SpaceX to List via an IPO as Musk’s Challenge Shapes the World’s First “Trillion-Dollar Billionaire” Muskonomy Ecosystem

SpaceX submits IPO prospectus in May 2026, aiming for a valuation of up to $2 trillion, potentially rewriting the record for the largest IPO in history.
(Background: Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon writes in the New York Times: AI doomsday panic is exaggerated, white-collar employment impact is greatest but will give rise to new jobs)
(Additional context: Charging $25k a day, two former fund managers conquer Wall Street with AI financial training)

Table of Contents

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• Muskonomy: An individual's ecosystem, everyone's risk
• Astronomical salaries, astronomical KPIs
• The most expensive IPO in history, yet in Q1 it’s in loss
• What the market is pricing in is a belief

Last week, on May 20, SpaceX filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC, planning to list on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12, raising $75 to $80 billion, with a valuation reaching $1.5 to $2 trillion. If successful, this will be the largest IPO in human history.

Muskonomy: An individual's ecosystem, everyone's risk

Meanwhile, the term “Muskonomy” is gaining increasing discussion. It is a portmanteau coined by Silicon Valley observers to describe Elon Musk’s empire. It means: his control over multiple companies has become deeply intertwined, forming a self-sufficient small economy, with SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, The Boring Company, Neuralink, all serving as both customers and suppliers to each other.

In SpaceX’s IPO prospectus, this structure is concretely quantified.

SpaceX purchased $131 million worth of Cybertrucks and $506 million worth of Megapack energy storage devices from Tesla; xAI bought $731 million worth of computing resources from Tesla. Money flows within Musk’s empire, with each company’s shareholders bearing the consequences of empire-wide decisions, yet having almost no influence over the decision-making process.

For potential retail investors, this means: you are not just buying an aerospace company; you are also accepting the risk that Musk might schedule SpaceX’s resources for xAI, Tesla, or other related companies.

The prospectus lists all of this under “Risk Factors,” effectively informing you: we know this is a problem, but this is how we operate.

Astronomical salaries, astronomical KPIs

In January 2026, SpaceX’s board approved a compensation plan: Musk will receive 1 billion Class B shares, triggered if: a permanent settlement is established on Mars with a population of at least 1 million, and the company’s market cap reaches $7.5 trillion.

In March 2026, the board approved a second plan: 302.1 million shares, with conditions including extraterrestrial data center computing power reaching 100 petawatts, and the completion of 12 market cap milestones, with an ultimate target valuation of $6.6 trillion. Converting 100 petawatts of computing power into real-world scale is roughly equivalent to simultaneously operating 100k 1GW nuclear power plants.

Compared to Musk’s 2025 annual base salary of $54k, these plans are almost laughable or humbling. Low base salary, high equity, all betting on “colonizing Mars” or “extraterrestrial computing centers,” conditions that are almost impossible to verify in the foreseeable future.

The most expensive IPO in history, yet in Q1 it’s in loss

In Q1 2026, SpaceX’s financials show: revenue of $25k, operating loss of $100k, adjusted EBITDA of $54k. EBITDA is positive, but under generally accepted accounting principles, the company is still in a loss position.

Musk owns 12.3% of Class A shares and 93.6% of Class B shares, with each B share having 10 votes, giving him an effective voting control of 85%. Google, Meta, and Snap have used dual-class share structures before, but SpaceX’s version is more extreme: 85% voting power means Musk has near-absolute veto power over any shareholder resolution. You vote, he decides; you bear the risk, he controls the direction.

What the market is pricing in is a belief

If SpaceX completes its IPO at a $2 trillion valuation, it will surpass Saudi Aramco to become the largest public offering in history. This itself indicates a direction of an era: capital markets are willing to price in “unrealized cosmic ambitions,” as long as the master of those ambitions is Elon Musk.

The question isn’t whether SpaceX has the technical strength—Falcon 9’s reusable achievements and Starlink’s commercial scale are real. The issue is: the risk section of the prospectus explicitly states “conflict of interest,” written so clearly it almost sounds like a warning. Are you willing to take a gamble?