NEW YORK, June 2, 2026, 04:01 (EDT)
- SpaceX set aside 5% of the planned IPO shares for certain employees and others picked by company executives.
- The company aims for a June roadshow and may look to raise about $75 billion at a valuation near $1.75 trillion.
- Anthropic’s IPO filing is speeding up the race for public AI investment.
SpaceX is setting aside 5% of its IPO shares for certain employees and others picked by top management, according to a filing on Monday. Those shares won’t be hit by the typical IPO lock-up restrictions. An IPO is a company’s debut sale of shares to public investors, and a lock-up is when insiders are barred from selling.
SpaceX is wrapping up the carve-out ahead of its investor roadshow, a pre-pricing tour for fund managers that Reuters says is set for June 4. The company is looking to sell shares as soon as June 11 and list on Nasdaq a day later with the ticker SPCX, according to people familiar with the plans.
The 5% line matters here. If SpaceX gets the $75 billion it’s after, the deal would top Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO and become the world’s biggest, according to a Reuters review of the largest offerings.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. filed its S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR system on May 20. The S-1 details the company’s business, risks, financials, and how shares are structured for the planned IPO.
SpaceX isn’t sticking to the typical 180-day lock-up that’s common in U.S. IPOs. Instead, the company is using a phased release based in part on performance and earnings periods. “It is probably better for the market that there will not be one big lock-up cliff,” said Ali Perry, a Mayer Brown attorney focused on public offerings. Reuters
Public buyers won’t have much say, according to the filing. SpaceX plans a dual-class setup, so some shares will hold more votes. Elon Musk will keep 85.1% of the voting power. The filing also showed that Starlink was the only profitable division last quarter, with the AI unit posting a $2.47 billion loss on $818 million in revenue.
Anthropic is set to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion each month through May 2029 for AI compute capacity from SpaceX’s Colossus and Colossus II data centers. Both companies have a 90-day termination option. That’s according to .
Anthropic has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, beating OpenAI to the starting line and raising the competitive stakes on Monday. Kat Liu, vice president at IPO research shop IPOX, said Anthropic’s quick move after SpaceX could help it “capitalize on strong investor interest” while the window is open. Reuters
Investors are starting to tie the three deals together. Reuters says OpenAI is getting ready to file for a U.S. IPO behind closed doors. SpaceX, after buying xAI in February, has added Musk’s Grok chatbot to its main rocket and satellite business.
Big funds are getting ready as well. John Flood, managing director at Goldman Sachs, said investors are “increasingly focused” on the effects of large IPOs. Rule changes could mean big new listings join benchmark indexes faster, forcing passive funds to buy in. Reuters
Some in the market are treating SpaceX more as a trade than a steady hold. “I’ll probably trade SpaceX but I don’t know that I’d be an investor,” Dennis Dick, a proprietary trader at Triple D Trading, told Reuters. Reuters
But the risks stand out. A Reuters analysis shows most of the biggest IPOs in recent years trailed the S&P 500. University of Florida’s Jay Ritter said firms with very high price-to-sales ratios tend to have the worst odds; for SpaceX, he said, “stuff could go wrong.” Reuters
The next thing to watch is if SpaceX files a new price range ahead of the roadshow. Right now, this listing looks like it will test what the market is willing to pay for rockets, satellite internet, AI hardware and Musk’s hold over the company in a single stock.
