From 800 billion to 1.5 trillion: Musk's ultimate bet before the IPO

Wall Street is on fire. In mid-December, SpaceX closed an internal share sale round that valued it at 800 billion dollars, making it the most valuable private company on the planet. But this is just the act. The real climax comes in 2026: an IPO that could raise more than 30 billion dollars and boost the total valuation to 1.5 trillion dollars, surpassing even the historic Saudi Aramco record in 2019.

For Musk, this means an unprecedented milestone. If the offering goes through, he will become the first billionaire in history, with a fortune around 400 billion dollars. An extraordinary transformation for someone who, just 23 years ago, was literally spat out by a Russian engineer for daring to dream of building rockets.

When ambition met reality

The year is 2001. Musk has just sold his stake in PayPal and is at that magical Silicon Valley point where almost anything seems possible. But while his contemporaries chose to be investors or consultants, he chose the riskiest path: building rockets and traveling to Mars.

His first move was to travel to Russia to buy a refurbished Dniéper vehicle. The result was humiliating. In a meeting with the Lavochkin Design Bureau, a Russian chief designer spat on him, asked if he thought aerospace technology worked like programming, and kicked him out with an astronomical price Musk couldn’t afford.

On the flight back, while his colleagues cried in frustration, Musk turned on his laptop. Minutes later, he showed an Excel sheet with numbers: “I think we can do it ourselves.”

Thus, SpaceX was born in February 2002, in a 75,000-square-foot warehouse in El Segundo, Los Angeles. Musk allocated 100 million of his PayPal earnings. The vision was revolutionary but the path, chaotic.

The hell of the early stages

Industry giants laughed. Boeing and Lockheed Martin were century-old launch and government contract machines. SpaceX was an unknown that didn’t even know where to start. The first Falcon 1, in 2006, exploded 25 seconds after liftoff. The second in 2007 crashed out of control. The third in 2008 was disastrous: the fuel stages collided over the Pacific.

By 2008, Musk was on the edge of the precipice. Tesla was teetering toward bankruptcy, his decade-long marriage was dissolving, and SpaceX only had money for one last launch.

The worst wasn’t the engineering. It was the rejection from his idols. Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, Musk’s childhood heroes, publicly declared that his project was a fantasy. Armstrong was direct: “You don’t understand what you don’t know.” Years later, Musk was moved when recalling it on camera. He didn’t cry when rockets exploded, but he did when talking about that betrayal.

The pivot that saved everything

On September 28, 2008, the fourth Falcon 1 launched. This time, the laws of physics worked. Nine minutes later, the payload reached the planned orbit. SpaceX became the first private company to achieve this.

Three months later, NASA called. William Gerstenmaier offered a $1.6 billion contract for 12 resupply missions to the International Space Station. Musk changed his computer password to “ilovenasa” and never forgot it.

SpaceX survived, but Musk already had his next obsession: rockets had to be reusable.

The revolution of first principles

While the industry bet on sophisticated and expensive aerospace materials, Musk applied his favorite methodology: breaking down the problem from scratch.

How much does it really cost to build a rocket? He opened Excel and started pricing. He discovered that traditional giants artificially inflated costs dozens of times. A screw that should cost a few dollars was sold for hundreds. Aluminum and titanium in international markets were fractions of what contractors charged.

This revelation changed everything.

In 2015, SpaceX achieved the impossible milestone: the Falcon 9 returned vertically and landed at the same launch site in Cape Canaveral. The era of cheap space had begun.

Then came the most radical decision: building Starship with stainless steel. The industry rejected the idea. Steel was “too heavy.” Musk recalculated the melting point. Stainless steel withstands 1,400 degrees, while carbon fiber requires costly thermal systems. When adding up the total weight, both options weighed the same, but steel cost 40 times less.

SpaceX moved operations to the Texas desert. They no longer needed precision rooms. They could set up a shop, weld like water tanks, and when an explosion occurred, sweep up the debris with simple trash bags and keep welding the next day. Manufacturing ceased to be an expensive art and became rapid iteration.

Starlink: from dream to empire

But the valuation of 800 billion dollars isn’t sustained by reusable rockets. It’s based on Starlink.

The constellation of low-earth orbit satellites in Starlink has become the planet’s most disruptive communications internet provider. Whether on a cruise in the Pacific or in conflict-ravaged zones, a box the size of a pizza connects to thousands of satellites in orbit. It’s not a spectacle; it’s critical infrastructure.

As of November 2025, Starlink has 7.65 million confirmed active subscribers, but the actual number of users reaches 24.5 million. North America accounts for 43% of subscriptions, while emerging markets in Asia add up to 40% of new growth.

Financial figures reveal the truth: SpaceX’s projected revenue for 2025 is 15 billion dollars, scaling to 22-24 billion in 2026. More than 80% comes from Starlink, not launches.

SpaceX evolved from a space contractor to a global telecommunications giant with an almost insurmountable competitive moat.

The IPO as interstellar fuel

Why did Musk finally agree to go public when he publicly rejected it just three years ago? Because dreams require capital.

According to his schedule, in two years Starship will make its first unmanned landing on Mars. In four, humans will step onto the red soil. His ultimate vision: build a self-sufficient city on Mars in 20 years, sending 1,000 Starship ships.

In multiple interviews, Musk has candidly declared: “The only purpose of accumulating wealth is to make humanity a multiplanetary species.”

The 30 billion dollars from the IPO won’t be yachts or mansions. They will be fuel, steel, oxygen, and trash bags. They will be the toll Musk charges Earthlings for paving the way to Mars.

The largest IPO in human history is about to take off. And this time, there will be no explosion.