SpaceX to raise $750 million at $137 billion valuation, report says

A SpaceX SN9 prototype Starship rocket. PA

SpaceX, the rocket maker and satellite internet company founded by Elon Musk, plans to raise $750 million in a new round of funding that values it at $137 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, is expected to lead the funding round, CNBC reported, citing documents it obtained.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was offering to sell insider shares at a price that would raise the company's valuation to about $140 billion. It was offering the shares for $77 apiece, sources said.

The $140 billion figure compares with a $127 billion valuation in July, according to data provider PitchBook.

SpaceX, which counts Alphabet and Fidelity Investments among its investors, raised about $1.68 billion through equity financing in June.

The company has been sending astronauts to the International Space Station under the space agency’s Commercial Crew Programme.

The initiative has allowed government astronauts and private citizens to launch from US soil again, after depending on Russia’s Soyuz rocket for more than a decade.

Its next flight for Nasa — the Crew-6 mission — is scheduled for launch in spring.

It includes UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, who will serve as a mission specialist aboard the Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX is working with other private US companies that work towards making space accessible to a wider international community.

It is also building a constellation of thousands of Starlink satellites to provide broadband internet cover to remote and rural locations on Earth.

A Starlink kit has “everything you need to get online in minutes”, the company says. Users who sign up for the service receive a kit that includes the Starlink terminal and base, a router, a power supply source and cables.

The residential Starlink package costs $110 a month, with a one-time hardware fee of $599.

SpaceX told US regulators last year that Starlink users had surpassed 400,000.

Starlink has been a key means of communication used by Ukraine’s military forces in its conflict with Russia in areas that don’t otherwise have cellular service.

In October, Mr Musk told the Pentagon that SpaceX could not fund the Starlink system in Ukraine indefinitely.

“The hell with it,” Mr Musk then tweeted. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”

Mr Musk is the second-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, behind Bernard Arnault.

The index puts the Tesla chief executive's wealth at $137 billion, after having declined by 49 per cent over the past year.

Mr Musk owns 42.2 per cent of SpaceX through a trust, according to a December 2022 filing with the Federal Communications Commission.