Elon Musk reportedly hopes that astrology will ensure the success of SpaceX’s planned initial public offering in June, when, unusually, Jupiter and Venus will align – supposedly unleashing a potent mixture of love, wealth and expansion.
The signs are that this will be a record-breaking IPO. Musk hopes to raise an unprecedented $50bn by selling shares to the public, dwarfing the record $29bn that Saudi Aramco pocketed from its IPO in 2019. The oil giant was valued at a record-breaking $1.7tn; SpaceX is forecast to be worth $1.5tn, though there is still time for its valuation to rocket into first place.
A successful flotation will also break venture capital records. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund invested early in SpaceX, taking a $20m stake in 2008 as the company’s first institutional backer. Subsequent investments have taken its total backing to $671m – a stake valued in the middle of last year at more than $18bn, when SpaceX’s total valuation was estimated at $400bn. It could be worth four times that in the IPO.
Such a huge gain could make Founders Fund, which also backed companies including Facebook, Palantir, Airbnb, Spotify and Stripe, the best-performing capital venture firm ever.
Musk deserves much credit for building SpaceX from a personal vision, when no other entrepreneur was serious about the space business. It almost didn’t survive, avoiding bankruptcy more than once only after Musk had gambled everything he had.
This gets less fanfare in Silicon Valley, but is also a great example of how the private sector can help the government get more bang for taxpayer bucks. If only Musk had tried to replicate this during his disastrous time wielding the axe on federal jobs and spending while running America’s department of government efficiency (Doge).
Photograph by Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / AFP via Getty Images
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