SpaceX Pushes Reusable Rocket Record as $75 Billion IPO Enters Final Countdown

SpaceX flies Falcon 9 for 35th time just days before its record $75B IPO, highlighting Starlink's growth despite $2.6B operating loss.

The Falcon 9 booster designated B1067 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:13 MESZ on June 8, carrying 29 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Its 35th flight — and subsequent pinpoint landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas — brought the vehicle within four missions of the NASA Space Shuttle program’s reusability record of 39 flights. The feat came just four days after SpaceX formally unveiled the largest initial public offering in history, a juxtaposition that neatly captures the dual engine driving the company’s valuation.

SpaceX plans to issue roughly 555 million Class A shares at a fixed price of $135 apiece, bypassing Wall Street’s traditional bookbuilding process. The listing is scheduled for June 12 on the Nasdaq — both the Global Select Market and the new Nasdaq Texas — under the ticker SPCX. An unusually generous 30% of the offering has been set aside for retail investors. The company aims to raise $75 billion, catapulting its implied market capitalization to $1.75 trillion and dwarfing the previous record held by Saudi Aramco. The final offer price is expected to be formally confirmed on June 11, pending SEC approval.

Beneath the headline numbers lies a stark operational divide. SpaceX’s connectivity segment, dominated by Starlink, generated $3.26 billion in first-quarter 2026 revenue, a 31.6% jump from a year earlier, and swung to an operating profit of $1.19 billion. The subscriber base more than doubled to around 10.3 million. In contrast, the Space segment — encompassing launch services for third-party customers and government contracts — saw revenue slide to $619 million from $865 million, while its operating loss ballooned from $70 million to $662 million. Research and development costs for that unit surged 76.8% as SpaceX pours capital into Starship and its supporting infrastructure. For the trailing twelve months, the company reported an overall operating loss of $2.6 billion on revenue of $18.7 billion.

That unprofitability has already closed one door. S&P Global declined to grant the stock expedited entry into the S&P 500, insisting on a track record of positive GAAP earnings. The Nasdaq, however, amended its own listing rules to accommodate the newly public company.

The IPO’s proceeds are earmarked for expansion: new rocket development, the Starlink satellite constellation, and artificial-intelligence initiatives. SpaceX recently merged with Elon Musk’s AI venture xAI, and management is exploring plans to build data centers in orbit. The decision to prioritize internal rocket capacity is already visible in the launch manifest — of the 40 Falcon missions flown in the first quarter, 33 were dedicated to deploying Starlink hardware, with only seven serving external customers.

Longer-term operational metrics reinforce the scale. Since 2023, SpaceX has carried more than 80% of all global payload mass to orbit. The company’s cumulative launch tally stands at roughly 660 completed missions, with a reflight rate of 95%. The Starlink constellation now numbers more than 10,580 active satellites, and the Falcon 9 fleet has logged 66 flights so far in 2026.

The timing of the booster record is a reminder that reusability, rather than one-off launches, underpins the business model. For investors eyeing the IPO, the critical question is whether Starlink’s expanding margins can absorb the mounting losses from Starship’s development. The answer will determine whether SpaceX’s celestial ambitions translate into terrestrial returns.