The Canadian Technology Magazine has covered plenty of major tech shifts, but this one could sit in a category of its own. SpaceX appears to be moving toward a public offering on a dramatically accelerated timeline, and if the estimates being floated are even remotely close, this would not be just another IPO. It would be one of the biggest market events in history.
The headline number grabbing attention is a possible valuation near $2 trillion. That is so large it almost sounds fake at first. But the real story is not just the size. It is the structure, the politics around control, the long-running lessons Elon Musk seems to have taken from Delaware, and the simple fact that SpaceX is no longer just a rocket company.
It is a launch company, a satellite internet giant, a defence contractor, and increasingly a key player in AI infrastructure. If this offering lands in the form being discussed, it could reshape how investors think about founder-led companies for the next decade. For Canadian Technology Magazine, that is the part worth paying attention to.
A giant IPO is one story. The control fight is the real one.
The loudest debate is not actually about revenue or even valuation. It is about governance.
The expected structure would give Elon Musk a class of shares with outsized voting power. In practical terms, that means he could not be removed as CEO unless the holders of those high-vote shares approve it. Since he controls enough of that voting block, the effect is obvious: he cannot be pushed out unless he wants to be or sells enough of those shares, which he has already indicated he does not plan to do.
That has sparked opposition from major U.S. public pension funds, especially in New York and California. These include some of the largest public pension groups in the country, organizations with massive assets under management and significant influence in corporate governance debates.
From their perspective, this kind of structure limits shareholder power and entrenches management.
From Musk’s perspective, this is not theoretical at all. It looks like a direct response to what happened before.
The Delaware lesson that changed everything
To understand why SpaceX would be structured this way, you have to go back to Tesla.
Musk’s famous Tesla compensation package was designed as a very high-risk, very high-reward deal. He would receive no guaranteed compensation. Nothing. The package only paid out if Tesla achieved a series of extreme performance milestones. If he failed, he got zero. If he succeeded, he got what became the largest CEO compensation package in U.S. corporate history, roughly $56 billion.
Tesla shareholders approved that package by a wide margin. Excluding Musk, about 73% supported it. The top target involved getting Tesla to a market cap around $650 billion. Tesla eventually blew past that.
Then came the legal challenge in Delaware.
A shareholder with just nine shares brought a case, and the Delaware court invalidated the package. That decision stunned a lot of people, not only because of the financial scale involved, but because it appeared to override the will of the company’s shareholders. Tesla later ran another vote after addressing disclosure concerns. Once again, shareholders backed the package, this time with roughly 72% support.
Same result in substance. Shareholders still wanted the deal.
That fight became bigger than Elon Musk or Tesla. It raised a broader question: who actually decides how a company is run? Is it the board and the owners of the company, or can courts and political actors effectively veto those decisions after the fact?
That conflict is now hanging over SpaceX.
Why Texas matters so much
After the Delaware battle, Musk publicly urged companies not to incorporate there. Tesla shareholders voted to reincorporate the company in Texas. That move mattered. It was symbolic, yes, but also strategic.
Texas has adopted legal protections that make certain shareholder lawsuits harder to weaponize. One example mentioned is a 3% shareholding threshold for derivative suits. The broad idea is to reduce the risk that a tiny shareholder can trigger a massive legal process that overrides corporate decisions approved by the board and the majority of shareholders.
Delaware itself appears to have felt the pressure. After companies threatened to leave or did leave, reforms were passed in 2025 aimed at preventing a repeat of the same kind of judicial outcome. Tesla then appealed, and the Delaware Supreme Court eventually restored the original compensation package.
Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders approved yet another, even larger compensation framework for Musk, reportedly with 75% support.
So when SpaceX is structured to prevent a repeat of the Delaware episode, that is not random. It is a direct reaction to a very specific sequence of events.
The logic behind the SpaceX share structure
The proposed structure reportedly gives Musk about 79% voting power on 42% equity through class B shares.
Critics see that and immediately say the same thing: this is anti-shareholder.
Supporters see it differently. They argue it protects the founder’s ability to execute over the long term and prevents a small set of institutions or a court from interfering with a company that investors knowingly chose to back.
That is the core philosophical divide.
- One side says: public shareholders should have more power and more checks on management.
- The other side says: if you do not trust the founder, do not buy the stock in the first place.
That second argument has a certain blunt logic to it. If the investment thesis is heavily tied to one person’s vision and execution, then giving that person durable control can actually be the point, not the flaw.
And that matters even more for a company like SpaceX, where long timelines, huge capital needs, and politically sensitive contracts make stability at the top unusually important.
Why pension funds are pushing back
The same pension funds that opposed Musk’s Tesla pay package are among the groups now pushing back against the likely SpaceX structure.
There is a practical wrinkle here, though. Individual investors can choose whether to buy a company with founder control. Large pension funds often do not have that same flexibility, especially once a company becomes large enough for inclusion in broad market indexes like the S&P 500.
If SpaceX eventually enters those indexes, many funds would be forced to hold it whether they like the governance or not.
So from their perspective, this is not just a matter of preference. It is a potential governance issue they may have to live with by default.
Still, the counterargument is hard to ignore. These same funds were on the losing side of the Tesla compensation votes, meaning they were opposing what the majority of shareholders wanted. And if Tesla turned out to be one of the strongest-performing assets in many of those portfolios, the optics get even messier.
That is part of why this debate has become so heated. It is not only about principle. It is also about who gets to define shareholder interests.
Why SpaceX may deserve a premium valuation
If this were just a launch provider, a $2 trillion valuation would sound absurd. But SpaceX today is really a bundle of businesses, and that changes the math.
The number being discussed for annual revenue is roughly $17 billion for SpaceX proper, with an even larger umbrella sometimes referred to as SpaceXAI. The reason the umbrella matters is that it points to how investors may be asked to value the company: not as one business, but as several engines stacked together.
1. Starlink is the revenue monster
Starlink appears to be the largest driver by far, generating around $11 billion in revenue. That means roughly 60% to 70% of SpaceX revenue is coming from satellite internet.
That alone changes the public-market story.
People still casually talk about SpaceX as if rockets are the main event. They are not. Rockets are the enabling layer. Starlink is the consumer and enterprise cash machine sitting on top of it.
And it is still growing fast, reportedly around 50% year over year.
The customer base also spans far beyond individual households. Mentioned partners and commercial channels include names like:
- T-Mobile
- Verizon
- AT&T
- Reliance Jio
- Rogers
- Optus
That is not niche demand. That is telecom-scale demand.
For Canadian Technology Magazine, this is one of the biggest reasons the IPO story matters. Starlink is no longer a cool science project. It is becoming foundational communications infrastructure.
2. Launch services still matter a lot
Launch services are estimated at roughly $4.5 billion in 2025 revenue, growing around 5% year over year.
That growth rate is slower than Starlink, but the strategic dominance is huge. SpaceX reportedly completed 165 Falcon 9 launches in a year, more than every other provider on the planet combined. It is said to capture around 85% of U.S. orbital launches.
That kind of scale does two things:
- It produces direct revenue.
- It lowers the cost of orbit for everything else SpaceX wants to build.
That second point may end up being even more important than the first.
3. Starshield adds the defence and government layer
Another piece under the umbrella is Starshield, the government and more classified side of the business. That segment is estimated around $2 billion.
This is the part that tends to receive less mainstream attention, but it likely deserves a lot more. A business with consumer internet, commercial launch, and deep government ties has a very different risk profile than a pure space startup.
It is diversified, sticky, and strategically important.
The AI angle most people are missing
The really interesting twist is that SpaceX is increasingly connected to AI infrastructure, directly and indirectly.
There are references to large AI data centre projects associated with xAI, including Colossus, Colossus 2, and a larger buildout that could reportedly push capacity to 2 gigawatts. There is also discussion of commercial AI workloads, including a major Anthropic-related arrangement and fresh model development tied to Grok.
That means the market may not price this thing like a traditional aerospace company at all. It may price it as a hybrid of:
- telecom infrastructure
- space logistics
- defence tech
- AI compute infrastructure
That is a weird combination. It is also exactly the kind of combination public markets tend to struggle with at first and then aggressively rerate once the pieces become obvious.
The wildcard: data centres in space
Here is where things get genuinely wild.
There is growing discussion, including from Google-related research, about the feasibility of putting AI data centres in orbit. Not just communications satellites. Actual compute infrastructure in space.
The main barrier is launch cost.
The economic argument is straightforward. If it is far more expensive to send data centre hardware into orbit than to build on Earth, nobody does it at scale. But if launch prices keep dropping to a certain threshold, the calculation flips. At that point, the advantages of orbital power and infrastructure become compelling enough that demand could explode.
The interesting part is the trendline.
Launch costs have fallen dramatically over time, from around $40,000 per kilogram to under $2,000 per kilogram, with a figure near $1,600 being cited. The analysis being discussed suggests that if prices fall toward roughly $200 per kilogram, orbital data centres could become economically competitive with Earth-based builds sometime in the mid-2030s.
And the improvement curve behind that thesis appears to rely heavily on SpaceX.
If that scenario plays out, then launch services stop looking like a relatively mature business and start looking like the gatekeeper for a whole new industrial layer in orbit.
That possibility matters. A lot.
So is a $2 trillion valuation crazy?
Maybe. But maybe not for the reasons people think.
If you value SpaceX as one company doing one thing, the number looks inflated.
If you value it as a platform controlling:
- global satellite internet growth
- dominant launch capacity
- government and defence contracts
- future AI infrastructure
- the declining cost curve that could unlock entirely new space industries
then the number starts to look less like hype and more like a market trying to price optionality at massive scale.
That still does not mean the valuation is right. It means there is at least a real argument behind it.
What this could mean for public markets
If the offering happens soon, and if it arrives with the founder-control structure intact, it could become a template for other major private tech companies.
The message would be simple: if a company becomes important enough, founder-led enough, and strategically central enough, it may no longer feel compelled to adopt the old public-market governance model.
That would be a major shift.
It would also intensify a trend already underway, where the biggest companies increasingly ask public investors to accept reduced control in exchange for access to exceptional growth and execution.
Some people hate that trend. Others see it as completely rational.
Either way, it is becoming harder to ignore.
Final thoughts
The most important thing about a possible SpaceX IPO is not the spectacle. It is what the company represents.
This is not just a bet on rockets. It is a bet on infrastructure, communications, defence, AI, and the next cost curve in space. It is also a referendum on whether founder control is a bug or a feature when the founder is central to the entire investment thesis.
That is why the debate is so intense.
And that is why Canadian Technology Magazine sees this as more than a Wall Street story. It is a technology story, a governance story, and maybe a preview of how the next generation of critical companies will come to market.
FAQ
What is SpaceXAI in this context?
The term refers to a broader umbrella that appears to combine SpaceX-related operations with xAI-related infrastructure and assets. The point is that the market may be asked to evaluate more than just rocket launches, including satellite internet, government work, and AI compute infrastructure.
Why are pension funds opposing the proposed IPO structure?
They are concerned that the dual-class or high-voting-share structure gives Elon Musk too much control and weakens normal shareholder oversight. Some of these same institutions also opposed Tesla’s previous compensation votes and governance arrangements.
Why does the Delaware case matter so much for SpaceX?
Because it appears to have fundamentally shaped how Musk thinks about legal risk and corporate control. After a Delaware court invalidated Tesla’s shareholder-approved compensation package, there was a clear push toward structures and jurisdictions designed to prevent similar outcomes in the future.
What is the biggest revenue driver for SpaceX today?
Starlink appears to be the largest contributor, with estimated revenue around $11 billion. That makes it the dominant business inside SpaceX by revenue, ahead of launch services and government-related segments.
Could SpaceX really be worth $2 trillion?
That depends on how the market prices its different businesses and future optionality. If investors focus only on launch services, the number looks very high. If they price in Starlink, defence work, AI infrastructure, and future space economy opportunities, the case becomes much stronger.
Why is Canadian Technology Magazine paying attention to this IPO?
Because this is not just a financial event. For Canadian Technology Magazine, it sits at the intersection of telecom, space, AI, infrastructure, and corporate governance. It has the potential to influence how major technology companies structure themselves for years to come.
