Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, more commonly known as SpaceX, is pricing the largest ever initial public stock offering this week and is expected to start trading on Friday, June 12, 2026, under the symbol SPCX on the NASDAQ. This massive fundraising will help support a unique and self-propelling growth story. What does this have to do with FinTech and payments? Like the SpaceX vertically integrated ecosystem, it is all connected. X Money is an emerging payments and digital wallet service built into the social media platform X, which along with its parent company xAI, was acquired by SpaceX earlier this year. Hang on we are going for a ride.
The deal.
SpaceX is raising $75 billion in its initial public offering by issuing 555.6 million Class A primary shares at an expected price of $135 per share. This would give the company a post-money market capitalization of approximately $1.7 trillion. There are twenty-three joint book runners listed on the cover of the prospectus, a Who’s Who of Wall Street, with Goldman Sachs the book runner and Morgan Stanley the largest of the co-leads. Approximately 30% of the offering is reserved for retail investors, an unusually high percentage as far as IPOs go, and Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Robin Hood, SoFi, and E*TRADE are listed as distributors of those shares. For context, prior to this IPO, Aramco (Saudi Arabia exchange Tadawul:2222) was the largest IPO at $26 billion in 2019.
Following the offering, SpaceX will have thirteen billion shares outstanding. Elon Musk, who serves as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, is expected to retain approximately 80%-85% of the voting control through a dual class share structure.
The after party.
Investors should be aware of the significant share unlock schedule that follows the IPO. On the second trading day after SpaceX releases its June 30, 2026, earnings (we expect in late July or early August 2026, six weeks after the IPO), approximately 911.5 million shares will become unlocked. Furthermore, depending on certain factors such as timing (180 day lock up) and stock price performance, up to four billion shares could be released throughout the first year of trading (before June 30, 2027). If exercised, that is almost five billion incremental shares added to the float or ten times the number of shares offered in the IPO. What is more, according to the prospectus, a much larger unlock of approximately 7.8 billion shares, including a substantial portion of Elon Musk’s holdings, will occur following June 30, 2027, quarterly earnings release. If any of these unlocked tranches are exercised the public float will increase substantially. In a vacuum that is normally negative for the stock price performance. One potential offset that could help support an orderly market is the possibility that major stock indices may add SPCX shortly after the IPO. This would create a built-in structural reason for institutional buying. Money managers whose performance is benchmarked against these indices (now including SPCX) will be compelled to hold a proportional amount of SPCX to properly track and match the index composition. Another more conventional offset is strong company performance, which could encourage investors to buy additional shares.
X Money.
The service entered early public access in April 2026, following Elon Musk’s announcement in March. It aims to transform the high-profile X platform into an “everything app” by combining social media, messaging, and banking tools all in one seamless service (like WeChat, an immensely popular social media platform in China). Users will be able to manage money directly inside the X app, without switching to separate services like Venmo, PayPal, or a traditional bank app.
It is currently in a phased rollout with limited availability, starting with features such as peer-to-peer payments, digital wallet funding, a Visa debit card with cashback, and competitive interest on deposits. The company is working with Cross River Bank as the primary depository institution. The service will be available in more than 40 U.S. states, and the company is federally registered nationwide as a Money Services Business (MSB) with FinCEN. However, in addition to federal registration, each state in which X Money conducts business must grant a separate Money Transfer License (MTL) and New York is the notable hold out.
X.
One of the most influential social media platforms for real-time news, politics, and public opinion. Monthly average users (MAU) are around 550 million with 350 million daily posts. Approximately one hundred million users are US based. Annual revenue close to $2.9 billion of which 65% is advertising (35% subscription). User numbers have stabilized since the more turbulent post Twitter acquisition declines in 2022-2023. A product redesign combined with new features like their LLM Grok integration and upcoming payments via X Money are drawing attention.
Let us explain.
Since X Money is a brand-new service, with no metrics, every user and transaction represents upside. One greenfield opportunity for X Money could be the rapid global expansion of SpaceX’s satellite-enabled internet service, Starlink. According to the prospectus, Starlink operates the world’s largest and most advanced high speed, low latency satellite internet network. Backing that up is Starlink’s performance, like adding 15,000 new customers every day and on track to deliver internet access to many parts of the world. At this pace, the service could double to twenty million subscribers within the next two years. Starlink, X, and xAI create a powerful, self-reinforcing flywheel: Every new Starlink satellite brings more people online, expanding the addressable audience for X. This, in turn, drives higher usage of X Money and xAI products like Grok. SpaceX is the core engine powering this growth. By building and launching its own rockets and continuously replacing older, lower-capacity Gen1 satellites with Gen2 satellites (which deliver 4× more capacity), SpaceX is generating incremental capacity for oversubscribed, older, and comparatively lower performing satellites. Gen3 satellites, planned for initial deployment in the second half of 2026, will deliver another major leap, 10× the capacity of Gen2 satellites.
Math.
In the near term, SpaceX can drive a major increase in network capacity from its current 9,600 satellites by completing its approved Gen2 rollout up to the FCC limit of 15,000 satellites. Since each Gen2 satellite delivers four times the communications capacity of a Gen1 satellite, SpaceX only needs seven hundred Gen2 satellites to fully replace the capacity of the estimated 2,800 Gen1 fleet. This would require about 26 Falcon 9 launches, or three and half months at the current pace. Adding the remaining ~5,400 satellites to reach the 15,000 target would take another 200 launches, or about 25 months. SpaceX is currently launching an average of two Falcon 9 rockets per week, each carrying around 27 Gen2 satellites. As a result, using only its existing Falcon 9 fleet and launch cadence, SpaceX could complete the full Gen2 build-out in less than two and a half years. This upgrade alone would more than double total subscriber capacity above twenty-five million users, versus serving ten million three hundred thousand subscribers today, providing significant headroom for continued growth. This extensive network aims to achieve comprehensive global coverage, including remote and underserved areas worldwide.
Starship.
Only the much larger Starship rocket has the payload and thrust capacity to launch the heavier next Gen3. Both are slated for commercial introduction late this year. One fully loaded Starship with 60 Gen3 satellites is equivalent to six hundred Gen2 satellites or 22 Falcon 9 launches. Looking further ahead, Starlink could reach one hundred million users in the early 2030s only including the Gen3 rollout (theoretically, 6,250 satellites or 104 Starship launches over 2 years, assuming a launch once a week, if our estimates are correct. Excludes Gen2). The “you got to believe” is that Gen3 receives an FCC license; technically speaking Starship and Gen3 are on time for commercially availability in 2H26; prove themselves as dependable as their predecessors Falcon 9, and Gen2, respectively. For reference, Starship has a payload capacity of one hundred metric tons or four and a third times greater than Falcon 9.
It is all about access.
The Gen2/Gen3 rollout will significantly expand Starlink’s wholesale communication opportunities. The company has built partnerships with major telecom operators worldwide for direct-to-cell service, network backup, and enterprise connectivity. For example, Starlink’s major telecom partners collectively serve more than 635 million customers worldwide (let that sink in). These partnerships position Starlink as a complementary wholesale provider that extends coverage to remote areas and offers backup capacity, rather than a direct competitor. In the US, its key partnership is with T-Mobile for satellite texting, voice, and data. Also newsworthy are the recent agreements for fast, inflight, low-latency, gate-to-gate Starlink Wi-Fi across the entire aircraft (personal devices + inflight entertainment screens) on mainline planes with United Airlines and Alaska Airlines. Earlier Starlink was adopted by Royal Caribbean Group, improving Wi-Fi speed by six times on its ships. Also, Starlink is now a standard feature on John Deere equipment, helping bring precision farming and autonomous solutions to remote areas.
However, Starlink is currently not operational everywhere including large swaths of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Russia. Parts of Sub-Saharan Africa may be limited.
xAI
In March 2025, xAI acquired X (including its payments service X Money). In February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI, placing X and X Money under the SpaceX corporate structure. These transactions are a source of the large share unlocks happening throughout 2026, many of which stem from equity compensation packages used by SpaceX and xAI to attract and retain top AI talent in a highly competitive market.
Falcon 9 and Starship provide transportation, Starlink global communication, and xAI functions as the interconnected, neuro-linked brain that integrates them all. Together they form a powerful self-improving feedback loop: transportation, communication, and intelligence continuously enhance one another. xAI is SpaceX’s flagship artificial intelligence platform whose compute backbone is anchored by Colossus, the world’s largest single-site AI training supercluster located in Memphis, Tennessee. As of June 2026, Colossus has scaled to approximately 550,000+ NVIDIA GPUs (primarily H100, H200, and B200 models) and is approaching 2 gigawatts of power capacity. The cluster was built at unprecedented speed, reaching 100,000 GPUs in just 122 days and expanding rapidly thereafter. xAI is targeting 1 million GPUs during 2026, with longer-term ambitions potentially reaching several million.
It is going to take a whole lot of money.
In terms of investment, the GPU hardware alone for the current deployment is valued at $18 billion, while the total capital expenditure for the full Colossus facility, including power infrastructure, cooling, and buildings, is estimated in the $30–40+ billion range. xAI has raised approximately $45 billion in total funding to date, with a $20 billion Series E round in January 2026 dedicated primarily to this massive compute expansion. This makes Colossus the largest facility of its kind giving xAI a powerful foundation for training successive generations of Grok models.
Grok is xAI’s frontier large language model (LLM) and chatbot. It burst onto the AI scene in July 2025 with the release of Grok 4.0, which surprised the industry by equaling or surpassing the performance of leading models from OpenAI and Google. Prior, Grok was considered an inferior LLM. The robust performance of Grok 4.0 served as a major wake-up call and triggered a vigorous competitive response from other AI labs. ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and Claude (Anthropic with Amazon as its largest investor) are once again dominating the headlines. However, xAI originally targeted Q1 2026 for Grok 5, but that slipped. The model is currently in late training / testing on the massive Colossus supercluster. In the meantime, Anthropic has signed a major compute outsourcing agreement with xAI. Under the deal, announced on May 6, 2026, Anthropic has exclusive access to the entire capacity of xAI’s Colossus 1 supercluster in Memphis, which includes over 200,000 Nvidia GPUs and more than 300 MW of power. Anthropic is using this massive compute resource to train and run its Claude models, particularly to support higher usage limits for its paid subscribers. The agreement is valued at $1.25 billion per month and is expected to generate more than $40 billion in total revenue for xAI through May 2029. xAI continues to use its newer Colossus 2 cluster for training Grok.
If you want a job done right do it yourself.
True to form, xAI will become significantly more vertically integrated in the coming years. Given the ongoing global shortage of GPUs and memory chips, where demand continues to outstrip supply, xAI plans to design and manufacture its own.
Enter xAI Terafab, a major semiconductor fabrication project announced in March 2026 with Tesla, SpaceX, and Intel. The initiative began with a prototype advanced technology fab on the North Campus of Giga Texas in Austin. The total project is expected to require $20–55 billion in initial capital, with the full buildout potentially reaching up to $119 billion. Small-batch production is targeted for late 2026, with volume manufacturing expected in 2027. The fab aims to use 2-nanometer process technology and will initially produce 100,000 wafers per month, scaling up significantly. These chips will support Tesla’s Autopilot, Optimus robots, and next-generation AI hardware, xAI’s Grok training, and SpaceX’s space-based computing needs. Terafab is designed as a fully vertically integrated facility to reduce dependence on external foundries like NVIDIA and TSMC.
To infinity and beyond.
SpaceX has built a tightly interconnected ecosystem that reinforces and accelerates growth. Its three core divisions, space transportation, global connectivity (Starlink), and AI/compute, are all reaching critical mass at the same time, creating powerful synergies. Ultimately, all roads lead back to SpaceX’s launch vehicles. Falcon 9 currently delivers payload to orbit for $3,000 per kg, compared to NASA’s older Atlas V at around $10,000 per kg. Starship is expected to dramatically lower this further, targeting an initial cost of around $100 per kg, with the long-term goal of driving it down by half or more. Deploying next-generation Starlink satellites and a wide range of other payloads will depend on Starship’s heavy-lift capability. Given that the total addressable markets for AI and global connectivity are each measured in trillions of dollars, Starship is effectively positioned to become the “long-haul trucker” of space, the essential enabler for these massive opportunities. We remain cautiously optimistic that Starship will enter commercial service in the second half of 2026.
Investors may recall that Starship has completed twelve test flights to date. Of these, seven were successful, including the most recent one, while five were not. Starship’s development follows a rapid “test, fail, learn, iterate” approach. Early flights (especially Flights 1–3) did not end well, but reliability has improved with later versions. Importantly, Starship is not starting from scratch. SpaceX has benefited from the deep experience gained through 650+ successful Falcon 9 launches, with only 4 failures across the entire program (including one in March 2025). 650:4 is a pretty good win loss ratio.
Falcon 9 uses ten Merlin rocket engines, which were developed and built by SpaceX. These engines, nine for booster phase and one second stage, are reuseable. The Merlin 1D produces approximately 190,000 lb of thrust at sea level and is one of the most efficient and cost-effective engines in its class. By comparison, the Raptor is SpaceX’s next-generation engine. It is far more powerful (3× the thrust of a Merlin), more efficient, and was designed from the ground up for full reusability and longer interplanetary missions. Starship utilizes thirty-three Raptors in booster phase, six in second stage and collectively provides the massive thrust capacity needed to launch Starship’s 100 metric ton payload. It is also engineered for significantly longer service life, with a target of around seventy-five flights per engine compared to fifteen flights for Merlin. Raptor also runs on a cheaper, cleaner, and more abundant fuel source of methane gas (vs highly specialized mixture and more costly rocket fuel). We realize this broad overview does not do full justice to the remarkable technological advancements across SpaceX’s various divisions, but we wanted to provide a high-level summary.
Orion’s Belt.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the scale of SpaceX’s ambitions, you are not alone. We believe SpaceX today is an early-stage modern conglomerate, much like General Electric was 130 years ago. The unprecedented technological leaps SpaceX has either originated or rapidly exploited are fundamentally reshaping the global economy. The company plays the long game across all areas of its business. This brings us back to X Money. Which competitors to X Money are pursuing anything remotely similar? A single company simultaneously leading in rocket engines, spacecraft, satellites, and AI, with the internal capability of reaching and serving every person on Earth, doesn’t feel like a fair fight.
The event horizon.
Our goal is to provide a primer on how SpaceX’s integrated approach could benefit X Money in the future. We encourage investors to review the official Space Exploration Technologies Corporation prospectus on SEC.gov and the SpaceX website. We hope this overview has helped those new to the story better understand SpaceX and serves as a starting point for deeper exploration. Thank you for your time.
