SpaceX is set to go public on Friday, at which time the company and the bankers it hired are hoping investors will buy at least $75 billion worth of stock, valuing the rocket- and satellite-maker/AI shop at something in the range of $1.75 trillion. The banks set to make hundreds of millions in dollars in fees are obviously jazzed about the whole thing as is, of course, founder Elon Musk, who is expected to become the world’s first trillionaire in the process. But not everyone thinks the SpaceX debut is something to celebrate. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for one, is hoping to convince the Securities and Exchange Commission to (temporarily) scrap the whole thing.
In a letter to SEC chair Paul Atkins, the Massachusetts lawmaker — and ranking member of the Senate banking committee — Warren writes that she has “extreme concern[s]” about the upcoming SpaceX IPO that comes down to three main points. First, the fact that the company is offering stock at approximately 100 times 2025 revenue, which does not appear to have any basis in reality. (Warren cites analysts who have called it “nonsensical” and “smoke-and-mirrors accounting” and told the New York Times’ DealBook “The idea of having Elon negotiate with Elon and decide that the value of this company is some astronomical number makes market analysts laugh — or maybe cry.”) Second, that the governance structure of the public company will basically make Musk unfireable (while leaving investors with “significantly fewer rights than those traditionally offered to purchasers of public shares”). And third, that because of the rewriting of rules that were created after the dot-com crash — rewritten by index providers expressly for the benefit of SpaceX — millions of Americans will be forced to own shares of the company through their retirement accounts.
