Flying towards a $1.5 trillion IPO, Musk almost lost everything

Author: Xiao Bing Deep Tide TechFlow

In the winter of 2025, the sea breeze in Boca Chica, Texas remains salty and fierce, while the air on Wall Street is unusually hot.

On December 13, a piece of news shot to the top of financial headlines like a heavy Falcon rocket: SpaceX’s latest round of internal stock offering values the company at 800 billion USD.

The memo shows that SpaceX is actively preparing for an IPO in 2026, planning to raise over 30 billion USD. Musk hopes the company’s overall valuation can reach 1.5 trillion USD. Once successful, this will bring SpaceX’s market cap close to the record level set by Saudi Aramco in 2019.

For Musk, this is an extremely magical moment.

As the world’s richest person, his personal wealth will once again break historical records with the launch of SpaceX’s “super rocket,” becoming the first trillion-dollar billionaire in human history.

Rewind 23 years, and no one would believe this ending. At that time, SpaceX was just a “manufacturing underdog” in the eyes of giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, likely to be crushed at any moment.

More accurately, it was more like a never-ending disaster.

When a man decides to build rockets

In 2001, Elon Musk was 30 years old.

He had just cashed out from PayPal, holding over a hundred million USD in cash, standing at the typical “point of personal freedom” in Silicon Valley. He could have sold the company and become an investor, an evangelist, or even do nothing at all, like the founders of a16z.

But Musk chose the most incredible path.

He wanted to build rockets, then go to Mars.

For this dream, he and two friends went to Russia, trying to buy refurbished Dnieper launch vehicles as transportation tools to realize the Mars Oasis plan.

The outcome was humiliating.

In a meeting with Lavochkin Design Bureau, a Russian chief designer spat on Musk, believing this American nouveau riche simply didn’t understand aerospace technology. Ultimately, they quoted an astronomical price and hinted that “if you have no money, get lost,” and the team returned empty-handed.

On the return flight, his companions were dejected, but Musk was tapping away on his computer. After a moment, he turned around and showed a spreadsheet: “Hey, I think we can build our own.”

That year, China had just launched Shenzhou 2, and space was seen as a “miracle” of national strength, a game only big powers could participate in. For a private company to want to build rockets was as laughable as a primary school student claiming to build a nuclear reactor in the backyard.

This is SpaceX’s “from zero to one.”

Growth is a series of failures

In February 2002, at 1310 East Grand Avenue, El Segundo, Los Angeles, in an old warehouse covering 75,000 square feet, SpaceX was officially founded.

Musk took out $100 million from his PayPal proceeds as startup capital, setting the company’s vision as “Southwest Airlines of the space industry,” providing low-cost, high-reliability space transportation services.

But reality quickly delivered a heavy blow to this idealist: building rockets was not only difficult but insanely expensive.

There is an old saying in aerospace: “Without a billion dollars, you can’t even wake up Boeing.”

Musk’s $100 million startup fund was a drop in the bucket in this industry. More severe was that SpaceX faced a market tightly controlled by century-old giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which not only had strong technical capabilities but also deep government connections.

They were used to monopolies and high government orders. To these giants, SpaceX was just a joke.

In 2006, SpaceX’s first rocket, “Falcon 1,” stood on the launch pad.

It was both a tribute to DARPA’s Falcon project and a nod to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. It was small, even a bit shabby, like a prototype.

As expected, 25 seconds after liftoff, the rocket exploded.

In 2007, the second launch. After a brief flight of a few minutes, it still crashed out of control.

Laughter and ridicule flooded in. Some mocked: “Does he think rockets are like writing code? Can you just patch them?”

In August 2008, the third launch was the most disastrous, with the first and second stages colliding, and the hope ignited moments before turning into debris over the Pacific.

The atmosphere changed completely. Engineers began suffering from insomnia, suppliers demanded cash, and the media no longer held back. Most critically, the money was running out.

2008 was the darkest year in Musk’s life.

The global financial crisis swept the world, Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy, his wife of ten years left him… SpaceX’s funds were only enough for one last launch. If the fourth failed, SpaceX would disband, and Musk would have nothing.

At this moment, the sharpest blow struck.

Musk’s childhood idol, “the first man on the moon” Armstrong and “the last man on the moon” Cernan, publicly expressed skepticism about his rocket plans. Armstrong bluntly said, “You don’t understand what you’re doing.”

Later, recalling this period, Musk welled up in tears in front of the camera. He didn’t cry when rockets exploded or when the company was close to bankruptcy, but he cried when mentioning the ridicule from his idols.

Musk told the host, “These people are my heroes in my heart. It’s really tough. I wish they could see how hard my work is.”

At that moment, a line of subtitles appeared: Sometimes, your idols will let you down. (Sometimes the very people you look up to, let you down.)

Surviving against the odds

Before the fourth launch, no one talked about Mars plans anymore.

The entire company was shrouded in a tragic silence. Everyone knew that Falcon 1 was built with their last pennies, and if this failure happened again, the company would be doomed.

On launch day, there were no grand declarations, no passionate speeches. Just a group of people standing silently in the control room, staring at the screens.

On September 28, 2008, the rocket took off, a fiery dragon illuminating the night.

This time, the rocket did not explode, but the control room remained silent until nine minutes later, when the engine shut down as planned, and the payload entered the designated orbit.

“Success!”

Thunderous applause and cheers erupted in the control center. Musk raised his arms high, and his brother Gimbel, standing beside him, started crying.

Falcon 1 made history, and SpaceX became the world’s first private commercial space company to successfully launch a rocket into orbit.

This success not only saved SpaceX but also earned the company a long-term “lifeline.”

On December 22, Musk’s phone rang, ending his turbulent 2008.

NASA’s space chief William Gerstenmaier brought him good news: SpaceX had secured a $1.6 billion contract for 12 round-trip missions between the space station and Earth.

“I love NASA,” Musk blurted out, then changed his computer login password to “ilovenasa.”

Having narrowly escaped death, SpaceX survived.

Jim Cantrell, one of the earliest participants in SpaceX rocket development and a friend who once lent Musk his university rocket textbook, reminisced about the successful Falcon 1 launch:

“Elon Musk’s success isn’t because he’s visionary, not because he’s exceptionally smart, nor because he works tirelessly—though all of that is true. The most important factor is that failure is not in his dictionary. Failure has never been in his thinking.”

Making rockets return

If the story ended here, it would be just an inspiring legend.

But the truly terrifying part of SpaceX was just beginning.

Musk insisted on a seemingly irrational goal: reusable rockets.

Almost all insiders opposed it. Not because it was technically impossible, but because it was too aggressive commercially—just like no one would recover a disposable paper cup.

But Musk persisted.

He believed that if airplanes were thrown away after one flight, no one could afford to fly. If rockets can’t be reused, space will forever be a game for the few.

This is Musk’s fundamental logic, first principles.

Returning to the beginning of the story, why did the programmer-turned-Musk dare to build rockets himself?

In 2001, after reading countless technical books, Musk used an Excel sheet to break down the costs of building rockets in detail. The analysis showed that the manufacturing cost of rockets was artificially inflated by traditional aerospace giants by dozens of times.

These wealthy giants were used to the comfort zone of “cost-plus” pricing, with a screw costing hundreds of dollars. Musk asked: “How much do raw materials like aluminum and titanium cost on the London Metal Exchange? Why does making parts cost a thousand times more?”

If costs are artificially inflated, they can definitely be artificially reduced.

Under the guidance of first principles, SpaceX embarked on a nearly no-turning-back route.

Repeated launches, analyzing failures, continuing to launch, trying to recover repeatedly.

All doubts came to an abrupt end that winter night.

On December 21, 2015, this day was destined to be recorded in human space history.

A Falcon 9 carrying 11 satellites launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Ten minutes later, a miracle happened: the first stage booster successfully returned to the launch site, landing vertically at the Florida landing pad like in a sci-fi movie.

At that moment, the old rules of space industry were completely shattered.

The era of cheap spaceflight was pioneered by this once “underdog” company.

Building starships with stainless steel

If recovering rockets was SpaceX’s challenge to physics, then using stainless steel to build Starship was Musk’s “dimensionality reduction” attack on engineering.

In the early development of the “Starship” aimed at colonizing Mars, SpaceX also fell into the myth of “high-tech materials.” At that time, industry consensus was that to reach Mars, rockets had to be lightweight, requiring expensive, complex carbon fiber composites.

To that end, SpaceX invested heavily in manufacturing large carbon fiber winding molds. However, slow progress and high costs alerted Musk, who returned to first principles and did some calculations:

Carbon fiber costs up to $135 per kilogram and is very difficult to process; meanwhile, 304 stainless steel, the material for kitchen pots and pans, costs only $3 per kilogram.

“But stainless steel is too heavy!”

Faced with engineers’ doubts, Musk pointed out the overlooked physical truth: melting point.

Carbon fiber has poor heat resistance and needs heavy, expensive insulation tiles. Stainless steel has a melting point of up to 1400°C, and its strength actually increases at cryogenic temperatures with liquid oxygen. Including insulation weight, rockets made of “clunky” stainless steel have a total system weight comparable to carbon fiber but cost 40 times less!

This decision allowed SpaceX to completely shed the shackles of precision manufacturing and aerospace materials. They didn’t need cleanrooms; they could weld rockets like water towers in the Texas wilderness, and if they blew up, it didn’t matter—just sweep up the debris and start again tomorrow.

This first principles thinking permeates SpaceX’s entire development process. From questioning “why can’t rockets be reusable?” to “why are space materials so expensive,” Musk always starts from the most basic physical laws, challenging industry assumptions.

“Using cheap materials to make top-tier engineering,” is SpaceX’s core competitiveness.

Starlink is the real killer app

Technological breakthroughs have driven valuation skyrocketing.

From $1.3 billion in 2012, to $400 billion in July 2024, and now $800 billion, SpaceX’s valuation has truly “taken off.”

But what truly sustains this sky-high valuation is not rockets, but Starlink.

Before Starlink, SpaceX was just a spectacular scene in the news—occasional explosions, occasional landings.

Starlink changed everything.

This constellation of thousands of satellites is becoming the world’s largest internet service provider, transforming “aerospace” from a visual spectacle into a fundamental infrastructure like water and electricity.

Whether on a cruise in the Pacific or in war-torn ruins, as long as there is a pizza-box-sized receiver, signals pour down from near-Earth orbit hundreds of kilometers away.

It has not only changed the global communication landscape but also become a super printing press, providing SpaceX with a continuous cash flow.

As of November 2025, Starlink’s global active subscribers reached 7.65 million, with actual users surpassing 24.5 million. North America accounts for 43% of subscriptions, while emerging markets like South Korea and Southeast Asia contributed 40% of new users.

This is also why Wall Street dares to give SpaceX a sky-high valuation: not because of frequent rocket launches, but because of the recurring revenue from Starlink.

Financial data shows that SpaceX’s expected revenue in 2025 is $15 billion, projected to soar to $22-24 billion in 2026, with over 80% of that coming from Starlink.

This means SpaceX has completed a magnificent transformation: it is no longer just a space contractor relying on contracts but has evolved into a global telecom giant with a monopoly-level moat.

The night before IPO

If SpaceX successfully goes public and raises $30 billion, it will surpass Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record of $29 billion and become the largest IPO in history.

Some investment banks predict that SpaceX’s final IPO valuation could even reach $1.5 trillion, challenging Saudi Aramco’s $1.7 trillion record in 2019, and entering the top 20 global market caps.

Behind these astronomical figures, the first to be excited are the employees at Boca Chica and Hawthorne factories.

In the recent internal stock sale, at $420 per share, those engineers who once slept on factory floors and endured countless “production hell” will see a large number of millionaires and even billionaires emerge.

But for Musk, IPO is not a traditional “cash-out,” but an expensive “refueling.”

Previously, Musk was opposed to going public.

At a 2022 SpaceX conference, Musk poured cold water on all employees, warning them not to expect an IPO: “Going public is definitely an invitation to pain, and the stock price will only distract you.”

Three years later, what changed Musk’s attitude?

No matter how ambitious the dreams, they need capital support.

According to Musk’s schedule, within two years, the first Starship will conduct uncrewed Mars landing tests; within four years, humans will step on Mars’ red soil. His ultimate vision, to build a self-sustaining city on Mars with 1,000 Starships over 20 years, still requires an astronomical amount of funding.

In many interviews, Musk has openly stated that the only purpose of accumulating wealth is to make humanity a “multi-planetary species.” From this perspective, the hundreds of billions raised in the IPO can be seen as Musk charging humans an “interstellar toll.”

We look forward to it: the largest IPO in human history will ultimately not turn into yachts or mansions; they will all be transformed into fuel, steel, and oxygen, paving the long road to Mars.**