Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and a prominent investor, has predicted that Elon Musk’s aerospace startup, SpaceX, is unlikely to go for an initial public offering (IPO) amid speculations of it happening this year.
The CEO and Founder of Social Capital, who is known for his “blank-check” companies, said on his podcast All-In that instead of an IPO, he believes that SpaceX would eventually go public through a reverse merger with Tesla.
“I don’t think SpaceX will IPO, I think it will reverse merge into Tesla and I think Elon will use it as a moment to consolidate control and power of his two seminal assets into one cap table,” he said.
The comments were made during an episode of the podcast released a day before, in which he and his two co-hosts, investors Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, discuss and predict key trends, as well as developments in the technology industry for the year ahead.
What is a reverse merger and did Musk ever hint about it?
A reverse merger happens when a private company becomes publicly traded by merging with an already public firm, bypassing the costly and lengthy traditional IPO process to quickly gain public listing.
Even though Palihapitiya has predicted the consolidation of Musk’s companies, the billionaire himself has never made any comments on the likelihood of such a move in recent times.
It was also not clear from Palihapitiya’s remarks whether he had information about specific plans from SpaceX or was just speculating. While Palihapitiya is not known to be particularly close to Musk, his co-hosts Calacanis and Sacks are closely associated with the SpaceX boss since his Paypal days. They been also been involved in Elon Musk’s takeover and ownership of Twitter Inc, according to multiple news reports.
Palihapitiya had also predicted earlier that SpaceX’s internet-from-space initiative Starlink would go public in 2023, but the forecast did not come true.
Details about SpaceX IPO
In December last year, Elon Musk finally responded to reports claiming the launch of a SpaceX IPO in 2026. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the billionaire CEO said that the report of his company planning to go public is “accurate”.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg also reported that SpaceX is moving ahead with plans for an IPO that would seek to raise significantly more than $30 billion. The report added that the transaction would make it the biggest listing of all time.
SpaceX’s management and advisers are reportedly pushing for a listing as soon as mid-to-late 2026, however the timing of the IPO could change based on market conditions and other factors, and one of the people said the timing could slip until 2027, Bloomberg reported.
