Investment banks leading SpaceX's mega-IPO are set to hold a kick-off meeting next week with the broader syndicate of banks involved in the deal, according to people familiar with the process.
Morgan Stanley, long considered the bank with the deepest ties to Elon Musk, is taking a leading role in the meeting on Monday, April 6, alongside active bookrunners Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. After formally mandating those five banks, SpaceX earlier this month filled out the syndicate by including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Mizuho, RBC Capital Markets and UBS, the people said.
SpaceX is targeting a mid-June launch for what is reportedly a US$75bn IPO at a US$1.75trn valuation, one of the people said.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The US$1.75trn target valuation is a significant step up from the US$1.3trn valuation on SpaceX's all-stock merger with xAI in February, according to analysts at Pitchbook. "SpaceX provides immediate liquidity and cash flow to support xAI's development," Pitchbook senior analyst Franco Granda wrote in a valuation assessment published March 2.
Such a large valuation will make SpaceX eligible for inclusion in major US stock indexes. On Monday, Nasdaq finalized criteria that would allow newly public companies to be added to the Nasdaq 100.
Specifically, newly public companies could be added to the Nasdaq 100 after 15 days of trading publicly, with the evaluation to take place after seven days and the announcement on inclusion after 10 days of trading.
The new rules include a fast-entry provision that would allow companies to be added to the index ahead of the quarterly rebalancing, meaning there could be more than 100 constituents. Fast entry applies if a company ranks within the top 40 based on market capitalization.
The Nasdaq 100 is a measure of the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. At the $1.75trn market cap, SpaceX would be the sixth-largest company in the index, trailing Nvidia ($4.1trn) and just below Amazon ($2.1trn).
Passive demand from index-trackers and "shadow trackers" are a significant source of demand for large IPOs such as the planned offerings from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, investment bankers close to the SpaceX IPO told IFR.