• February–May: From xAI merger to S-1 reveal
• Risk factors emerge: Grok scandals, gas turbines, and Musk himself
• Late May: Scrutiny of the AI strategy and market math
• Governance, antitrust, and the broader Musk contradiction
• Vision vs. reality: Extraterrestrial economy and public reaction

SpaceX Files S-1 for Initial Public Offering SpaceX’s long-anticipated IPO filing pulls Wall Street into an experiment that is part rocket company, part AI supercomputer gambit, and part science-fiction manifesto — all while revealing a business that is losing billions today to chase trillions tomorrow.

§February–May: From xAI merger to S-1 reveal

In February, Elon Musk merged his AI startup xAI — which had already absorbed social network X — into SpaceX in a $1.25 trillion all‑stock deal, setting the stage for a combined listing later in the year. The move brought xAI’s heavy losses into SpaceX’s books: xAI lost $6.4 billion on $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, with plans to scale its Grok model to “multiple trillions of parameters,” implying even higher future compute spending.

On May 20, SpaceX publicly filed its S‑1, opening its finances for the first time. The company disclosed 2025 revenue of $18.67 billion but a net loss of $4.94 billion, largely driven by AI investment, and touted a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion — $26.5 trillion of it from AI. An Axios analysis noted that SpaceX is “wildly unprofitable,” with its hoped‑for $1.75 trillion valuation depending heavily on faith in future growth rather than current earnings.

Business Insider described parts of the S‑1 as reading like a “sci‑fi manifesto,” full of concepts such as orbital AI compute, lunar mass drivers, and references to future “multi‑trillion‑dollar economic opportunities” in off‑world industries. A companion piece highlighted the most radical plank: a plan to launch “AI compute satellites” into orbit by 2028, turning space‑based solar power into an AI infrastructure business.

§Risk factors emerge: Grok scandals, gas turbines, and Musk himself

Within the same filing window, reporters mined SpaceX’s risk disclosures. Business Insider detailed how SpaceX warns investors that Grok’s NSFW image tools could generate “potentially explicit content” and “nonconsensual or exploitative imagery,” noting multiple lawsuits and investigations tied to sexualized deepfakes, including minors.

TechCrunch focused on xAI’s environmental and legal exposure: the company is being sued by the NAACP for operating dozens of unpermitted gas turbines at a Tennessee data center, even as SpaceX disclosed plans to buy $2.8 billion more turbines over three years. Another article argued that Musk’s shift toward fossil‑fueled data centers and space‑based solar suggests he has “given up on solar power (on Earth),” despite Tesla’s original mission to build a “solar electric economy.”

The Verge underscored how intertwined Musk’s empire has become. SpaceX calls itself “highly dependent” on Musk while also buying $131 million in Tesla Cybertrucks and nearly $700 million in Megapacks, and listing his other ventures as potential competitors — making Musk himself a central risk factor.

§Late May: Scrutiny of the AI strategy and market math

As analysts digested the numbers, Ars Technica noted that SpaceX now frames rockets and Starlink as supporting a far larger AI play through its SpaceXAI division, which controls Grok and claims “the largest actionable total addressable market in human history.” Yet Grok is struggling: only about 0.174% of surveyed US AI users pay for it, compared with over 6% for ChatGPT.

Axios dissected the $28.5 trillion TAM and quoted economist Ryan Cummings’ verdict — “in one word, it’s farcical” — while acknowledging that such estimates are inherently speculative and that some past tech TAMs have proved both over‑ and under‑stated. TechCrunch’s Equity team likewise said the S‑1’s math “requires a little faith,” pointing to 36 pages of risk factors and a Mars‑colony‑linked pay package meant to justify one of the largest IPOs in US history.

§Governance, antitrust, and the broader Musk contradiction

Beyond finance, The Next Web reported that xAI’s general counsel recently warned staff to limit contact with employees at AI‑coding startup Cursor, which SpaceX has an option to acquire for $60 billion, to avoid “gun‑jumping” antitrust violations as regulators scrutinize the historic IPO and potential acquisition.

A separate TNW analysis argued that the S‑1 crystallizes Musk’s “clean energy contradiction”: Tesla’s master plans call for eliminating fossil fuels, yet xAI is locking in gas‑powered data centers while SpaceX’s vision of clean energy is now mostly in orbit, with little role for Tesla’s terrestrial solar business.

§Vision vs. reality: Extraterrestrial economy and public reaction

SpaceX’s own prospectus asks investors to look past near‑term losses toward an extraterrestrial economy: point‑to‑point hypersonic travel on Earth, space tourism, regular passenger and cargo transport to the Moon and Mars, energy production for off‑world settlements, and even asteroid mining. Many of these ideas are explicitly labeled “unproven,” yet excluded from the formal TAM because their timing is too uncertain.

On social media, Musk has amplified praise for the company’s achievements and ambitions. After a commentator lauded SpaceX as “such a bad ass company” based on its string of space firsts in the IPO filing, Musk replied: “The SpaceX team is incredible!” Celebrating a recent Starship V3 test, he called it “an epic first Starship V3 launch & landing” and told employees, “You scored a goal for humanity.”

Whether public markets will share Musk’s enthusiasm for a loss‑making, AI‑heavy, off‑world energy strategy will become clear when SpaceX, trading under ticker SPCX, is expected to debut in the coming weeks.

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