Countdown to the Largest IPO in History: Can SpaceX’s Three-Day Closed-Door Meetings Win Over Wall Street?

TradingKey - Elon Musk's SpaceX is moving full steam ahead with its highly anticipated IPO process.

This week, the company hosted a series of closed-door analyst meetings over three consecutive days at its launch facilities in Texas and its large-scale data center in Tennessee, inviting top aerospace and technology analysts from Wall Street.

This move is a standard part of the IPO process, allowing the company to provide analysts with a comprehensive briefing on its business structure, financial outlook, and long-term strategy, paving the way for its formal listing in late June. If the IPO successfully raises $75 billion, it will set a record as the world's largest initial public offering, potentially bringing the company's valuation to $1.75 trillion.

The conference was held in three stages. Tuesday's session kicked off at "Starbase" in Boca Chica, Texas, where analysts attended day-long meetings and toured the launch facilities. On Wednesday, another group of analysts representing institutional investors such as large mutual funds and pension plans attended a dedicated briefing at Starbase. On Thursday, invited analysts moved to the Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee, for an in-depth look at SpaceX's "Macrohard" project. To ensure confidentiality, all attendees were required to surrender their electronic devices before entering.

Assessing the Reasonableness of SpaceX’s IPO Valuation

SpaceX is targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation for its IPO, with the core challenge being how to convince investors to buy in. As a standard part of the listing process, the IPO analyst briefing is a key window for the company to communicate its value to Wall Street; firms typically use this to provide a comprehensive overview of business layout, financial prospects, and long-term strategy to guide and shape investor expectations.

Currently, some invited analysts have received SpaceX's confidential registration documents, but the information disclosed is relatively limited. According to industry practice, IPO registration documents typically cover core content such as business descriptions, financial statements, risk factors, plans for the use of proceeds, and information on major shareholders.

Approximately two weeks after the conclusion of this analyst briefing, SpaceX also plans to host an independent "Modeling Day" event for some Wall Street analysts participating in the IPO underwriting. At that time, key data such as financial forecasts and business logic will be disclosed in detail to help analysts build pre-listing earnings projection models.

SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen needs to convince top Wall Street analysts and institutional investors to accept the nearly astronomical valuation of $1.75 trillion within the next two months.

This February, Elon Musk merged xAI into SpaceX, integrating rockets, Starlink satellites, the X social platform, and the Grok AI chatbot into a technology and aerospace conglomerate. This cross-sector integration has created a unique business model, but has also made the company's valuation complex and difficult to decipher.

To support this high valuation, some large institutional investors have moved beyond traditional benchmarking frameworks, no longer using established aerospace or telecommunications firms like Boeing ( BA ), AT&T ( T) and other established aerospace or telecommunications firms as benchmarks, instead benchmarking SpaceX against AI infrastructure companies like Palantir Technologies, GE Vernova ( GEV) and Vertiv ( VRT) and other AI infrastructure companies. This shift in valuation perspective not only reflects the overall evolution of the market's valuation logic for "technology-driven infrastructure companies," but also introduces more uncertainty into SpaceX's pricing process.

Based on preliminary financial data disclosures, SpaceX's financial prospects are a mixed bag. As of the end of 2025, SpaceX's total assets after the xAI merger reached $92 billion, total liabilities were $50.8 billion, and cash reserves exceeded $22.8 billion, doubling from $11.4 billion at the end of 2024.

Among its segments, the Starlink business shows strong growth momentum, with revenue rising from just $469 million in 2023 to $2 billion in 2024, and jumping significantly to $4.42 billion in 2025. However, due to heavy investment in AI infrastructure, SpaceX swung from a profit to a loss in 2025, with capital expenditures surging nearly fivefold over two years, raising market questions regarding the timing of its profitability and whether business growth can support such a high valuation.

For SpaceX, which spans the three major fields of aerospace, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence, establishing a reasonable valuation system is one of the current greatest challenges. While some investors' shift away from traditional horizontal comparisons toward benchmarking against AI-focused tech firms provides new logical support for SpaceX's high valuation, it also imbues the entire pricing process with a sense of speculation and uncertainty.

SpaceX Adopts Dual-Class Share Structure

SpaceX's capital structure design for its IPO maintains Musk's characteristically firm style, utilizing a dual-class share structure to keep control firmly in his hands.

According to the disclosed prospectus, the company will issue Class B shares with super-voting rights of 10 votes per share to Musk and the core management team, while publicly issued Class A shares will have only one vote per share; this ensures Musk retains his dominance over corporate decision-making post-IPO, preventing short-termist Wall Street investors from interfering with long-term strategies such as Mars colonization.

The filing also sets restrictive provisions that limit shareholder influence over board elections or specific legal actions, requiring related disputes to be settled via arbitration and restricting the litigation venue.

This layout brings to mind Musk's prior experience at Tesla—where his $56 billion CEO pay package from 2018 was voided by a Delaware court, leading him to criticize the state and relocate Tesla's headquarters to Texas. With SpaceX's equity design, he is evidently fortifying his defenses in advance against external attempts to undermine his long-term vision.

In addition, compensation details for the core team have been revealed: Musk received a base salary of just $54,080 last year, but with SpaceX's official listing, his equity holdings could yield billions or even tens of billions of dollars in potential gains; SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell’s total compensation reached $85.8 million, while CFO Bret Johnsen’s total compensation was $9.8 million.

SpaceX to allocate 30% of IPO shares to retail investors.

Musk is also planning to extend a major "olive branch" to retail investors in the SpaceX IPO, rewarding the individual investor base that once propelled Tesla's stock price to levels far exceeding traditional automaker valuations.

According to sources familiar with the matter, SpaceX intends to reserve approximately 30% of the shares in this IPO for retail investors, a proportion that is extremely rare in mega-IPO cases and breaks the industry norm of 5%-10% for retail allocations.

To further strengthen ties with retail investors, SpaceX also plans to invite 1,500 retail investors to the Starbase facility in Texas for an on-site visit after the roadshow kicks off during the week of June 8, allowing them to gain a first-hand understanding of the company's aerospace technology layout and R&D progress.

At the same time, the retail subscription channel for this IPO will be expanded to international markets, allowing individual investors in the UK, the EU, Australia, Canada, Japan, and South Korea to participate, a move that will significantly broaden SpaceX's geographic investor coverage.

However, the specific deal structure and the precise retail allocation ratio for this IPO have not yet been finalized, and relevant details are expected to be announced just before the official launch. Regarding underwriting, Morgan Stanley ( MS ), Bank of America ( BAC ), Citigroup ( C ), JPMorgan Chase ( JPM) and Goldman Sachs ( GS) are leading the offering as lead underwriters, while another 16 banks will handle auxiliary underwriting tasks in specific segments such as institutional client outreach, retail channel development, and international market distribution.