GERMANY PERSPECTIVE

Berlin, May 21, 2026. SpaceX's IPO, filed this week with the US SEC, has captured the attention of German economic press — less for its record-breaking valuation than for what it reveals about a corporate governance structure deemed unprecedented by its concentration.

The numbers are undoubtedly spectacular. SpaceX aims to raise $75 billion, far exceeding the previous record held by Saudi Aramco in 2019 (approximately $29 billion). The targeted market capitalization of $1.75 trillion would immediately place the company among the world's top 10 most valuable listed companies — ahead of Tesla, currently valued at around $1.3 trillion. The 2025 revenue stands at $18.67 billion, with Starlink accounting for $11.4 billion, up nearly 50% from the previous year.

But the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is blunt in its editorial titled 'Machtrausch' — delusion of power. The prospectus reveals that Elon Musk has created a dual-class share structure that guarantees him 85.1% of voting rights. Unlike Tesla, where he holds around 13% of the capital, SpaceX takes it a step further: only B-share holders — of which Musk is the majority — can decide to remove him. In practice, as the FAZ notes, 'Musk can only fire himself.' The prospectus itself warns future shareholders that they will have 'limited, if any, influence' over the company's decisions.

The Tagesschau and Deutsche Welle recall that behind the promise of a 'galactic humanity,' the accounts reveal substantial losses: approximately $4.94 billion in 2025 according to DW, or $2.6 billion according to consolidated data cited by Tagesschau — both sources agreeing on massive investments in new generations of rockets and artificial intelligence. No dividend is expected in the short or medium term.

German press also highlights the entanglements of the Musk conglomerate. SpaceX has integrated xAI and the X platform into its ecosystem; Tesla holds stakes in SpaceX; and a cloud services contract has been signed with Anthropic for $1.25 billion monthly until May 2029. For the FAZ, these interconnections illustrate a logic where 'weaker companies are supported by stronger ones' — a form of cross-subsidization that raises documented conflicts of interest in the prospectus itself.