Elon Musk’s SpaceX raised $ 850 million to $ 419.99 per share

SpaceX completed another $ 850 million equity financing round last week, people familiar with the financing told CNBC, raising the company’s value to about $ 74 billion.

The company raised new funds at $ 419.99 per share, those people said – or just a penny below the $ 420 price that Elon Musk made infamous in 2018 when he said he had “secured funding” to take Tesla out. private.

The latest increase also represents a jump of about 60% in the company’s valuation compared to the previous round in August, when SpaceX raised almost $ 2 billion to a valuation of $ 46 billion.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In addition to SpaceX continuing to build a war chest for its ambitious plans, those inside the company and existing investors have managed to sell another $ 750 million in a secondary transaction, one of the people said.

In particular, SpaceX raised only part of the funding available on the market, a person told CNBC that the company received “crazy demand” of about $ 6 billion in bids in just three days.

The latest cash inflow comes as SpaceX continues to develop two capital-intensive projects simultaneously.

Starlink is its ambitious project to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to provide high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet. SpaceX management has previously estimated that Starlink will cost about $ 10 billion or more for construction, but believes the network could bring in up to $ 30 billion a year – or more than 10 times the annual revenue of its existing rocket business. .

SpaceX has so far launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink, while it began launching the service early in a public beta to customers in the US, Canada and the UK. Starlink service for $ 99. Pre-order messages tell users that SpaceX “aims to cover your area in the middle to end of 2021,” while other pre-orders say 2022.

The company revealed in a Federal Communications Commission filing last week that Starlink has “over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad,” just over three months after the public beta began.

Musk also reiterated last week that SpaceX intends to drop Starlink and make it public. He said Starlink “has to go through a deep chasm of negative cash flow next year or so.”

“Once we can reasonably predict the cash flow, Starlink will make an IPO,” Musk said.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket is his other ambitious effort, with the company constantly building and testing prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas. The company successfully launched several Starship prototypes, landing them safely after short flights at approximately 500 meters altitude. But its most recent high-altitude flights, despite passing several development milestones, exploded on impact during landing attempts.

The Starship prototypes are made of stainless steel, the company aims to develop a missile system that can be reused in the same way as a commercial aircraft. SpaceX is developing Starship in order to launch cargo and up to 100 people at a time in missions to the Moon and Mars.

Despite the explosive endings of the last two flights, SpaceX saw the launches as steps forward in the development of the rocket. The next Starship prototype is on the company’s launch platform, SpaceX will try a new test flight in the coming weeks.

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