Since SpaceX set its IPO price at $135 per share and announced a June 12 Nasdaq debut, the financial media has been largely cheerleading. Time to slow down and read the fine print.

The Basic Numbers — And Why They're Insane

SpaceX plans to sell 555.6 million shares, raising $74.4 billion at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion, according to Engadget and CNBC. Underwriters can purchase an additional 83.33 million shares, pushing the raise to roughly $85.6 billion total.

Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital, told The New York Times that $74.4 billion would be "more than every U.S. IPO combined in the last two years."

SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in sales last year, according to CNBC. The company is being valued at roughly 95 times revenue. Meta — which topped $200 billion in revenue — sits at a lower revenue multiple. Tesla recorded nearly $95 billion in sales. SpaceX, valued ahead of both on the Nasdaq, isn't close on revenue.

The Governance Problem Wall Street Is Pretending Doesn't Exist

Elon Musk will hold over 82% voting control after the offering, according to SpaceX's own prospectus filing. This isn't a dual-class share structure where insiders have 10 votes to your 1. This is Musk controlling more than four-fifths of the vote outright.

The prospectus actually says — and this is a direct quote — "We believe that Mr. Musk's substantial ownership interest in us provides him with an economic incentive to assist us to be successful." That's the company arguing its own CEO's self-interest is an investor protection. In a standard governance framework, that argument wouldn't fly.

Then there's the lock-up clause. Musk cannot sell for 366 days after the IPO. After that, per the filing, he "will not be subject to any obligation to maintain his ownership interest in us and may elect at any time thereafter to sell all or a substantial portion" of his stake. That's a very specific warning buried in the risk factors that retail investors need to read carefully.

ARK's Bull Case vs. Reality

Brett Winton, chief futurist at ARK Invest, went on CNBC's Squawk Box and argued that Starlink alone justifies a valuation "approaching $2 trillion." ARK's venture fund has SpaceX as its largest single holding at 11.4% of assets, so Winton has every reason to talk the stock up. That conflict of interest got zero airtime.

Winton's thesis: Starlink currently generates about $13 billion in annual revenue and operates a constellation delivering roughly 500 terabits per second of bandwidth. Each future Starship launch can add 60 terabits per second of capacity. He projects "hundreds of billions of dollars" in Starlink revenue down the line.

The Musk Trillionaire Story Is a Distraction

CNBC led with Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire. His SpaceX stake is worth $866.5 billion on paper, plus a $355 billion Tesla stake, plus options that could add $100 billion more.

That's a fun headline. It's also completely irrelevant to whether this is a good investment for anyone else. The financial press treating Musk's paper wealth as a feature — rather than a reminder of how concentrated the power structure here is — tells you something about the coverage environment.

The Side Story Traders Are Playing Right Now

Can't get SpaceX shares at IPO? Traders are piling into EchoStar (SATS), a Nasdaq-listed networking company that owns an estimated 3% of SpaceX stock, acquired through a wireless spectrum deal in September. According to CNBC, EchoStar options volume on Wednesday ran more than three times the daily average, with over 60,000 contracts traded for nearly $50 million in premium. The stock is up 650% over the past year but has pulled back 11% recently. Caveat emptor.

What the Prospectus Reveals That Barely Got Coverage

Buried in the IPO filing: Anthropic will pay the combined SpaceX-xAI entity $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for use of xAI's data centers, according to Engadget. That's $15 billion a year flowing in from one AI customer — a revenue stream that exists because of Musk's web of interconnected companies, not because SpaceX earned it through competitive market dynamics.

Also in the filing: X (formerly Twitter) saw a $595 million decrease in ad revenue in 2024 due to advertiser departures. SpaceX and X are separate companies, but Musk runs both. The same man controlling 82% of your votes also runs a social media platform bleeding ad revenue. That's a material governance risk.

The BBC Makes a Fair Point

According to BBC News, the prospectus contains sci-fi language about humans avoiding "the same fate as dinosaurs" and building an "age of abundance" in space. BBC's Lucy Hooker notes there is "plenty of scepticism about the feasibility" of asteroid mining, Mars colonization, and orbital data centers. The BBC coverage is notably more skeptical than U.S. financial media, which has largely treated the prospectus's ambitions as settled science.

Bottom Line

This is a real company with real revenue, a dominant satellite internet business, and genuinely impressive engineering. It is also priced at 95x revenue with a CEO who controls 82% of the votes, can dump his entire stake in a year, and has publicly stated his goal is to colonize Mars.

The June 12 final price gets announced June 11. If you're buying, you're not betting on SpaceX's business. You're betting that the hype holds long enough for you to get out before Musk can.