Elon Musk’s SpaceX has begun lining up senior roles at four major Wall Street banks as it races toward a potentially record-breaking initial public offering.
As per a Financial Times report, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are being positioned for lead underwriting roles in what would rank as one of the largest IPOs ever.
The aerospace and satellite company is aiming to raise tens of billions of dollars and test investor appetite for a company valued at roughly $800 billion in recent private markets.
The process signals an aggressive push toward a public listing after SpaceX doubled its valuation in just six months, jumping from $400 billion last July to $800 billion in December.
The move matters not just for Wall Street’s banking fees, but also for the technology industry’s hunger for capital and the increasing willingness of private companies to embrace public markets.
SpaceX IPO: Banks compete for lead roles
The Financial Times report mentioned that Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are being lined up for the senior underwriting positions, though the final roster and specific “lead left” roles have not yet been decided.
All four banks declined to comment, and SpaceX did not respond to requests for confirmation.
Analysts have suggested Morgan Stanley holds the inside track given its deeper relationship with Elon Musk through his work at Tesla and other ventures.
“People familiar with the matter said a small group of Wall Street banks are being positioned for senior underwriting roles, though no final decisions have been made,” sources told the Financial Times.
SpaceX’s CFO Bret Johnsen confirmed in December that the company is “getting the company ready for a potential IPO in 2026,” but stressed that timing and valuation “remain quite uncertain.”
The funds would accelerate Starship rocket development, establish data centers in orbit, fund missions to Mars and the proposed Moonbase Alpha lunar base.
Market comparison
If executed at the company’s current $800 billion valuation, even a modest offering of 3-5% of equity could yield $25-40 billion in proceeds.
That would eclipse Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO, which at $29 billion remains the largest on record and represented a $1.7 trillion valuation.
SpaceX’s potential scale would immediately place it among the twenty largest publicly traded companies globally.
The timing collides with an expected wave of mega-tech IPOs.
OpenAI, Anthropic, and other high-value artificial intelligence firms are considering public market debuts in 2026.
The Starlink engine
What’s really driving SpaceX’s valuation upward is Starlink, the satellite internet service.
The company now has 8.5 million customers generating over $10 billion in annual recurring revenue.
By contrast, the Falcon 9 and Starship launch businesses operate on tighter margins and serve more as infrastructure investments to deploy satellites and future missions.
The company deployed over 3,200 satellites in 2025, a 60% jump from the prior year, and is planning a second-generation direct-to-device cellular system for 2027.
If those milestones hold and market conditions cooperate, an IPO could indeed arrive in the coming months.
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