SpaceX prepares for (stockmarket) liftoff

**Rahul Tandon** (0:00)
I've been reading the launch document for SpaceX, and in it, Elon Musk says he wants a permanent colony of one million inhabitants on Mars. And it got me thinking, which planet would you both like to live on?

**Michelle Fleury** (0:13)
Can I just say, I think I'd rather stay on planet Earth.

**Rahul Tandon** (0:16)
No, no, you've got to go.

**Michelle Fleury** (0:17)
She knows too much. I want to go to the beach. I don't know that that's, you know, an option often, Mars.

**Will Bain** (0:23)
I had to go through which one to furthest away from the sun. Being this ginger, I felt like that was safer, really. I couldn't get any closer to the sun and so perhaps a frozen desert on Mars might be the right spot for my skin colouring.

**Rahul Tandon** (0:36)
Well, it could have. I'm glad you said further away from the sun and not further away from me, which I thought you were going to say. We are talking about this because on Friday morning, SpaceX, the company behind space travel, satellites and AI will go public. It is the largest IPO in history and could make Elon Musk the first ever trillionaire. But is it worth the $1.7 trillion price tag? We're going to find out on today's episode of Business Daily.
Welcome back to Power Players. I'm Rahul Tandon here in the UK.

**Michelle Fleury** (1:14)
I'm Michelle Fleury in New York.

**Will Bain** (1:16)
And I'm Will Bain here in the studio with Rahul.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:18)
Now, for many years, investors, shall we call them normal earthlings as well, have wanted to get a ticket to SpaceX, and now they can finally get one. It's a historic week for the stock market as it launches on the NASDAQ on Friday in the US. Yeah, I'm sure you, wherever you are in the world, you will have seen this story in your paper. So here's a question for both of you. Why now? Why is this happening at this moment, Michelle?

**Michelle Fleury** (1:43)
Look, this is an extraordinary company in many parts because it is over 20 years old. And when we're talking about firms that decide they want to have a stock market debut, usually that's because founders turn to public markets to raise money. And in this case, we're talking about a company that already is, you know, making money, has a solid customer base and therefore it is a much bigger company that is coming to market than I think investors are traditionally used to. And that's one of the things that makes this so exceptional. It's the sheer size of this firm.

**Will Bain** (2:23)
I had it put to me very simply by an investor a little bit earlier this week, Rahul, here in the UK, said they just need vast, vast amounts of money.

**Rahul Tandon** (2:33)
It's huge the money they need. And why do they need that money then, Will?

**Will Bain** (2:36)
Well, a lot of this is about building out, it's the AI bits of the business and building out, I guess, the infrastructure that is going to power all this AI. So data centers that we've talked ad-noising about, but also things like chips. You've got to buy those, right? And that's why companies like Nvidia, the chip maker.

**Rahul Tandon** (2:52)
One thing that struck me, Michelle, was the sheer amount of money that they're trying to raise. Seventy-five billion dollars. If we look at the last big IPO, the biggest one ever before this, this was Aramco, wasn't it? And they raised nineteen, twenty billion dollars a few years ago. So this is on a different scale, isn't it?

**Michelle Fleury** (3:09)
Yeah. I mean, you know, Saudi Aramco, a huge oil producer, typically associated with sort of license to print money.
This is a very different beast. I mean, we're talking about SpaceX, a company that, you know, existed for the last 20 years or so with a concept to try and put rockets up to the moon. People were initially very sceptical. And now suddenly they managed to pull something off that really a lot of people thought couldn't happen. And only a handful of private investors were allowed to put their money into this company. And now it's like this kingdom is suddenly opening up its borders and people who want a piece of it for the first time will be able to get in, will be able to get a ticket, in theory. And that's why I think there is so much fascination, not just around the company, but of course also around the man behind it, Elon Musk.

**Will Bain** (4:04)
And if they do so, won't just be a slice of Elon Musk and the AI race, as Michelle's saying. Also you'd be investing in a company that immediately leaps into the top 10 Biggest in the world by market valuation, overtake the likes of Metta, Boeing, Lockheed Martin. I mean, these are all things, Michelle, that are licenses to pre-mining, right? There's only a couple of aircraft manufacturers in the world. Weapons with, unfortunately, all the wars going on in the world. There's always needs for more weapons and weapons makers. It just gives you a sense of the kind of company this company is going to keep immediately.