FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris, May 21, 2026. SpaceX's IPO application, made public on Wednesday, May 20, before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has sparked a dense and skeptical coverage in France. Le Monde and France 24 have dedicated several articles to the event, focusing less on the technological feat than on the disturbing financial arithmetic underlying the operation.

The figures are staggering. SpaceX hopes to raise between $75 and $80 billion during its listing on the Nasdaq, scheduled to start on June 12 under the symbol SPCX. The targeted valuation, ranging from $1,750 to $2,000 billion, would represent nearly 100 times the company's annual revenue - $18.7 billion in 2025. For comparison, the IPO of Saudi Aramco, which previously held the world record with $25.6 billion raised in 2019, would be reduced to a minor episode in financial history.

However, French media emphasize the flip side of this picture. In 2025, SpaceX ended the year with a net loss of $4.9 billion and a debt of $29 billion, fueled by its heavy investments in the Starship program, the deployment of Starlink, and, since its acquisition of xAI in February, in artificial intelligence. The AI segment alone recorded a net loss of $6.4 billion in 2025, with investment expenses reaching $12.7 billion for the year and $7.7 billion for the first quarter of 2026.

The only solid financial driver identified by French media is Starlink. The satellite internet network generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, up by nearly 50% from the previous year, and represents the majority of the consolidated revenue. A contract with Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, also provides for the rental of computing capacity in the COLOSSUS data centers for $1.25 billion per month until May 2029.

The governance structure also draws attention. Through a mechanism of class B shares worth 10 ordinary votes each, Elon Musk will retain approximately 85% of the voting rights while holding only 42% of the capital - down from 51% currently. The SEC document itself warns that Musk 'will have the power to control the outcome of matters requiring shareholder approval.' Le Monde notes that this configuration would allow the entrepreneur to avoid the governance frictions that have regularly plagued his tenure at Tesla.