The SpaceX IPO is a referendum on Elon Musk and his plan to colonize Mars
In today’s CEO Daily: Unpacking Space X’s IPO prospectus. The big leadership story: Inside Microsoft’s plan to make up the ground it’s lost in the AI race. The markets: Mixed globally as investors digest Nvidia’s latest earnings. Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. Good morning. How much faith do you put in Elon Musk? If you can’t wait to get a piece of Space X after studying its prospectus, the answer is, a lot. Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company filed its S-1 yesterday, giving us a detailed look at the financials behind what’s expected to be the biggest initial public offering in history. In some ways, this is the stuff of speculative fiction: a bold plea for capital to conquer new worlds, a dream for one man to net the largest pay package ever handed out on earth if he manages to establish a permanent colony of at least 1 million people on Mars. (See page 236.) Though he might try, they can’t all be named Musk. And before SpaceX can plant a flag on other planets, it may need to address some red flags here at home. Among them: Revenue. SpaceX expects to raise up to $75–80 billion at a valuation of $1.5 trillion or more. Saudi Aramco raised $29.4 billion at roughly the same valuation in 2019. The difference is that it made a profit of $21.3 billion on $71 billion in revenue in the quarter prior to filing while SpaceX lost $1.3 billion on $4.7 billion in revenue last quarter. And the source of that revenue is mixed, with the Starlink satellite business heavily subsidizing Musk’s rockets and xAI business. Leadership. To see how Elon Musk runs a public company, look at his track record at Tesla. He transformed it from a struggling startup to a successful global EV giant. But he’s done a lot to squander that lead: the SEC fights, the social media fights, the lawsuits, the public insults, the tendency todiss his own colleagues, the threats to walk away if he didn’t get that other trillion-dollar pay package. (Sadly, no cage fight