SpaceX did not respond to requests for further comment on the filing.

‘SWINGING BIG AND HOPING TO CASH IN’

Such out-of-this-world claims are raising questions from market observers and skeptics. But some of the world’s biggest institutional firms and Musk loyalists – ​Fidelity ​Investments, Founders Fund and Valor Equity Partners – have remained committed as SpaceX endured years of rocket failures, revenue losses, lawsuits against the U.S. government, workplace ​injuries and geopolitical issues.

Musk’s credibility with investors rests on SpaceX’s ability to turn once-dubious ideas into ‌operational businesses, most notably through the reusable Falcon 9 rocket and the Starlink broadband network it enabled.

“Twenty-five years ago, people thought we were insane, including me,” said Jim Cantrell, one of SpaceX’s earliest employees, who later left to start his own company. Now, “the idea of having products made on Mars and sold on Earth is not so insane.”

But the filing also shows SpaceX lost money last year, is spending far less on AI development than major tech rivals, and warns investors that projects ranging from settlements on the moon and Mars to orbital data centers rely on unproven technologies that may not be commercially viable, Reuters found.

Those more sober numbers have led some commentators to dismiss Musk’s vision as hype designed to inflate SpaceX’s valuation. Unlike the early days of reusable rockets or electric vehicles, AI is no empty frontier, with SpaceX set to compete against the world’s biggest companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet.

Among the filing’s largest claims is that SpaceX is going after a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion, more ‌than the total GDP of the United States, “a very swing for the fences number,” said Eric Talley, a Columbia Law School professor who focuses ​on corporate governance, adding that Musk’s “calling card is swinging big and hoping to cash in.”

Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, an investment firm that owns SpaceX ​and Tesla shares, said investors are “willing to suspend fundamental analysis to not be left out.”

“There’s the perception that Elon ​did it once with Tesla and built a trillion-dollar company,” he said, “and that he’ll be able to do this again and again.”

SPACEX’S RELIANCE ON MUSK

Musk’s space predictions have not always borne out. Timelines for ‌Starship, the fully reusable rocket at the heart of SpaceX’s future, have repeatedly slipped amid explosive ​test failures, regulatory delays and engineering hurdles.

That matters because Starship underpins ​much of what SpaceX has promised investors, from expanding Starlink into new markets to lofting AI infrastructure into orbit and carrying astronauts for NASA missions beyond Earth. The risks are laid out bluntly in the prospectus.

“Any failure or delay in the development of Starship at scale … would delay or limit our ability to execute our growth strategy,” the S-1 said.

One of the starkest risks flagged in SpaceX’s pre-IPO filing is its reliance on Musk himself. He holds four titles, ​controls the board, and has an unusually structured compensation package tied to valuation targets as ‌high as $7.5 trillion and milestones, such as settling one million people on Mars.

The filing describes Musk as “one of the great visionaries of our generation” and warns that a future without him could pose an existential challenge for ​the company, adding that selecting a successor may not happen in a “timely manner or at all.”

“He’s the only person reliably getting satellites into orbit, and astronauts down from the space station,” Isaacson, Musk’s biographer, said.

“He’s ​been able to turn science fiction into just science.”

(Reporting by Echo Wang and David Jeans; Editing by Joe Brock and Nick Zieminski)