IPO filing sets stage for record offering

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s longtime president and operating chief, has played a key role at the company, helping build the business and sell its vision to NASA.

Shotwell joined SpaceX as vice president of business development shortly after the company’s founding in 2002. She previously worked at rocket maker Microcosm and the Aerospace Corporation.

Over the past quarter century, Shotwell has developed a close relationship with Musk, who appointed her president of the company in 2008. Shotwell oversaw the company through its early Falcon rocket development and government contract work with NASA.

Shotwell has worked closely on the company’s business strategy, including plans to eventually build a permanent base on Mars. An engineer by background, Shotwell graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics.

According to Wednesday’s filing, Shotwell’s compensation totaled $85.8 million in 2025, with the vast majority coming from options awards. Her base salary was $1.08 million. SpaceX also said it “provides security equipment to enhance security at Ms. Shotwell’s personal residence.” That’s included in $30,095 worth of other compensation.

Shotwell holds 5.46 million Class A and 7.1 million Class B shares ahead of the offering.

—Samantha Subin

OpenAI is mentioned twice in SpaceX’s S-1.

The company is listed as one of SpaceX’s “key competitors” in AI, alongside Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, open source model providers and social networks including Meta’s Threads, Reddit, and TikTok.

OpenAI is also mentioned in a section of the filing that explains SpaceX’s Grok AI models. SpaceX says its “accelerated development cadence” positions Grok among the fastest-advancing frontier models relative to peers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman isn’t named in the document.

–Ashley Capoot

SpaceX said capital expenditures in the first quarter totaled $10.1 billion, more than doubling from a year earlier. The vast majority of those costs — $7.7 billion — were for AI, with the rest spent on space and connectivity.

—Ari Levy

In April, SpaceX said it obtained the rights to buy coding startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year or pay $10 billion for the work the companies are doing together. In Wednesday’s filing, SpaceX elaborated, saying that it doesn’t have an obligation to buy Cursor or pay a fee.

SpaceX would pay $60 billion worth of Class A stock to buy the company, the filing shows.

If the deal doesn’t happen, Cursor can receive a $1.5 billion termination fee and a $8.5 billion deferred services fee, payable in cash, or Class A stock if SpaceX hasn’t gone public by the time the fees become payable.

SpaceX can exercise a call option that would involve acquiring Cursor in the 30 days after Sept. 30, or after seven trading days after the IPO, whichever comes first.

As of Jan. 31, Cursor had $2.7 billion in cash and equivalents, with $550 million in liabilities, the filing shows.

— Jordan Novet

Anthropic will pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 as part of the compute deal the companies announced earlier this month, according to the filing.

The AI company will use all of the compute capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, the companies announced previously. Anthropic will get access to more than 300 megawatts of compute capacity, and also “expressed interest” in working with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of capacity in space.

SpaceX said in its IPO filing that capacity will ramp in May and June of this year at a reduced fee. The agreement can be terminated by either company with 90 days of notice, the filing says.

–Ashley Capoot

SpaceX said revenue increased 15% to $4.69 billion in the first quarter from $4.07 billion a year earlier. Revenue for all of last year jumped 33% to $18.67 billion.

The company recorded a net loss in the latest quarter of $4.28 billion after losing $4.94 billion in 2025.

—Lora Kolodny

Musk controls 85% of SpaceX voting power, with 849.5 million Class A shares and 5.57 billion Class B shares, according to Wednesday’s prospectus.

Other than Musk, no person or entity has a stake larger than 5%.

— Jordan Novet

Musk merged SpaceX with xAI in February, creating a combined entity that he valued at the time at $1.25 trillion.

Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company, has a market cap of about $1.6 trillion, and was previously the main source of his liquid wealth.

In a statement announcing the SpaceX-xAI merger, Musk said the deal was meant to create “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform.”

But by April, Musk acknowledged that xAI, and the tech underlying its AI chatbot and image generator Grok, “was not built right first time around,” and needed to be “rebuilt from the foundations up.”

Grok was supposed to be xAI’s answer to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, but has remained more of a niche player. Grok drew lawsuits and investigations in the U.S. and Europe after it enabled the widespread creation and sharing of nonconsensual explicit, deepfakes, which were based on photos and videos of real women and children.

As part of the SpaceX overhaul of xAI’s business and technology, the company struck a deal last month to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, or pay a $10 billion breakup fee. That transaction is expected to move ahead after SpaceX shares begin trading.

SpaceX is also acting as a so-called neocloud, renting out xAI’s compute capacity at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis to Anthropic.

—Lora Kolodny

SpaceX is based in Texas, along the Gulf Coast. In 2024, Musk said he was moving SpaceX’s headquarters from Southern California to Boca Chica, Texas, where the company built and launched its rockets.

Last year, SpaceX was successful in converting Boca Chica into an official company town named Starbase through an election. Around 500 people, including SpaceX employees, lived in the community at the time, according to the Texas Tribune.

Starbase’s official website describes the town as the “gateway to Mars,” and “a launch site unlike any place on Earth, with humanity’s future in space unfolding in plain view for the public.”

Bobby Peden, who has spent roughly 13 years working for Musk’s rocket maker, is the town’s inaugural mayor after getting elected last May.

SpaceX is planning for a 12th test flight of its massive Starship rocket that will launch from a new pad at the Starbase facility as early as May 21.

“Development, manufacturing, testing, and launch of Starship currently takes place at Starbase, home to SpaceX headquarters and one of the world’s first commercial spaceports designed for orbital missions,” the prospectus says.

SpaceX is currently being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after an unidentified worker died at a Starbase facility on May 15, as the San Antonio Express-News reported Monday. 

— Lora Kolodny