SpaceX is now sitting at the top of the U.S. private company pyramid after launching a secondary share sale that pushes its internal valuation to $800 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
That figure instantly knocks OpenAI down to second place and gives Elon Musk’s space and satellite giant a valuation double what it held earlier this year, which was $400 billion.
Bret Johnsen, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, told investors about the deal just days ago. SpaceX, which turns 25 this year, usually does these tender offers twice annually. This is nothing new. What’s new is the size.
Whether or not buyers take the full $800 billion bait remains to be seen, but Elon has built a cult following of investors who’ve kept throwing money at it no matter how high the bar gets.
He even posted back in June that the Texas-based company was on track to pull in $15.5 billion in revenue for the year. That was on X, where Elon now broadcasts most of his company updates in real time.
Starlink subscriber numbers climb while military ties deepen
SpaceX is still launching rockets faster than anyone else, but the bigger story might be Starlink. That satellite internet business is now sitting on top of 8 million active customers, including homes, businesses, and airlines.
Those satellites are padding out SpaceX’s books with real money and making the $800 billion number feel a little less crazy to backers.
The company has already dropped around 9,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit to build out that global network, and they’re not done.
There’s also a strong military thread running through all this. SpaceX runs launches and satellite contracts not only for NASA, but also for the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. That includes secretive national security payloads and tech that never makes the press.
Commercial satellite missions are just one part of the mix now. The defense angle has been growing more central to the company’s mission as more governments look for direct space capabilities.
Beyond launching satellites, SpaceX is also working on a way to connect satellites straight to smartphones, no towers. That got real when SpaceX moved to buy large chunks of radio spectrum from EchoStar, the satellite company. In total, SpaceX committed over $20 billion in cash, stock, and debt to lock in the frequencies.
“We are so pleased to be doing this transaction with @EchoStar and working with operators across the globe to advance our mission to end mobile dead zones everywhere on Earth,” said Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s President, in a post on X.
SpaceX moves 1,083 BTC as crypto traders track its wallets
While Wall Street was trying to figure out whether the $800 billion price would hold, SpaceX made a massive Bitcoin transfer that grabbed attention from crypto traders. Arkham Intelligence reported that the company moved 1,083 BTC last Friday.
It wasn’t the first time.
This was the eighth Bitcoin transfer connected to SpaceX, and it came just as BTC dipped to $91,000 ahead of the day’s crypto options expiry and a new U.S. inflation readout.
The movement was detailed down to the sat. 283 BTC worth $31.33 million stayed unspent and landed in a wallet labeled bc1qrzg. A separate $162.48 worth of Bitcoin got pushed to Coinbase Prime, likely for liquid access.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Moves Bitcoin Holdings. Source: ArkhamThen, the rest (800 BTC) valued at $73.73 million, got transferred to another holding wallet tagged bc1qyh. As usual, none of these transactions came with a company comment or explanation.
In the end, SpaceX is still plowing cash into Starship, the massive rocket it’s building to send astronauts to the moon under contract with NASA.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/spacex-overtakes-openai/
