Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO: the capitalist space revolution begins

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When I began researching, writing, and publishing on the subject of space capitalism several years ago, many people laughed. They asked why I had chosen such a niche topic and suggested that it sounded more like science fiction than reality.

Well, space capitalism is now a reality. Within a few hours, we will witness what is expected to be the largest IPO in history: Elon Musk’s company SpaceX aims to raise $75 billion. As a result, Musk is set to become the first trillionaire in history. Astute observers, including American politician and space enthusiast Ted Cruz, predicted more than a decade ago that the world’s first trillionaire would emerge from the space industry.

Let me begin with a disclosure. No question has been asked of me more often in recent days than whether I plan to buy SpaceX shares myself. The answer is no. First, because I write about the company and do not want to create any appearance of bias or conflict of interest. Second, because I am fundamentally a passive investor who allocates virtually all of his stock-market investments to globally diversified ETFs.

The most remarkable company of the past 50 years

At the same time, I believe that SpaceX is the greatest company founded in the past fifty years, and that Elon Musk is a visionary entrepreneur whose significance can be compared only to figures such as Thomas Edison or Henry Ford.

In the space industry, SpaceX occupies a unique position. According to the IPO-prospectus, since 2023 the company has transported more than 80 percent of all mass sent into orbit worldwide each year, while maintaining a Falcon 9 mission success rate exceeding 99 percent. One could make an additional comparison: if SpaceX were a country, it would have ranked first by a wide margin in successful rocket launches in 2024, 2025, and so far in 2026, ahead of China. Of the approximately 15,000 active satellites currently in orbit, around 10,000 are Starlink satellites.

In 2025, SpaceX conducted twenty times as many launches as Europe’s entire state-organized space program. More than a decade ago, the company developed the world’s first truly reusable orbital rocket, something no government space agency has yet achieved. Compared with the Space Shuttle, Musk’s company has reduced launch costs by roughly 95 percent.

From 1957 until today, all governments combined have launched 15,062 satellites into space. Elon Musk, by contrast, has placed 14,844 satellites into orbit within just a few years.

Musk’s visions

Yet this is only the beginning. Musk is pursuing ambitious projects, including the construction of data centers in space. Such orbital data centers could operate almost continuously on solar power while addressing some of the energy and land-use constraints faced by terrestrial facilities.

His truly grand objective, however, is the colonization of Mars. By settling humanity’s neighboring planet, Musk hopes to transform humanity into a multi-planetary species. His stated goal is to establish a population of one million people on Mars. Achieving this would require approximately 1,000 Starships carrying 100 settlers each during every launch window, which occurs roughly every 26 months.

Regarding the company’s long-term outlook, the prospectus states that SpaceX believes its current space activities could catalyze transformative breakthroughs, reshape terrestrial industries, and ultimately create entirely new trillion-dollar markets on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

This is where many critics become skeptical. They fear that profits generated by businesses such as Starlink could be consumed by Mars-related projects that generate little or no financial return. The prospectus remains vague on this point. For example, it suggests that establishing a permanent presence on the Moon could enable annual growth in AI computing capacity on a terawatt scale, support deeper space exploration and industrialization, and serve as a stepping stone toward a civilization on Mars.

Musk’s goal: turning humanity into an interplanetary species

Musk also reiterates a theme he has emphasized for years: that humanity’s dependence on a single planet represents a major vulnerability and exposes civilization to existential risks. According to the IPO-prospectus, one of the company’s motivations is to ensure that humanity does not ultimately suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs.

The prospectus further describes SpaceX’s mission as developing the technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary, deepen humanity’s understanding of the universe, and extend conscious life beyond Earth.

Given these ambitions, and considering that SpaceX is currently reporting losses partly because of its approximately $15 billion investment in Starship while also indicating that it does not intend to pay dividends in the foreseeable future, critics such as University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter argue that even if Starlink were eventually to generate tens of billions of dollars in annual profits, those funds might be spent on transporting people to Mars rather than being distributed to shareholders.

IPO prospectus: opportunities described too vaguely

Only in the later sections of the prospectus are potential future business areas mentioned, including space tourism, orbital manufacturing, passenger and cargo transportation to the Moon and Mars, and energy production beyond Earth. Asteroid mining is also mentioned, but only briefly.

What is absent, however, are the enormous opportunities associated with real estate. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty clearly prohibits nations from claiming ownership of celestial bodies or land on those bodies. Whether this prohibition also applies to private companies remains a matter of legal debate. Some space-law scholars argue that the treaty bans national sovereignty beyond Earth but does not necessarily prohibit private ownership. Their interpretation is based on the legal doctrine expressio unius est exclusio alterius: the explicit inclusion of one category implies the exclusion of others.

Legal uncertainties: who owns asteroids?

Admittedly, there is legal uncertainty here. But where there is uncertainty, there is also opportunity. Should SpaceX eventually acquire ownership rights to asteroids or land on the Moon or Mars, it could become the greatest real-estate story in history, potentially even creating space-based REITs that could be listed on stock exchanges. These opportunities may ultimately represent the company’s most significant long-term commercial prospects.

Because the primary purpose of an IPO-prospectus is to minimize legal liability through extensive discussion of risks rather than to highlight speculative opportunities, these possibilities receive little attention. I suspect the company’s legal advisers recommended avoiding anything that might appear overly science-fiction-like to investors.

Ironically, this restraint may produce the opposite effect. Because the potentially enormous commercial opportunities in areas such as space tourism and asteroid mining are merely mentioned rather than fully explained, and because real-estate opportunities are not discussed at all, readers unfamiliar with the subject may conclude that SpaceX intends to spend vast sums pursuing idealistic science-fiction dreams.

That interpretation is misguided. If there is one thing that can be said with confidence about Elon Musk, it is this: wherever there is an opportunity to create value and generate profits, he will pursue it.

Dr Dr Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist and the author of 31 books, which have been published in 35 languages. His book “New Space Capitalism” has just been released.