORIDA TODAY Space Team coverage should kick off about 90 minutes before liftoff at floridatoday.com/space. For the latest news and launch schedule from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space. Another easy way: Click here to sign up for our weekly 321 Launch space newsletter. Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY, where he has covered news since 2004. Contact Neale at [email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
Will SpaceX's IPO fund life on Mars -- and a trillionaire?
SpaceX is launching history's biggest public listing, propelling Elon Musk's wealth into the stratosphere. DW explores whether the firm's out-of-this-world ambitions are truly cosmic or another black hole for investors. Elon Musk has a habit of turning science fiction into reality. From reusable rockets to autonomous electric vehicles and humanoid robots, the billionaire's ventures often achieve what was once thought impossible. With SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO), he's aiming for even bigger milestones. The company, which has stayed fiercely private for 24 years, is now preparing to go public. In an S1 filing to US regulators on Wednesday, which runs to hundreds of pages, SpaceX plans to raise roughly $75 billion (€64.5 billion) from new investors, which would value the company at up to $1.75 trillion. Not bad for a firm that is still loss-making and which Musk -- already the world's richest man -- will effectively still control. Musk wants SpaceX to do more than send astronauts into space. He plans to build the infrastructure to secure the future of human life beyond Earth. The ultimate goal, Musk has said, is to create self-sustaining cities on Mars that could be home to up to a million people. To achieve that, SpaceX plans to use Starship -- its giant reusable spacecraft -- to make the first uncrewed voyages by 2030. The one-way journey to the Red Planet covers about 140 million miles on average and takes roughly six to nine months. The initial missions will test landing systems and begin setting up basic infrastructure, with crewed voyages to follow a few years later. SpaceX also wants to use resources on celestial bodies much closer to Earth to support humanity's multi-planetary expansion. Musk believes that asteroids, which fly through space on shifting orbits, could one day be mined. Asteroids' near-zero gravity makes them far easier and cheaper to land on and extract materials from. However, large-scale asteroid mining of platinum, nickel, gold and ice (water) -- all vital for supporting life, building habitats and producing fuel on Mars -- won't be achieved until the 2040s or beyond, space industry analysts have predicted. A crucial first stepping stone, however, will be the Moon, which is only a three-day trip from Earth. SpaceX envisions habitats, factories and fuel depots could be built on the Moon -- a much cheaper option than launching tons of materials from Earth. Musk also believes space has an answer to one of the biggest problems facing artificial intelligence (AI) -- the enormous amount of power and cooling required for massive data centers to handle billions of user requests at once. Instead of building more of these power-hungry facilities on Earth, SpaceX has floated the idea of placing giant AI supercomputers in orbit on large arrays of satellites. These data centers could use unlimited sunlight for energy and the cold vacuum of space for free cooling, making large-scale AI training far cheaper and more efficient than on our home planet. If SpaceX's ambitions aren't crazy enough, the IPO's plans to elevate Musk -- already the world's richest person -- are truly out of this world. Musk currently owns an estimated 42% of SpaceX. At the targeted $1.75 trillion valuation, his stake alone would be worth roughly $735 billion. Combined with Musk's holdings in Tesla, xAI and other ventures, the IPO would likely push his total net worth past the $1 trillion mark, making him the first trillionaire in history. A special dual-class share structure gives Musk over 80% of the voting power despite owning a much smaller share of SpaceX equity. This setup effectively makes him unfireable as CEO, helping him to pursue long-term, high-risk projects without pressure from short-term investors or activist shareholders. Musk's ironclad control has drawn criticism before, most notably at Tesla, where shareholders sued over his massive pay packages and potential conflicts of interest, arguing the board lacks real independence. Similar concerns have arisen over his control of the social media platform X, where decisions like major layoffs and strategic shifts were made by him. The blockbuster listing will also create enormous wealth for early backers and executives. According to the Financial Times, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and CFO Bret Johnsen would see their shares exceed $1 billion in value. Longtime investor Antonio Gracias could be sitting on $70 billion or more, while PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek's stake would be worth around $5 billion. Wall Street is gearing up for what could be the largest IPO in history, with Goldman Sachs acting as the lead underwriter. If SpaceX does secure an additional $75 billion in funding, it would be nearly triple Saudi Aramco's previous record of approximately $29.4 billion in 2019. Before that, Alibaba's US listing was the largest share offering, raising $22 billion in 2014. A $1.75 trillion valuation would place SpaceX in the Top 10 of the world's largest public companies, alongside NVIDIA, Apple, Google owner Alphabet and Microsoft. This would mark a huge leap of faith by investors as SpaceX remains deeply unprofitable, reporting a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025 due to heavy investments in Starship, satellite deployment and AI resources. Due to the enormous hazards of operating extraterrestrially, along with fast-advancing AI, the IPO filing lays out the very real dangers SpaceX faces. These include "a unique range of space-related risks," including "radiation from solar and cosmic sources; micrometeoroids and orbital debris," and "human injury or death." Wednesday's filing also warns: "We have a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future." The sky-high valuation has some analysts wondering whether SpaceX's ambitions are more pie-in-the-sky than rocket science -- a debate that will only intensify once trading begins on the Nasdaq next month.
SpaceX IPO Filing Reveals Anthropic's $15B AI
SpaceX IPO filing documents released on May 20, 2026, have sent shockwaves through the tech sector by disclosing that Anthropic is committing $15 billion annually for exclusive access to SpaceX-managed data centers. This massive financial commitment underscores the escalating arms race for high-performance computing power required to train next-generation models. While firms like Anthropic have historically focused on software safety, this pivot toward proprietary physical infrastructure signals a move to secure compute availability amidst a global silicon shortage. The real story here isn't just the sheer scale of the investment, but the strategic integration between aerospace-grade satellite networking and terrestrial AI clusters. By utilizing SpaceX's Starlink-backed infrastructure, Anthropic aims to minimize latency in distributed training environments. This allows researchers to scale model training across geographically dispersed nodes without the typical bottlenecks found in standard commercial cloud offerings. Spacex ipo: Infrastructure Requirements and Market Impact The $15 billion price tag represents a significant shift in how AI labs view operational expenditure. Most competitors rely on public cloud providers, but Anthropic is clearly betting that vertical integration with SpaceX will provide an edge in data throughput. This move mirrors the industry trend where firms like Persistent Systems have been optimizing their own internal pipelines to handle larger workloads, though the scale here is orders of magnitude higher. Not everyone agrees with this strategy -- skeptics argue that $15 billion is an unsustainable burn rate that could alienate long-term investors. But the data suggests otherwise; as models grow, the bottleneck shifts from parameter count to data transmission speeds. If Anthropic can maintain its lead in reasoning capabilities by utilizing this dedicated hardware, the cost may be justified by the sheer commercial value of their upcoming releases. The implications for the broader market are profound. As specialized infrastructure becomes the new competitive moat, we expect to see more partnerships between aerospace, energy, and AI companies. This is particularly relevant following news that Andrej Karpathy recently joined the pre-training team at Anthropic, likely to oversee the optimization of these massive new clusters. Looking ahead, the success of this partnership will likely determine whether other AI labs follow suit or remain tethered to traditional cloud providers. We anticipate that by early 2027, the line between satellite-based telecommunications and AI data processing will blur almost entirely. Understanding anthropic fully means staying ahead of these developments. FAQs Is the $15 billion figure confirmed? Yes, the $15 billion annual payment is explicitly detailed in the latest SpaceX IPO filing documentation accessible as of May 20, 2026. Why is Anthropic choosing SpaceX? Anthropic is reportedly leveraging SpaceX's proprietary low-latency networking, which provides a significant speed advantage for training large-scale multimodal models compared to standard data centers. How does this affect the competition? This move forces competitors to find similar dedicated infrastructure partners, likely driving up the valuation of private data center operators and energy-dense facility providers globally. SpaceX IPO
Microsoft rises 2% as Anthropic eyes deal for custom Maia AI chips By Investing.com
Investing.com -- Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) rose 2% Thursday after The Information reported that Anthropic is in talks to use the company's custom AI server chips. Anthropic is currently in discussions to rent servers powered by Microsoft's Maia chips to secure additional computing power for its Claude models, according to the report. Securing Anthropic as a client would mark a significant win for Microsoft, whose in-house chip development faced delays last year. The deal would allow Microsoft to compete with cloud rivals Google and Amazon by offering an alternative to Nvidia hardware, which currently dominates the market and eats into cloud profit margins. For Anthropic, renting Maia chips provides additional options to run its models and the opportunity to tailor future generations of the chip to its specific needs. The Maia chips are designed to run existing models faster than Nvidia's hardware, though they are not intended for training or developing new models, according to the report.
Live coverage: SpaceX to launch first Starship Version 3 rocket
SpaceX is set to launch the third generation of its Starship rocket as soon as Thursday, May 21, from its company town in southern Texas, called Starbase. The 407-foot-tall (124 m) two-stage rocket will fly on a suborbital mission dubbed Flight 12. The mission will see the Super Heavy booster (Booster 19) splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and the Starship upper stage (Ship 39) meet its own aquatic end in the Indian Ocean. Liftoff is scheduled during a launch window that opens at 5:30 p.m. PDT (6:30 p.m. EDT / 2230 UTC). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about two hours prior to liftoff. Following five flights of Starship Version 2 in 2025, the company progressed to the next block upgrade of the rocket after extensive testing, including two separate explosive set backs on the test stand, which destroyed a Super Heavy Booster and a Starship. Because this is the introduction of a new version, Booster 19 will not return for a catch attempt back at Pad 2. Instead, it will land in the Gulf about seven minutes after taking off. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, SpaceX noted that it invested more than $15 billion into Starship development. The company said it was ramping up the research and development work on the rocket, which is designed to be fully reusable. "In 2025, our Space segment generated a loss from operations of $657 million and Segment Adjusted EBITDA of $653 million, including the impact of funding [$3 billion] in research and development expense for our next-generation Starship launch vehicle program," the company wrote. SpaceX expects Starship to be capable of carrying 100 metric tons or more of payload into orbit eventually with Version 3. For this 12th test flight, 20 Starlink simulator satellites will be deployed on a sub-orbital trajectory over a roughly 10-minute period, starting about 17 minutes into the flight. Two additional satellites, described by SpaceX as "modified Starlinks" will be released to "attempt to scan Starship's heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship's heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test." Like on recent Starship flight, SpaceX also plans to perform a relight of one of the Raptor engines on Ship 39 while it's in a coast period. That will happen nearly 39 minutes into the mission. This engine demo will help inform future deorbiting burns once SpaceX begins launching Starship on orbital trajectories. Finally, Ship 39 will target a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean more than an hour after launching from Texas. SpaceX previously said that if all goes well with Flight 12, Flight 13 may be an orbital launch, but that has yet to be determined.
Sources: Anthropic is in talks to rent servers powered by Microsoft-designed chips; source: Anthropic has steadily increased its Azure usage since November 2025
@tbpn: $NVDA is becoming more and more undervalued, and the competitive threat from TPU and Trainium are red herrings, says @firstadopter. "The stock is almost as cheap as it's ever been. It's trading at 19x forward P/E. That's below the S&P 500, which is growing at like 10%. Nvidia's [video] Physical AI & $NVDA As in each of the past five quarters, Jensen reminds investors that physical AI will become a major driver in the next several years, but it has not yet started. My take: Investors are under appreciating the impact of physical AI. This year, FSD will account for about 0.3% of total passenger miles driven in the U.S., and autonomous ride-hailing will account for about 2% of rideshare. Cars are one part of physical AI.
Why SpaceX's mega IPO may not signal a broader rebound in listings - The Economic Times
SpaceX's huge IPO is set to capture global attention. However, experts believe this event may not reflect the true health of the broader IPO market. Other companies are carefully planning their own listings to avoid being overshadowed. Analysts suggest the IPO rebound will remain selective, focusing on specific sectors. The SpaceX listing is expected to be a major spectacle.
Instant View: SpaceX files long awaited IPO, creating a fresh AI play
NEW YORK, May 20 : Elon Musk's rocket and satellite maker SpaceX filed on Wednesday for its widely awaited initial public offering, which stands to raise the most ever in an initial offering. The firm said it has picked the Nasdaq as the trading venue for its blockbuster market debut, confirming what people familiar with the matter told Reuters this month. COMMENTS: DAN IVES, HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AT WEDBUSH SECURITIES, NEW YORK: "SpaceX officially filed its S-1 to go public via IPO under the ticker symbol SPCX representing the largest IPO in stock market history, as the company remains at the center of two of the largest growth opportunities over the coming decades. "We continue to believe that SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one company in 2027 with the groundwork already in place for both operations to become one organization. "Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem and step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla in some way to give the connected tissue between both disruptive tech stalwarts looking to lead the AI revolution." DENNIS DICK, PROPRIETARY TRADER, TRIPLE D TRADING, BARRIE, ONTARIO, CANADA: "It's a little scary to come in and say, 'Yeah, let's go invest in a $2 trillion company," hoping that they'll reach the stars. I'll probably trade SpaceX but I don't know that I'd be an investor. "You have to think about what this means for Tesla. Once SpaceX is public, does some of the luster around Tesla start to fade? Now you're going to have another way to play Elon Musk." CAROL SCHLEIF, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, BMO PRIVATE WEALTH, MINNEAPOLIS: "Space in general is attractive to investors. They like optimistic themes and it's another iteration of the importance and sustainability of not just the AI trend, but the technology transformation, because it's robots, it's space. It's advanced manufacturing. Its advances in scientific discovery and drug discovery and medical equipment. It's our ability to basically push knowledge work into a new era. "The Artemis mission excited a lot of people. It was overshadowed, unfortunately, by so many events that were going on in the Middle East. But a lot of clients I talk to are super excited about the concept of Artemis 2 going back to the moon and doing preparatory work to manufacture stuff on the moon."
SpaceX reveals Musk company links, from Cybertrucks and jets to stock investments
May 20 (Reuters) - SpaceX's IPO filing revealed extensive commercial and financial ties among Elon Musk's companies ranging from Cybertruck purchases and shared private jets to stock investments, showing how deeply intertwined his business empire has become ahead of what could become the largest IPO in history. While many of the billionaire's companies have long collaborated, the filing contains previously undisclosed details about how they now form a network bound by commercial agreements, financing obligations and operational dependencies spanning AI, transportation, communications and infrastructure. The disclosures on Wednesday showed rapidly expanding transactions among SpaceX, electric vehicle maker Tesla, artificial intelligence company xAI and social network X ahead of a planned SpaceX IPO targeting a valuation of about $1.75 trillion. SpaceX and its xAI subsidiary collectively bought about $650 million in goods and services from Tesla last year, including $506 million in Megapack battery systems purchased by xAI. SpaceX spent $144 million on commercial goods and services, including $131 million on Tesla's stainless-steel Cybertrucks at suggested retail prices, which would buy more than 1,000 of them. Tesla, which has historically spent little on traditional advertising, also paid $4 million for advertisements on X in 2025, according to the filing. The filing also disclosed aircraft-sharing arrangements involving Tesla and Musk personally, along with security payments to a private company owned by Musk. It showed Tesla owns nearly 19 million shares of SpaceX Class A stock, representing less than 1% ownership after the offering, following a $2 billion investment in SpaceX earlier this year. Tesla and SpaceX are also working on a multibillion-dollar joint project called the Terafab, a chip-manufacturing venture, highlighting how Musk's companies are becoming increasingly interconnected around AI and compute infrastructure. Tesla is building a solar factory to scale toward a 100-gigawatt-per-year domestic manufacturing target, aiming to supply custom photovoltaic hardware for SpaceX's planned constellation of orbital AI data centers. INVESTOR SCRUTINY The disclosures come as investors increasingly scrutinize governance, capital allocation and the overlap among Musk-controlled companies as SpaceX expands beyond rockets and satellite internet into AI infrastructure and computing. The filing revealed more than $20 billion in related-party AI infrastructure lease obligations tied to equipment agreements between subsidiaries linked to xAI and private investment firm Valor Equity Partners, whose founder Antonio Gracias sits on SpaceX's board.
SpaceX aims for 10,000 annual launches within five years, FAA says
ARLINGTON, Virginia, May 20 (Reuters) - SpaceX aims to reach 10,000 launches annually within five years, but government officials will need to see improved reliability before approving such an expansion, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said he met with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who told him about the company's ambitious goal. SpaceX conducted 170 launches in 2025 deploying about 2,500 satellites. Bedford said Shotwell told him "about the SpaceX five-year vision to get to 10,000 launches a year." In a Forbes video interview that aired this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted the company already has 10,000 satellites in orbit and eventually wants to launch 10,000 communications satellites per year, though he did not specify a timeframe. Bedford said after a forum that the FAA would need to see greater reliability before approving such a goal. "We need to see a lot more reliability," Bedford told reporters after the forum. The FAA licenses all commercial space launches and takes steps to streamline key hurdles. It imposes restrictions to ensure launches or space accidents do not interfere with passenger air traffic. Bedford said the purpose of the meeting with SpaceX "was to go through the constraints that we see and what can we do planning wise now to put ourselves in a position to accommodate that type of a stretch goal." SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bedford said he and Shotwell "had a very frank conversation, we're going to have to push ourselves, they're going to have to push their reliability." He noted that President Donald Trump wants to get to the moon before 2028. "To do that, we are going to have to work with industry to unlock that innovation," Bedford added. Bedford also said the FAA was not currently the limiting factor for space launches. "I can see a future where we will be the limiting factor, because we are not putting enough funding into our space team," he said. He said the FAA was reviewing data from prior launches to better understand risks. To address safety concerns, the FAA has to bar flights in some areas at the time of launch and "that can be very disruptive," Bedford said. In January, SpaceX said it wants to launch a constellation of 1 million satellites that will orbit Earth and harness the sun to power AI data centers. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
Analysis:Fears of unfettered hacking spurred by Anthropic's Mythos AI model overstated
May 20 : Early fears that Anthropic's new AI model, Mythos, could dramatically turbocharge hacking are looking overstated a month after its release. The company warned at launch in April that Mythos had uncovered thousands of software vulnerabilities -- including flaws across every major operating system and browser -- and said the fallout from its spread could be severe. Governments took notice. Officials in multiple countries huddled with banks to assess risks, and by early May the White House was weighing rules to control how new models are released after safety testing. But inside the cybersecurity world, the reaction has been more measured -- with some saying the broader response has been overblown, and that access to a Mythos-level large language model will not immediately enable hacking operations previously out of reach for bad actors. "I think there's a really big communication gap between practitioners and policymakers," said Isaac Evans, founder and CEO of software security firm Semgrep. The model represents "a real technical advance," he said, but the response "is not substantiated by what we actually know about how those capabilities will translate in the field." To be sure, experts who have used the model in controlled environments have reported substantial improvement in vulnerability discovery, and banking industry IT staffs are working to fix scores of system weaknesses in large and small bank technology stacks, Reuters reported on May 12. The worry has been heightened further by continued revelations of criminal and state-linked hacking cases involving AI, including Google's announcement on May 11 that it had detected the first-ever case of a major cybercrime group using AI to discover a previously unknown software flaw and planning a mass exploitation event. PRACTITIONERS SEE MEASURED RISK The gap between the extent of the threat seen by security professionals and that seen by policymakers has fueled a narrative that puts Mythos at the center of a looming security crisis -- even as comparable capabilities have been available for some time. "We've been able to use AI to find more bugs than we know what to do with for months if not years," said one person with extensive vulnerability research experience with early access to Mythos. The challenge is not finding vulnerabilities, they said, but validating, prioritizing and fixing them without breaking systems. Organizations' ability to process and validate a flood of newly discovered vulnerabilities is generally not where it needs to be, the person said, and that is the bigger challenge introduced by Mythos-level models, even as they acknowledged that the model is an improvement. "It is capable of finding more with a weaker prompt than the models that came before it," the person said, referring to the instructions a user provides the model to attempt to achieve a goal. Existing models required more detailed and complicated instructions, the person said, meaning the barrier to entry has been lowered. Anthony Grieco, senior vice president and chief security and trust officer at Cisco, said one new and helpful aspect of Mythos is its ability not only to identify vulnerabilities, but to scan much faster vast amounts of code for those vulnerabilities and help experienced practitioners lower the rate of false positives. This, he said, allows defenders to focus on the most pressing cyber risks in their contexts. The model also has fewer guardrails than previous models, allowing users to craft more specific instructions that enable activities that previous models would not. PROJECT GLASSWING TESTS DEFENSES Grieco said to fully maximize the power of Mythos, organizations need both proper computing power as well as a rigorous harness, a term used to describe the computer environment within an organization where a large language model runs with specific instructions and limitations. "If you have a Formula One car but you've only ever driven a bike, you might be able to get it to go straight," Grieco said. "But you're not going to maximize the track time out of the gate." Even so, Anthropic's framing -- and its decision to invite select firms to test defenses under a program dubbed Project Glasswing -- helped push the conversation about the model well beyond typical security circles. The result: an all-hands-on-deck response that amplified both the perceived threat and the company's stature, even as the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk while other parts of the government clamored for access. The White House is discussing with AI labs more widespread use of their technology, a White House official told Reuters. An Anthropic spokesperson said the company is working "closely with the U.S. government to quickly advance shared priorities," and working with the government to give more parties access to Mythos. FINDING VULNERABILITIES WITH AI IS ONLY THE START Mythos -- and to some extent OpenAI's GPT-5.5 -- has dominated national security discussions about AI. But those debates often gloss over a simpler point: vulnerability-hunting AI is not new. The real problem is what comes next. "Our adversaries have gotten really good without AI," said Cynthia Kaiser, a former senior FBI cybersecurity official now at Halcyon. "Ransomware attacks are happening in under an hour," she said, adding that most threats still don't rely on AI at all. For now, Mythos' scale and computing and infrastructure demands also limit who can use it. But those barriers are unlikely to last. "I don't think the architecture is optimized," said Nick Adam of financial-services company State Street during a panel discussion at Vanderbilt University. He pointed to the computer processing infrastructure and harness issue identified by Grieco. "There's a barrier to entry there -- but it will be solved pretty quickly."
SpaceX IPO filing lays bare losses and Musk control as it stakes future on AI
May 20 : SpaceX took the wraps off its IPO filing on Wednesday, laying bare for investors just how much Elon Musk is losing on artificial intelligence while betting the company's future on transforming the rocket maker into an AI powerhouse. Much of its outlook relies on SpaceX dominating technologies and markets that do not yet exist - from Mars missions to AI data centers in space. For many, Musk's record turning Tesla into the most valuable auto company in the world and developing the world's first fully reusable rocket and largest satellite network is enough to justify investment. The filing cements Musk's tight control of SpaceX while giving shareholders little say over his decisions. It shows just how central AI has become following the February purchase of xAI, which drove most of the company's spending and a majority of its losses in the first quarter. The listing could become the first U.S. market debut above $1 trillion and would immediately make SpaceX one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies. Of SpaceX's three divisions, only the connectivity segment powered by satellite internet unit Starlink was profitable in the first three months of the year. While Starlink generated an operating profit of $1.19 billion, it wasn't enough to prevent the company from booking a total operating loss of $1.94 billion in the first quarter on $4.69 billion in revenue. Its AI division, alone, accounted for $2.47 billion in losses on $818 million in revenue. Musk's purchase of his social media and AI company xAI gave SpaceX new capabilities and opportunities but a staggering amount of spending, accounting for 76 per cent of its $10.1 billion in capital spending in the first quarter, as well as fresh losses. The company's plans rely on technology that's not yet been built for much of its future revenue stream, including operating data centers powered by solar power in space, to reach a potential market of $28.5 trillion, according to the filing. The filing confirmed a series of recent Reuters reports about the IPO. SpaceX has grown into the world's largest space business since its founding in 2002 by launching thousands of Starlink internet satellites. Its pioneering use of reusable rockets has transformed the economics of space, forcing competitors like Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to play catch-up. A successful share sale could value the company at a record-setting $1.75 trillion, which would put its founder on track to become the first trillionaire in history. Musk will also retain 85.1 per cent of the combined voting power of the company, the filing showed. The company's regulatory disclosure comes during a critical week for the rocket maker, which is preparing to launch a test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket on Thursday. The board has given Musk control over the company, but has tied much of his compensation to audacious targets of establishing a permanent human colony on Mars and building space data centers with compute capacity powered by the equivalent of 100 terawatts, or 100,000 one-gigawatt nuclear reactors, Reuters previously reported. SpaceX is aiming to list its shares as early as June 12, with a roadshow launch targeted for June 4 and the share sale expected as early as June 11, Reuters reported last week. 'HALO EFFECT' Musk's CEO celebrity persona may matter more 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 is 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 companies like this 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 a record for the world's biggest IPO when it debuted on Riyadh's exchange at a value of $1.7 trillion. SpaceX had planned to try to raise more than $75 billion in the offering, Reuters previously reported. SpaceX will use a dual-class share structure that gives Class B shareholders 10 votes each, concentrating control with Musk and a handful of other insiders, while Class A shares sold to public investors will carry one vote each, the prospectus showed. The company has adopted numerous provisions that, taken together, severely limit shareholder rights, forcing legal claims through arbitration, restricting where cases can be filed and protecting Musk from being fired by anyone other than Musk. The scale of the offering has drawn attention to the increasingly interconnected structure of Musk's business empire, often dubbed the "Muskonomy," which includes leading electric vehicle company Tesla, as well as his businesses in AI and brain-chip implants. SpaceX merged with Musk's AI startup xAI in a deal that valued the rocket company at $1 trillion and the developer of the Grok chatbot at $250 billion. Through its AI infrastructure platform, SpaceX inked deals for Anthropic to pay it $1.25 billion a month to use compute capacity from its Colossus and Colossus II data center clusters in Memphis, Tennessee through May 2029, the filing shows. The company disclosed that it had been named as a defendant in multiple lawsuits arising from its AI chatbot Grok's image-generation and editing features. INTENSIFYING SPACE RACE The race to commercialize space has intensified as private companies led by SpaceX and Blue Origin compete to slash launch costs, deploy satellite networks and secure government contracts. SpaceX's revenue is driven by Starlink, the world's largest satellite operator. The network of about 10,000 satellites offers broadband internet to consumers, governments and enterprise customers. But the company's expanding footprint across aviation, maritime and enterprise markets is helping turn capital-intensive space projects into a recurring revenue engine. SpaceX plans to earmark a significant portion of shares for retail investors and will host about 1,500 of them at an event in June, Reuters reported in April. The company is expected to list on the Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the ticker symbol "SPCX." Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan are the bookrunners.
Anthropic nears first quarterly profit, agrees to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion monthly for computing power
SAN FRANCISCO, May 20 : Anthropic is closing in on its first quarterly operating profit, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, as its sales eclipse the enormous costs to develop and deploy artificial intelligence. In recent fundraising materials, the San Francisco-based startup apprised investors that its June quarter sales could reach at least $10.9 billion, more than double its $4.8 billion in revenue for the just-ended March quarter, the person said. That will propel its second-quarter operating profit to an expected $559 million, said the person, on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal reported the figures earlier on Wednesday. Anthropic's financials underscore how demand for the lab's Claude AI has jumped, as software developers use the technology to handle their computer programming and some enterprises deploy its top-shelf model Mythos to unearth vulnerabilities in their code. The profit is rare for an AI industry that is grappling with the technology's high costs. One such expense, in the form of AI's voracious demand for computing power, was also disclosed on Wednesday in the IPO filing of SpaceX, Elon Musk's rival space and AI company. SpaceX said Anthropic had agreed to pay it $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, in deals for compute capacity that now include both of SpaceX's AI training data center clusters, Colossus and Colossus II. Either Anthropic or SpaceX can terminate the agreements with 90 days' notice, and fees would be reduced during the capacity ramp-up this month and next, the filing said. Musk posted on X that SpaceX was in discussions with other companies about "offering AI compute as a service at significant scale," which would be a boost as its AI segment remains in the red. SpaceX's AI segment lost about $2.5 billion from operations in the March quarter, on segment revenue of $818 million, its IPO filing showed.
SpaceX IPO filing brings Musk's interplanetary ambitions to Wall Street
May 20 : As Elon Musk's SpaceX races toward what could be the largest IPO in history, its filing delivers a rare mix of hard financial data and bold ambitions of exploring the frontiers of space. The filing's references to lunar missions and Mars settlement echo the popular space-age futuristic themes of "The Martian" and "Interstellar," while grounding those ambitions in the more familiar language of commercial space development. The company identified asteroid mining, in-orbit manufacturing and energy production on the moon and Mars as potential future opportunities, even though these ventures appear nowhere near feasibility. The language in the filing at times veered from conventional corporate disclosure to warnings of existential peril. "We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs," the company said, as it made a case for interplanetary travel. The part-balance-sheet, part-science-fiction nature of the paperwork is just one of several signs that show how unprecedented SpaceX's IPO truly is, in terms of size, ambition and business model. It is also consistent with Musk's public persona. The billionaire founder and CEO of the company has developed a reputation for being unconventional, which has earned him a loyal following but also unsettled investors at times. "Love him or hate him, Musk is definitely not boring, and his capacity to spin business narratives that seem outlandish at first hearing but become conventional wisdom later clearly adds to the allure of SpaceX," said Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. Projections deemed excessively rosy can backfire, as hard-nosed investors are often more interested in tangible details about a company's business than grandiose visions. SpaceX acknowledged the risk, warning that many of its initiatives depend on technologies that are either nascent or do not yet exist, and may never become commercially viable. Musk's solid track record at Tesla, however, has turned some of his hardened skeptics into believers, with "never bet against Elon" becoming a common saying on Wall Street. Since SpaceX has no obvious public market peer, the projections may be treated as a necessary part of the pitch rather than a flaw. "Very little captures public imagination like space travel, and I think investors will want that in their portfolios. SpaceX will be pitching itself as a generational company, one with a long-term vision for investors to hold onto for 20 or 30+ years," said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs. The IPO is expected to raise a record $75 billion at a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion, placing SpaceX among a handful of the world's elite kilocorn companies and sending ripples across nearly every corner of the equity markets. The rocket and satellite maker accelerated the timeline for its IPO earlier this month. It is now aiming to list its shares as early as June 12 on the Nasdaq, Reuters reported, citing sources.
SpaceX aims for 10,000 annual launches within five years, FAA says
ARLINGTON, Virginia, May 20 (Reuters) - SpaceX aims to reach 10,000 launches annually within five years, but government officials will need to see improved reliability before approving such an expansion, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said he met with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who told him about the company's ambitious goal. SpaceX conducted 170 launches in 2025 deploying about 2,500 satellites. Bedford said Shotwell told him "about the SpaceX five-year vision to get to 10,000 launches a year." In a Forbes video interview that aired this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted the company already has 10,000 satellites in orbit and eventually wants to launch 10,000 communications satellites per year, though he did not specify a timeframe. Bedford said after a forum that the FAA would need to see greater reliability before approving such a goal. "We need to see a lot more reliability," Bedford told reporters after the forum. The FAA licenses all commercial space launches and takes steps to streamline key hurdles. It imposes restrictions to ensure launches or space accidents do not interfere with passenger air traffic. Bedford said the purpose of the meeting with SpaceX "was to go through the constraints that we see and what can we do planning wise now to put ourselves in a position to accommodate that type of a stretch goal." SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bedford said he and Shotwell "had a very frank conversation, we're going to have to push ourselves, they're going to have to push their reliability." He noted that President Donald Trump wants to get to the moon before 2028. "To do that, we are going to have to work with industry to unlock that innovation," Bedford added. Bedford also said the FAA was not currently the limiting factor for space launches. "I can see a future where we will be the limiting factor, because we are not putting enough funding into our space team," he said. He said the FAA was reviewing data from prior launches to better understand risks. To address safety concerns, the FAA has to bar flights in some areas at the time of launch and "that can be very disruptive," Bedford said. In January, SpaceX said it wants to launch a constellation of 1 million satellites that will orbit Earth and harness the sun to power AI data centers. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Himani Sarkar)