Why water bottles have been given a red card by FIFA

**Andrew Peach** (0:00)
Is SpaceX worth 1.3 trillion dollars?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
SpaceX has been very successful launching rockets, it's also been very successful in Starlink satellites.

**Andrew Peach** (0:09)
I think AI is the money-losingest thing the human race has ever done.

**Will Grant** (0:13)
I think it's grossly oversold.

**Andrew Peach** (0:15)
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service. This is Andrew Peach on the way, how the largest ever public sale of shares could make SpaceX one of the US's top 10 firms. Also, today, it might be hot if you're going to see a World Cup game, but you still can't bring your own water bottle inside. And why the European Union has found 50 million euros to help Armenia.
But first, today.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:49)
Ignition sequence, start and liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

**Michelle Furry** (0:57)
And liftoff of the Falcon 9

**SPEAKER_7** (1:13)
LZ-1, the Falcon has landed. Landing operators moving to procedure 11.100, section three on LZ-1, beat that, and recovery that.

**Patrick Healy** (1:19)
Repeat, the Falcon has landed.

**Andrew Peach** (1:22)
Those cheers marked the successful landing of a spaceship owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Now the company is set to hold one of the largest ever public sales of shares, and it could make SpaceX one of the US top 10 listed firms. Let's get more from our North America business correspondent, Michelle Furry, who's live with us from New York. Tell you what, Michelle, let's just whine right back. What is SpaceX and what does it do?

**Michelle Furry** (1:49)
Look, I think, you know, the clue is in the name, right? SpaceX, it is a rocket company that designs, makes, operates reusable rockets to launch various payloads to use sort of some jargon in the space industry to orbit for the government and for commercial customers. And it started, I guess, back in the early 2000s and has been building ever since. And now the hope is obviously after it acquired ex-AI from its founder, Elon Musk, that it is also adding AI to its business and that will be part of its model going forward.

**Andrew Peach** (2:28)
Okay. Next basic question. What is an IPO, an initial public offering? And why does Elon Musk need all this money? He is after all one of the world's richest men.

**Michelle Furry** (2:39)
So an IPO, initial public offering, is the idea of a private company essentially making shares available to the public on a stock exchange. So in this case, we're talking about the NASDAQ. That was the site chosen.
And it's a way to raise money by selling shares to the public. Typically, institutional investors, so big pension funds, but also some retail investors. So people who are buying on sites like Robin Hood and other kind of Charles Schwab and others.
And that's essentially the key here, is it's about raising money. Now, in the case of SpaceX, it has been private for a very long time and was able to grow so far with money from private investors. But AI is requiring so much money that they are now turning to the public to raise more. It's not just new companies, but also well established companies. So Google, for example, said they plan to sell some more shares to the public to try and raise money. All of this because AI simply is so expensive, eye-wateringly so, that to kind of scale up the infrastructure required is forcing all of these companies to go to public markets to raise money.

**Andrew Peach** (3:57)
Michelle, thank you. Live to Patrick Healy now, expert in listings on the US equity markets. Patrick's in Washington on World Business Report. You've been involved in valuing companies, Patrick. When you're talking about unprecedented numbers like this, how does anyone work out what it might be worth?

**Patrick Healy** (4:17)
First of all, thank you for having me on. Pleasure. There's a huge amount of modeling that goes on way behind the scenes. I use SpaceX as the example.
You can't model far enough out for when these kinds of companies are actually going to make money. Best example for me to what's happening with SpaceX is Tesla.
Tesla, 20 years ago, electronic cars were just a crazy idea. Now they're a reality and Tesla is a money-making company. But it will take a very, very long time for these numbers to firm up and actually turn black rather than red. And there's going to be a lot of red for a long period of time. So this is a bet. And if I could just comment about SpaceX, the name is a little bit deceiving. I would argue that this is more of an AI play than a spacecraft play.