EspaceX not only rewrote the aerospace and defense playbook, it also contributed to the birth of a new space economy.
NOW That of Elon Musk The company is tackling another type of project: going public.
“I wasn’t sure if we would take the company public,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, told CNBC in an exclusive interview, just before the company began its investor roadshow. “Actually, now is a good time.”
Speaking from a catwalk overlooking the Starship factory at SpaceX’s expanding headquarters in the industrial city of Starbase, TexasShotwell said the rocket maker needed to go private in order to focus on its long-term goals rather than its quarterly financial results.
“Today, across SpaceX’s various businesses, the building blocks of a publicly traded company are now in place,” she said. Eight years ago, Shotwell said an IPO probably wouldn’t happen until SpaceX was flying regular missions to Mars.
Shotwell is SpaceX’s top executive under Musk, the founder, CEO, chief technology officer and chairman of the board, and the person whose stated goal is to make life multiplanetary. Musk focuses on high-level strategy and deepens technical development of the future.
Running the business on Earth is the job of those around him, namely Shotwell. One of the first employees hired in 2002, SpaceX’s first year, Shotwell oversees the day-to-day operations of a full-time workforce of 22,000. She has managed everything from rocket development to the creation of Starlink and, more recently, the integration of xAI. She also speaks with customers, regulators and, now, public investors.
“Elon jokes that we do the impossible, but we do it late,” said Shotwell, who is also one of eight members of the company’s board of directors. “Look at our track record, look at our history. We’re doing really hard things. We’re taking them to the product level. In fact, xAI is definitely starting to be product-driven.”
Designing cutting-edge technology to tackle difficult business cases that others have deemed unviable, and then bringing them to market, is SpaceX’s strategy.
With rockets, the company undercut competitors for launch contracts, fielded reusable boosters, and dramatically reduced the cost of flights to space. Manufacturing Star link the job was to send satellites into low Earth orbit and do it economically. Now, with AI infrastructure, SpaceX aims to create a vertically integrated technology stack spanning space and encompassing everything from chips to AI applications.
With a folder $75 billion IPOSpaceX boasts a stratospheric valuation of nearly $1.77 trillion. At this market cap, SpaceX would debut as the seventh most valuable company in the United States, surpassing Meta and Musk’s other public company, Tesla. It would also be worth more than the entire S&P 500 aerospace and defense group.
Wall Street skeptics question the math. The valuation suggests an estimated revenue multiple of 40 for 2026 and an adjusted earnings multiple of 175.
SpaceX wants to become the ultimate product-driven infrastructure company, a modern railway for the new industrial revolution. But unlike 19th-century Union Pacific, SpaceX is also seeking ownership of the supply chain and at least some of the factories along the route.
Musk has sold investors hard things in the past. During Tesla’s 16 years as a public company, it grew the market capitalization on the promise of humanoid robots and self-driving cars.
“Over the last few years, we felt a lot of pressure from everyday Americans and our friends who wanted to buy stocks, and there was just no way for those people to get in,” Shotwell said.
Convergence of space and AI Shotwell emphasized that SpaceX’s horizons are very long term.
“I don’t want to focus on quarterly results,” she said. “I’m not saying we’re not going to do the right thing by our investors, but what those who invest in SpaceX need to know is that what we’re doing is very futuristic.”
SpaceX’s most obvious gap is in launching rockets. Its Falcon fleet currently dominates this market, accounting for about 80% of the world’s mass put into orbit since 2023. Last year, SpaceX launched 165 orbital missions, 157 of which used repurposed rocket boosters. The cost of sending cargo to low Earth orbit has fallen by more than 90%, from the Space Shuttle to the Falcon 9.
Most of these launches have been carried out by SpaceX for SpaceX, as the company rapidly deploys its Starlink broadband constellation. With more than 10 million subscribers accessing the Internet through a constellation of approximately 9,600 satellites and growing, Starlink is the company’s leader. profit engine. The connectivity segment also includes the nascent direct-to-cell communications business Starlink Mobile and Starshield, which military experts say are reshaping warfare.
Connectivity boasts high margins and generates cash for heavy investments in other parts of the business. This is particularly important for the AI segment, which is primarily xAI after SpaceX acquired that part of Musk’s empire earlier this year. SpaceX said capital spending for AI was $12.7 billion in 2025 and $7.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026.
With xAI comes the large language model Grok and X, formerly known as Twitter. And to attract developers, the company struck a deal with AI coding newcomer Cursor, with a purchase option the company for $60 billion in stock.
Then there is the Terafab computing and semiconductor manufacturing megaproject that it is jointly developing with Tesla. Intel recently signed as a partner and supplier. The cost of Terafab is expected to ultimately run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
And in and around Memphis, Tennessee, SpaceX owns the Colossus data centers. SpaceX recently struck multibillion-dollar deals, first with Anthropic and then with Googleto provide them with unused computing capacity. The monthly payments, while they exist, will help SpaceX offset its heavy capital expenditures.
“I see us not only building the technology stack needed for AI and operating the X platform, but we are also data center builders, both here on Earth and in space,” Shotwell said. “I think we will continue to provide this capacity to others. We will never sell the compute capacity that we actually need, which is why we wanted these contracts to be short-term if necessary.” Cloud infrastructure is a highly competitive business. SpaceX is betting it will go into orbit, solving a number of major terrestrial problems such as electricity scarcity, land and water conservation and community pushback.
Musk said this would happen in the next two to three years. Other space entrepreneurs like Jeff BezosWill Marshall of Planet Labs and Dylan Taylor of Voyager Technologies recently said it would take longer. There are technological challenges and manufacturing hurdles, and introductory prices still need to come down significantly.
However, SpaceX prospectus says that as early as 2028, it will begin deploying AI computing satellites. Reports surfaced this week that the first demonstrations could be put into orbit before the end of 2027.
“The AI satellites are, to some extent, simpler than the next-generation Starlink V3 satellites,” Shotwell said. “I’m not saying it’s child’s play, but I’m not worried about the development of AI satellites.”
The supply chain, she acknowledges, is a challenge, whether it’s investing in solar panels or making enough chips.
“I don’t think chipmakers are looking at scaling in the same way we are,” Shotwell said. “Or they don’t believe us.”
Starship is the launchpad for growthMuch of SpaceX’s future depends on Starship. It is one of two vehicles contracted by NASA to provide the human lunar landing systems for the Artemis program. It’s also the system that could one day transport goods and people to Mars.
Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation spacecraft, larger than the Statue of Liberty and more powerful than any other rocket built. Unlike the workhorse Falcon 9, Starship is designed to be fully reusable, the holy grail of space launch.
SpaceX recently completed its 12th test flightlaunching its new version of Starship, known as V3, in a largely successful mission. SpaceX conducts each test aggressively, pushing its vehicles to their limits because executives believe that far more data can be gleaned from failures than from successes, a strategy sometimes referred to as “productive failure.”
When Starship comes online, it will exponentially increase mass in orbit while reducing launch costs, an equation necessary to make data centers in space possible. Starship is expected to deliver a 95% drop in launch costs compared to Falcon 9.
Walking through the factory, Shotwell pointed out Starships and Super Heavy boosters in various stages of production. Currently, SpaceX produces one fully assembled spacecraft per month. Shotwell wants to be able to produce two ships per week.
She expects Flight 13 to take place in about a month, followed by regular flights every month. Much remains to be done, however, and much of that timeline depends on regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Orbital flights are expected by the end of this year.
“We did some Raptor lighting in the space, so we feel pretty comfortable,” Shotwell said. “But we want another suborbital shot on the next flight, and then I hope we’ll attempt at least one orbital shot on Flight 14.”
Starship has cost $15 billion so far, money spent on technical development, ramping up the production line, construction costs for Starbase and the launch pad as well as gas pipelines and natural gas wells. SpaceX develops propellant in-house.
Shotwell said SpaceX’s massive investments in new technologies allow it to take this “next level” cycle with confidence.
“If I were to go back to the difficult days of Falcon 9 and Dragon, and we were to talk about capital investments for that program versus what we’re doing in AI, it would be a totally mind-blowing situation,” she said.
The expanding Musk universeDuring its first 23 years of existence, SpaceX made very few deals. That started to change last year when SpaceX agreed acquire Echostar 65 megahertz of spectrum for $17 billion to help power Starlink Mobile. Next comes the xAI deal, valued at $250 billion, and the Cursor deal, which has a potential price tag of $60 billion.
“It’s an exciting new world for us,” Shotwell said. “I think mergers and acquisitions are a thing of the future, especially when you consider the world of AI.”
In an amended IPO filing, SpaceX said it may issue “significant shares” to fund future transactions. This has sparked more speculation that a merger between SpaceX and Tesla could possibly be on the cards.
Shotwell joked that such a deal “might make Elon’s life a little easier.”
“There is no doubt that there are synergies between Tesla and SpaceX for our future,” she said. “There’s a convergence of what we’re all trying to accomplish going forward, but right now I’m focused on keeping the lights on here, keeping the rockets in production, flying rockets, flying people, getting to the International Space Station and, critically, providing broadband to people who don’t have access to it.”
Tesla owns a stake in SpaceX. Starlink mini is a critical component of Tesla’s emerging Cybercab fleet. Over the years, Tesla has shared its manufacturing innovations with SpaceX. And now the two are collaborating on Téraphab. SpaceX even spent $131 million on Cybertrucks in 2025.
Discussions about mergers have been fueled in part by SpaceX’s unconventional, and according to some experts, unprecedented governance structure. Musk has supermajority voting rights, with control of more than 80%. And with power over the board, he even has final approval regarding his own removal.
Shotwell argued that this was the best way to govern because no one else can run the business.
“The company obviously wouldn’t collapse without Elon, but it wouldn’t be the same by any means,” she said. “It is extremely important that he is the CEO and that we have the governance structure that we have defined.”
The ultimate goal, for Musk, remains Mars.
Elon Musk’s compensation package involves 1 billion shares based on performance when certain milestones are met, including establishing a permanent human colony of at least 1 million humans on Mars.
“I’m sure there are at least that many people who want to go,” Shotwell said.
In the meantime, SpaceX and its new public investors will focus on the IPO that will mark its own human history.
WATCH: SpaceX’s IPO is emblematic of the space economy
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that SpaceX is reportedly considering launching demonstrations of AI computing satellites by the end of 2027. An earlier version of this story misstated the year.
