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SpaceX is preparing to launch its Starship rocket from South Texas later today. As NPR Geoff Brumfiel reports, the company is planning on going public soon, and it has a lot riding on this flight.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Starship was actually supposed to launch last night. The rocket was fueled and ready to go, but at the last minute, they had a problem with the launch tower.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: All right. It is sounding like we are not going to be able to clear this issue in time today, so we are going to be standing down from a launch.
BRUMFIEL: When the rocket does launch, it'll be the first test flight of a new version. The older versions had a roughly 50/50 success rate, but this next launch needs to succeed because next month, SpaceX is going public. Franco Granda, a research analyst with the firm PitchBook, says SpaceX's IPO could put the company's value at up to $2 trillion.
FRANCO GRANDA: This is a crazy business. Valuations have gone into outer space, into other galaxies. And I think it's all riding on the promise of the future potential, like the markets that they will unlock through Starship.
BRUMFIEL: Starship is absolutely essential to SpaceX's plans. SpaceX wants to use it to build up its internet satellite constellation, Starlink, and it wants to build AI data centers in space. And NASA wants to use it to send astronauts to the moon. Billions and billions of dollars in revenue are at stake. And if it doesn't work, Granda says SpaceX isn't really worth the trillions its CEO, Elon Musk, wants it to be.
GRANDA: Without Starship, I don't think he gets to that - the next leg of growth and what they're really hinging this entire valuation premium from.
TIM FARRAR: It's really critical to all of these ambitions.
BRUMFIEL: Tim Farrar is president of TMF Associates and an expert on the satellite telecommunications business. Starship is supposed to eventually be a cheap, easily reusable rocket that can fly multiple times a day. Farrar thinks that's still a long way off. And as for the here and now, new financial disclosure documents released ahead of the IPO show that SpaceX is losing money. In the first three months of this year, it lost over $4 billion. It's also carrying nearly $30 billion of debt, much of it thanks to the company's struggling AI business. That might be enough to give some investors pause, but Farrar says SpaceX's value really comes down to one man.
FARRAR: The valuation is completely dependent on the degree to which people believe in Elon Musk, and it's not dependent on the current businesses.
BRUMFIEL: He says so long as investors are convinced Musk can make a fortune in the future, they're more than happy to hand over their money today.
Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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