As a private investor for SpaceX, I have always been greatly interested to see its progress. Musk is indeed an genius to make such a complicated business so successful even before the IPO. I'm enormously proud of being one of the early investors for it. Go SpaceX!!✌💪
December 30 capped off a remarkable year for SpaceX. It was the 61st launch for the private aerospace company of the year, a record.
Making the final launch of the year even more special was one of the secrets to SpaceX's business success – lower cost of payloads to orbit through reusability. It was the 11th mission for the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster used on December 30.
Below is a snapshot of all 61 launches last year:
2022 SpaceX Launches
Source: spaceflightnow.com
And it appears that 2023 will be no less exciting for SpaceX.
The company is kicking off the year with a $750 million raise, lifting its own valuation into orbit – $137 billion. It's one of the most valuable private companies in history, and third only to two other public aerospace companies: Raytheon ($180 billion) and Boeing ($169 billion).
$137 billion is an extraordinary valuation for a private company. And the $750 million figure is small in comparison to the $3.62 billion that SpaceX raised last summer.
That raises the question: Is an IPO in the works?
An IPO is certainly overdue. After all, SpaceX has been taking in investor's capital now since its first funding back in 2002.
There are countless numbers of venture capital (VC) firms and angel investors that have provided capital to Musk and his team at SpaceX over the last two decades… I'm sure they're hungry for some liquidity after the long wait.
Leading this latest round is Andreessen Horowitz, with additional participation from Sequoia and Founders Funds, which are all giants in the VC world.
It's hard not to be optimistic about SpaceX. There's no other aerospace company in history like it:
It held a record number of launches in 2022.
It exceeded 1 million subscribers for Starlink – its satellite-based broadband internet service.
It signed up two private commercial spaceflights around the Moon.
It's on track to support NASA's Artemis 3, which will send the SpaceX Starship to the Moon around 2025. (And prior to that, it will launch, transport, and insert the Lunar Gateway into the Moon's orbit.)
And in the weeks ahead, we can expect the inaugural launch of the first Starship into orbit – a great way to kick off the year.
And we shouldn't forget that SpaceX is literally humanity's best chance for becoming a multi-planetary species in our lifetimes.
SpaceX is one of the most-anticipated IPOs in history. And there's a chance for two IPOs.
The first would likely be the spinout of Starlink into its own publicly traded entity. That would be a smart move, as Starlink would raise additional capital from the IPO, much of which would be used to hire SpaceX for additional launch services.
It would be natural for the SpaceX IPO to follow sometime after that. If I had to make a prediction, I would say that Starlink goes public in the second half of this year when market conditions improve, and SpaceX follows in 2024.
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