SpaceX is about to release its prospectus: Here are the five main highlights.

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SpaceX is about to publicly release its prospectus, a document that will present both a dazzling growth story and eye-popping loss figures, kicking off the largest and most ambitious IPO in the company's history.

This IPO could raise up to $75 billion, set to become the largest tech company listing in history.

The information disclosed in the prospectus will help investors systematically scrutinize, for the first time, SpaceX’s seemingly separate business lines—rocket launches, satellite internet, social media, AI models, data centers, defense contracts, and Mars exploration.

The prospectus will reveal that SpaceX’s historical cumulative losses have reached $37 billion, surpassing the combined cumulative losses of the ten most loss-making tech companies to go public after it. Meanwhile, its satellite internet business Starlink achieved $11.4 billion in revenue last year—alone equaling the combined revenue of the world’s top seven satellite communications operators.

Highlight 1: Cumulative historical losses are staggering, exceeding the combined losses of ten leading tech companies

SpaceX’s scale of losses is unprecedented in tech IPO history. By the end of last year, the company’s balance sheet showed a cumulative loss of $37 billion. This figure not only exceeded the combined historical losses of well-known companies like Didi Chuxing, Uber, Airbnb, and Rivian at the time of their IPOs, but also topped the combined losses of the ten next-largest loss-making tech companies.

Such massive losses reflect SpaceX’s enormous investment over 24 years to build its dominant rocket launch capabilities, as well as the years of large-scale equity incentives to employees. The recent acquisition of xAI earlier this year further increased the pressure—xAI recorded substantial losses last year.

Highlight 2: Huge gap between adjusted profits and real losses

After stripping out major cost items, SpaceX’s financial performance last year looked impressive: adjusted EBITDA reached $6.6 billion. However, under GAAP, the company’s net loss last year was $4.9 billion.

The gap between the two is particularly striking. The total amount of expenses excluded from SpaceX’s adjusted metrics is 1.7 times its adjusted EBITDA. This ratio exceeds that of other capital-intensive businesses, including AI data center operator CoreWeave, satellite internet provider Viasat, and even another one of Musk’s listed companies, Tesla.

This gap is due to SpaceX’s unique cost structure—high capital expenditures and equity incentives combined with debt pressure have dramatically increased the expenses excluded from adjusted metrics. While it’s common for companies to present non-standard profit metrics to investors, the scale of SpaceX’s adjustments is very rare among its peers.

Highlight 3: Starlink alone competes with seven, dominates the satellite internet market

Starlink is SpaceX’s most valuable core asset. In only five years, this satellite internet business has risen to market dominance.

Last year, Starlink’s revenue reached $11.4 billion, more than double its largest competitor Viasat, and equal to the combined revenue of SES, Viasat, AST SpaceMobile, Globalstar, Iridium, Eutelsat, and the satellite division of EchoStar. This clearly outlines Starlink’s overwhelming advantage in the global satellite communications landscape.

Highlight 4: Rocket launch commercialization progressing slowly, capacity shifting toward AI orbital computing

SpaceX’s Space division (mainly providing rocket launch services for external clients) showed a clear slowdown in growth last year, with revenue rising only 8% to $4.1 billion, mainly relying on contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA.

The fundamental reason for sluggish growth is that SpaceX completed 165 Falcon 9 launches last year, of which only 43 were for external commercial clients—nearly three-quarters of capacity was used internally for Starlink, a proportion that has increased compared with previous years. Drafts of the prospectus state, “The number of customer launches and per-launch pricing will remain basically flat between 2024 and 2025.”

More noteworthy, the prospectus reveals that SpaceX will redirect a significant portion of its Starlink-related launch capacity to AI business in the future, to deliver servers and other computing facilities into orbit. This strategic shift could further squeeze available capacity for external commercial launches.

Highlight 5: AI division growth disappointing, hard to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic

SpaceX’s AI division integrates the social media platform X and the xAI company, which owns the Grok chatbot. However, data shows the division’s growth is lackluster.

Last year, xAI’s revenue grew by only 23%, a striking gap with competitors: according to The Information, Anthropic’s revenue grew more than 1,000% in the same period, while OpenAI’s growth was nearly 300%.

Even more noteworthy, the AI division’s revenue currently comes mainly from social media platform X, rather than AI itself, although the exact proportion is unclear. The company attributes the division’s growth to “increased subscription income, as well as higher advertising and platform service revenue,” highlighting the ongoing challenge of monetizing its AI business.

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