SpaceX To Target $75B in IPO at $135 Per Share

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.

**Ed Ludlow** (0:22)
This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, Elon Musk rejects another Wall Street convention and sets a fixed price for the SpaceX IPO ahead of the marketing phase of the deal. The plan? Offer shares at $135 a piece.

**Caroline Hyde** (0:34)
Plus Palo Alto Networks falls after the company reported its results, failing to meet really elevated buy side expectations this following a more than 60% run to date.

**Ed Ludlow** (0:44)
And candidates backed by tech billionaires and founders fell short in California's primary elections yesterday. We break down the results and what it means for Silicon Valley.

**Caroline Hyde** (0:53)
But let's check in on what current geopolitics means for this market. We take a breather. We have been at record high after record high. The S&P have been on a nine-day tear. The Nasdaq have been up for four straight trading days. Today we pause. We're off by just a tenth of a percent. Of course, front and center is maybe conflict erupting once more. A little bit that sees far under pressure between the US and Iran. Oil goes higher. Bonnials, they go higher. Stocks just pull back a little bit. Ed, but what are you watching?

**Ed Ludlow** (1:17)
Let's get today's big number. $84.75 billion. Alphabet is upsizing its equity raise to that level up from the previously announced raise of $80 billion. All this to fund its AI infrastructure expansion.
Interesting like this is a multi-day story. The stock's basically flat, but there's an element of dilution. The main point being parts of the equity offering really over subscribe. So Alphabet's saying, okay, we'll do a little bit more. Google's latest fundraising. There is a race happening here, guys. It highlights this scramble for capital in the AI era. Now SpaceX is taking things a step further. Elon Musk company is planning a $75 billion IPO, and has already set a fixed share price ahead of the traditional roadshow process. Another sign Musk is willing to rewrite Wall Street's playbook. That's all according to sources. Bloomberg's Catherine Dougherty is here with more. It's been, well, a bit of a whirlwind few days. So we report it's $135 a share, 556.5 million shares. Do the math, they'll raise $75 billion. That's not how this typically works in an IPO process.
Why?

**Catherine Dougherty** (2:28)
No, typically a company that's looking to list in the US markets is going to look at a range. They're not going with a firm number like this 135 that you're referencing. And that's because in the next week or so, there's a lot of things that could change. This is supposed to be a marketing process. But locking in a price of $135 a share is giving some sort of certainty. It's giving a signal to the market of what to expect. We're expecting that next week by around the 11th is when we could see these SpaceX shares come to market.
But even leading up to it, it's just another indication of the difference in the approach that SpaceX and Musk's team are taking at this time.

**Caroline Hyde** (3:13)
I mean, there is some precedent for doing it this way, Catherine, just not of the size, right?

**Catherine Dougherty** (3:18)
Absolutely. So smaller companies can take this route that SpaceX is looking like it will.
But it is not typical for a company, especially given that this is supposed to be the largest listing on record. So it's taking just some unconventional routes, but you are absolutely right. It's not the first time or likely the last, especially for companies of smaller sizes.

**Caroline Hyde** (3:43)
I mean, Ed, you've been at the forefront of reporting each tick by tick when it comes to what's happening with Elon Musk and SpaceX more broadly. But isn't there a lot of cooks in the kitchen right now? How are we understanding as to what this price point means? And what it means for all of those friends, family, those are about to potentially become millionaires.

**Ed Ludlow** (4:01)
The price point is interesting. So $135 a share is a 28% premium from when they did a stock split on May the 15th. So basically SpaceX's shares were above $500 in the private market. So it did a five for one, took it down to 105 at the valuation of 1.25 trillion. So this is like math, it's kind of a little bit dry. But the point is, is that the share price at 135 is not keeping up with the jump in valuation. There's dilution there, but the friends and family that will get an allocation, all of the mechanics are still in place, like traditional IPO stuff, the roadshow will happen, it will price in the normal way. You're just saying like, here's the number. It's a very, very unusual situation. By the way, Bloomberg's Catherine Dosti, thank you very much. Top reporting as always. Some news crossing the terminal as well, Elon Musk's AI company, XAI, has paused hiring for professionals to train its Grok Chatbot on a range of specialized skills. That's according to sources who say the decision is at least partly due to concerns that the company's HR department is overwhelmed and often unable to process new candidates.