If Elon Musk’s SpaceX decides to , it could have a large amount of cash to do it.
SpaceX, Musk's rocket and artificial intelligence company, hit the public stock market Friday in a blockbuster move that dumped a whole lot of money on a whole lot of people, particularly founder and CEO Musk, who could become the world’s first trillionaire.
During its initial public offering Thursday, SpaceX sold 556 million shares at an initial price of $135 a share, which was the biggest IPO in history, to raise $75 billion, multiple outlets are reporting.
On Friday, shares of stock in SpaceX were trading at $161 at the close of market Friday after rising as high as $175 by mid-afternoon. That valued the company at more than $2 trillion, exceeding the market capitalizations of other titans of American industry, including Walmart and General Motors combined, the New York Times reported.
The company’s president and CEO were on Wall Street on Friday morning to ring the bell to open Nasdaq’s Stock Market. Musk also rang a bell from Texas.
SpaceX operates about 9,500 of the 14,000 or so satellites orbiting Earth, providing the company’s Starlink Internet service to customers worldwide. Earlier this year, it notified federal regulators of intentions to launch up to 1 million low-Earth orbit satellites, part of a larger plan to operate artificial intelligence data centers from space.
The prospectus for the SpaceX stock debut shows spending at a massive scale — greater than the economic output of some countries — and about to grow much larger as Musk races to make good on his promise to hurl people to distant planets, .
Money to be raised in the initial public offering will help finance those futuristic, fantastical plans.
Some of those plans could involve south h.
State Sen. Bob Hensgens, R-Abbeville, confirmed in May that an aerospace company is in talks to buy coastal land in the Vermilion Parish area from ExxonMobil, which has owned 136,000 acres there since the 1950s. Sources familiar with the situation indicated SpaceX is the company in question.
Several legislators signed nondisclosure agreements at the request of Gov. Jeff Landry's administration, precluding them from discussing specifics about a potential aerospace company. Hensgens was the first elected official to go on record confirming it. He said he did not sign the NDA because he did not believe it was fair to his constituents.
If the deal happens, it would bring billions in revenue to the parish along with about $100 million for coastal restoration, Hensgens said.
The potential location in Vermilion Parish could be an ideal one for SpaceX between its Brownsville, Texas, headquarters and Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to Lafayette real estate broker Jim Keaty, who has been monitoring and blogging about local developments. The company’s rockets are too large to be transported by rail and would have to be shipped by barge.
The Freshwater Bayou Lock provides direct, deep-water access to the Gulf of Mexico for SpaceX’s autonomous drone-ship recovery vessels, Keaty said. The nearby Port of Iberia has more than 100 marine fabrication yards already equipped to build launch mounts, modify barges and supply offshore-grade steel.
The area also provides easy access to much-needed fuels — natural gas and methane.
“Vermilion gives them Gulf access between Boca Chica, Texas, (where the SpaceX Starbase hub is located) and Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it has launch pads,” said Kimberly Siversen Burke, director of governmental affairs for Quilty Space, a Florida firm that advises aerospace companies.
“It has methane infrastructure nearby in Cameron and fabrication access through the Port of Iberia,” she said.
Keaty said the location could support activities such as manufacturing Starships, testing its Raptor engines and loading completed rockets on barges bound for Florida.
State lawmakers in the recent legislative session passed a package of bills to give aerospace companies generous tax breaks and expansive protections against lawsuits.
Some companies could get huge tax breaks, including a big property tax exemption and state and local sales tax breaks for aerospace equipment. Some aerospace activity and facility records will be exempt from public disclosure laws.
The bills would make it illegal for residents to sue for damages if rocket testing or launches harmed the area or their property. The bills also would also prevent local governments or organizations from trying to legally block the company from coming.