SpaceX IPO riches would make robber barons blush

Space Exploration Technologies

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The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Robert Cyran

    NEW YORK, June 16 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Elon Musk’s personal fortune would embarrass even the mightiest industrial titans of old. SpaceX SPCX.O, his rockets-to-chatbots company, has taken flight since its initial public offering, topping $3 trillion in market value. Musk’s hefty stake has lifted his wealth to $1.4 trillion, according to Forbes, equivalent to more than 4% of U.S. GDP. Even the barons of the 19th-century Gilded Age, nicknamed for its rampant inequality, can hardly compare.
Relative to the size of the economy, Musk's hoard is over twice as large as John D Rockefeller’s at his death in 1937. As with the Standard Oil founder, such an astonishing sum confers immense power. Musk was already capable of spending nearly $300 million to help elect President Donald Trump and other republicans in 2024, making him the cycle’s biggest donor. SpaceX added over 200 times that much to his personal wealth on Tuesday morning alone.
In turn, the Trump administration is a key ally. Last week, it urged a federal court to dismiss an environmental lawsuit against SpaceX’s AI efforts. Musk recommended Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates key aspects of the satellite business. Carr has proven friendly to his interests.
SpaceX’s own gigantism is a powerful tool, too. The $60 billion purchase of the firm behind coding tool Cursor, finalized on Tuesday, ranks as one of the year’s biggest M&A deals. The buyer paid with stock equivalent to a mere 2% of its market capitalization.
The so-called robber barons of the Gilded Age, like Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, helped the nation become a powerhouse in oil and steel. SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are, at the very least, crucial military technology. But Musk’s predecessors also shaped a vast legacy after their deaths. Carnegie’s largesse built over 2,500 libraries worldwide. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, for example, spent much of her youth at one. Rockefeller’s foundation was the driving force in the agricultural Green Revolution, which helped to ameliorate widespread famines globally.
Musk’s ambition, by contrast, seems to be to evacuate his fortune from Earth in favor of Mars. Whether it would survive the trip is unclear. SpaceX’s valuation, at over 100 times its trailing revenue, is hard to justify. The number may be somewhat illusory, held aloft by a small share float that keeps supply and demand imbalanced. Eventually, though, more shares will hit the market, as will those of more-advanced AI rivals. Musk’s empire may not prove as enduring as those of yesteryear.
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CONTEXT NEWS
SpaceX shares rose as high as $225 on June 16, briefly giving the company a market capitalization of $3 trillion and making it the fourth-largest U.S. firm. The Elon Musk-run rocket-maker went public on June 12 at $135 a share.
On June 16, SpaceX said it would buy Anysphere, the company behind popular AI coding service Cursor, for $60 billion in an all-stock deal.
Musk’s net worth, according to Forbes, stood at $1.4 trillion on the morning of June 16.

(Editing by Jonathan Guilford; Production by Pranav Kiran)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on CYRAN/robert.cyran@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: robert.cyran.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))