Canadian Technology Magazine has covered plenty of large tech stories, but this one sits in a category of its own. If the current timeline holds, SpaceX could be heading toward a public debut on a scale that makes almost every previous IPO look small. The number being floated is not just big. It is absurdly big. We are talking about a valuation that could approach $2 trillion.
That matters for more than the usual “largest IPO ever” headline. It matters because this is not simply a rocket company going public. It is a bundle of launch services, satellite internet, government contracts, AI infrastructure, and a governance structure designed very intentionally around one lesson: after what happened with Tesla in Delaware, Elon Musk appears determined to make sure he cannot be pushed out of control of his own industrial machine.
That is the real story. The IPO is huge, yes. But the more interesting angle is how it is being structured, why pension funds are already upset, and what sits under the hood of the business now being framed as SpaceXAI.
The IPO timeline just moved up
The biggest shift is timing. The expectation now is that the formal steps could begin almost immediately, with a launch window for the IPO potentially as soon as next month or shortly after. If that happens, it would not just be another market event. It would be one of the defining capital markets events of this era.
For context, Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing is often cited as the biggest IPO in history, at roughly $20 billion raised. SpaceX being discussed in the neighbourhood of $2 trillion is a completely different magnitude. Even allowing for the fact that valuation and IPO proceeds are not the same thing, the comparison still tells you something important: this is not a normal listing.
Canadian Technology Magazine readers should pay attention because this story sits at the intersection of aerospace, telecom, AI, regulation, and corporate power. It is exactly the kind of thing that ends up reshaping entire sectors.
Why the structure is already controversial
The central flashpoint is governance.
The proposed structure reportedly includes a provision that the CEO can only be removed by a vote of Class B shareholders. In practical terms, that means Elon Musk would retain enough voting control that he could not be removed unless he effectively allowed it.
That is the part critics are attacking.
Large public pension funds, especially from New York and California, are objecting hard. The most prominent names being associated with opposition include:
- New York State Comptroller
- New York City Comptroller
- CalPERS in California
Collectively, these institutions represent an enormous amount of capital and influence. But the deeper issue is not just that they dislike concentrated voting power. It is that this governance model seems designed specifically to stop outside actors, activists, and courts from replaying the Tesla compensation war in a new venue.
The Tesla lesson that changed everything
To understand why this structure exists, you have to go back to Tesla.
Musk’s original Tesla compensation package was famously extreme. It was structured as an all-or-nothing deal. No salary, no guaranteed bonus, no easy payout. If Tesla hit a series of eye-watering milestones, he would receive a record-setting compensation package. If not, he would get effectively nothing.
Tesla shareholders approved it by a wide margin. Roughly 73 percent supported it.
The top milestone involved pushing Tesla to a market cap around $650 billion. Tesla went well beyond that, even crossing $1 trillion. In other words, by the numbers, the package did what it was designed to do. The company grew far beyond the threshold the board and shareholders had set.
Then came the legal challenge in Delaware.
A shareholder with just nine Tesla shares brought a case that ended with a Delaware judge voiding the compensation package. That decision infuriated many investors because, from their perspective, the shareholders had already spoken. Twice, eventually.
After the ruling, Tesla shareholders voted on the package again, this time with more disclosure around the concerns raised in court. It still passed, with roughly 72 percent support.
That is what made the Delaware fight so explosive. The same shareholder base, after renewed disclosure, still approved the deal. Yet the court had already asserted the authority to override the outcome.
For Musk and his allies, the message was simple: even if shareholders approve something, a court in the wrong jurisdiction can still blow it up.
Why Delaware became the warning sign
Delaware has long been the default home for corporate America. But the Tesla case shook confidence in that system, especially among founders who want stronger control over their companies.
After the ruling, Musk publicly encouraged companies to leave Delaware. Tesla shareholders later voted to reincorporate in Texas. That was not symbolic. It was strategic.
And Delaware felt the pressure.
According to the account surrounding this fight, companies either threatened to leave or actually left, creating enough concern that Delaware lawmakers eventually passed reforms intended to reduce the odds of similar judicial outcomes in the future. Tesla then appealed, and the Delaware Supreme Court ultimately reversed the earlier decision and restored the original $56 billion package.
Since then, Tesla shareholders have also approved an even bigger compensation package tied to fresh milestones, with support rising to about 75 percent.
The broader point is not just whether one likes Musk or dislikes him. It is that a pattern emerged:
- Shareholders approved a package.
- A court blocked it.
- Shareholders approved it again.
- The fight turned into a referendum on who actually controls a public company.
That history now hangs over SpaceX.
SpaceXAI is not just branding. It is a legal and strategic response.
The planned listing is being framed as SpaceXAI, and that naming choice matters.
This is not simply “SpaceX but public.” It appears to be a structure built to combine space infrastructure and AI infrastructure while also protecting founder control in a way that avoids the vulnerabilities exposed in Delaware.
Texas plays a key role here. One of the protections highlighted is a higher threshold for derivative suits, including a 3 percent shareholding requirement in some contexts. The idea is to reduce the risk that tiny share positions can trigger outsized legal disruptions.
The Class B share design reportedly gives Musk about 79 percent voting power on 42 percent equity. That kind of split is exactly what governance critics hate. But it also tells you the company is optimizing for mission continuity over shareholder democracy in the conventional sense.
If you think Musk is the indispensable operator behind the business, that structure looks like protection. If you think no public company should be so dependent on one person, it looks like entrenchment.
That is the argument in its purest form.
The uncomfortable question for investors
There is a blunt argument at the centre of all this: if you do not trust the founder, why buy the stock?
That sounds simplistic, but it gets to the heart of the tension. Many investors buy founder-led companies specifically because they believe those founders can do what more committee-driven organizations cannot. If that is the reason for owning the shares, then weakening founder control may undercut the exact thing being invested in.
On the other hand, passive funds and pension funds do not always have the luxury of simply opting out. If a company of this size ultimately lands in major indexes, many large funds will end up holding it whether they like the governance or not.
That helps explain why the pushback is so fierce. For individuals, the choice is straightforward. Buy it or do not. For giant institutional pools of capital, the choice is often constrained.
Canadian Technology Magazine readers who follow market structure will recognize this as one of the biggest unresolved tensions in modern investing: passive ownership keeps growing, but passive owners still want a say in governance. Founder-led companies increasingly want to shut that door.
What actually makes up SpaceXAI?
This is where the story gets even more interesting, because the business is not just rockets.
Estimated 2025 revenue is being put at roughly $17 billion. The major buckets beneath that umbrella break down like this:
- Starlink: about $11 billion
- Launch services: about $4.5 billion
- Starshield: about $2 billion
- xAI-related infrastructure: additional upside through data centres and model training capacity
Even with rounding, the picture is clear. Starlink is the engine.
Starlink is the main event
Starlink appears to account for roughly 60 to 70 percent of total revenue, and it is still growing at about 50 percent year over year.
That is enormous.
It is easy to think of Starlink as a niche product for remote cabins and emergency internet access, but the customer picture is much bigger. The business includes direct subscribers, but also telecom relationships and satellite connectivity arrangements involving names such as:
- T-Mobile
- Verizon
- AT&T
- Reliance Jio
- Rogers
- Optus
That turns Starlink from “cool hardware on a roof” into a global communications platform. It is sticky, consumer-friendly, and increasingly integrated into national telecom ecosystems.
Launch services still matter a lot
Launch services are estimated around $4.5 billion for 2025, growing at about 5 percent year over year.
That growth rate is slower than Starlink, but the market position is overwhelming. SpaceX reportedly completed 165 Falcon 9 launches last year, more than every other provider combined. It now captures about 85 percent of U.S. orbital launches.
This is one of those businesses where dominance compounds. The more launches you do, the more data you gather, the more costs you optimize, and the harder it is for competitors to catch up.
Starshield is the quieter bucket
Then there is Starshield, estimated around $2 billion. This is the government and defence side, the more classified and less publicly detailed part of the empire.
It matters because it diversifies revenue and deepens the company’s strategic importance. A business that combines commercial internet, launch services, and government capabilities is not just another tech stock. It becomes infrastructure.
The AI angle could change the valuation story completely
The most underappreciated part of this setup may be the AI infrastructure component.
xAI and associated compute projects are increasingly relevant to the SpaceXAI umbrella. The major facilities referenced include:
- Colossus One, reportedly tied heavily to Anthropic usage
- Colossus Two, handling primary xAI training workloads
- Macroharder, a project expected to lift Colossus capacity toward 2 gigawatts
One estimate cited suggests that the Anthropic-related arrangement alone could generate $5 billion to $6 billion in revenue in a “neo-cloud” model. If accurate, that adds another layer to the investment case.
This is where the proposed public vehicle starts looking less like an aerospace company and more like a convergence company:
- Launch infrastructure
- Global broadband
- Government space systems
- AI compute infrastructure
- Potential future model and software monetization
That kind of bundle is one reason a trillion-dollar-plus discussion is even possible.
Google’s “Project Suncatcher” shows why launch costs matter so much
One of the most fascinating pieces of the larger argument involves Google research and the idea of placing AI data centres in space.
At first glance, that sounds ridiculous. But the analysis behind it is more serious than many people assume. The basic idea is that if launch costs keep falling, there may come a point where building data centres and supporting power systems in orbit becomes economically competitive with building them on Earth.
The threshold discussed is roughly $200 per kilogram to orbit.
That matters because launch costs have already fallen dramatically. The rough trajectory outlined runs from around:
- $40,000 per kilogram
- to $10,000
- to $6,000
- to $5,000
- to $4,000
- to under $2,000, around $1,600
Google’s analysis suggests that, with continued learning-rate improvements in launch economics, prices could reach the needed threshold by the mid-2030s.
And here is the key point: those falling launch costs are tied heavily to SpaceX’s progress.
So if launch costs keep dropping, the addressable market for putting more industrial capacity into orbit could shift from tiny to massive. Not a little bigger. Massive. Once orbital deployment crosses from “interesting science project” to “economically rational,” the amount of hardware companies would want to send up there could explode.
That possibility gives SpaceX a kind of hidden optionality. It is not just serving existing launch demand. It could be building the cost curve that unlocks entirely new categories of demand.
Why this could become a fight over control, not just valuation
The media coverage around a deal like this will likely focus on familiar themes:
- Is the valuation too high?
- Is the structure unfair to shareholders?
- Is Musk taking too much control?
Those questions are valid, but they can miss the bigger strategic issue.
This IPO looks like an attempt to solve a problem created by prior legal and governance battles. From that perspective, the unusual share structure is not a side detail. It is one of the main products being sold. Investors are not just being asked to buy future cash flows. They are being asked to buy into a governance philosophy.
That philosophy is simple: mission-driven companies working on very long time horizons may need insulation from short-term institutional pressure and opportunistic litigation.
Again, some people will strongly disagree. But at least the logic is coherent.
So is a multi-trillion-dollar valuation crazy?
Maybe. But not for the lazy reasons people usually give.
If you value SpaceX as “a rocket company,” the number sounds insane.
If you value it as a combined platform with dominant launch market share, a rapidly growing global internet service, defence and government business, and emerging AI infrastructure tied to a founder who has repeatedly built category-defining companies, the conversation changes.
That does not automatically make $2 trillion correct. It just means the valuation debate has to start from what the company actually is, not from what people assume it is.
Canadian Technology Magazine should be framing this story exactly that way. Not as hype versus scepticism, but as a real industrial question: what is the market willing to pay for a company that is simultaneously becoming a telecom operator, launch monopoly, strategic contractor, and AI infrastructure layer?
Final thought
This may end up being remembered as one of those moments where several huge trends collapse into a single capital markets event.
Space, broadband, AI, energy demand, legal jurisdiction, public markets, passive investing, and founder control are all colliding here. That is why the IPO matters. Not because it is large, but because it is a stress test for how modern markets handle companies that no longer fit old categories.
If the deal launches on the expected timeline, it will not just be another listing. It will be a statement about who gets to control the next generation of industrial platforms.
FAQ
Why is this IPO being described as potentially the biggest in history?
Because the valuation being discussed is around $2 trillion, which would put it in a completely different class from prior blockbuster IPOs. Even compared with Saudi Aramco, the scale being talked about here is extraordinary.
Why are pension funds objecting to the SpaceX share structure?
The main concern is control. The reported Class B structure would give Elon Musk enough voting power that he could not realistically be removed as CEO without his own consent. Critics argue that reduces shareholder influence too much.
How does the Tesla Delaware case connect to SpaceXAI?
The Tesla compensation fight showed that even a shareholder-approved package could be overturned by a court. The new structure appears designed to reduce the chance of similar legal and governance disruptions happening again.
What is the biggest revenue source inside SpaceXAI?
Starlink appears to be the biggest driver, with about $11 billion in estimated revenue out of roughly $17 billion total for 2025. It is also growing much faster than launch services.
Why does Google’s orbital data centre research matter to SpaceX?
Because the economic feasibility of orbital data centres depends heavily on launch costs falling. SpaceX is one of the main companies driving that cost decline, so if the economics improve enough, it could unlock a major new source of launch demand.
Why is Canadian Technology Magazine covering this as a technology story instead of just a finance story?
Because this is not only about valuation or public markets. It touches broadband, AI infrastructure, launch systems, government technology, and the future cost of building in space. It is one of the clearest examples of how major technology platforms are converging into a single industrial system.
