SpaceX, the aerospace company headed by billionaire Elon Musk, struck a valuation of $100 billion following a secondary share sale announced earlier this week, CNBC reported on October 8.
Sources told the news channel that SpaceX has an agreement with new and existing investors to sell stock valuing up to $755 million from insiders, at a price of $560 per share.
For comparison purposes, publicly-traded Boeing, which competes with SpaceX for space contracts, has a market cap of just over $130 billion. At the $100 billion valuation, the only private company in the world with a higher valuation is China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok.
The new valuation for SpaceX is an increase of 33 percent from the $74 billion valuation it had in February, when it raised nearly $1 billion in new funding at $419.99 a share, CNBC reported at the time. The company also conducted a secondary transaction in February, with insiders selling $750 million.
SpaceX’s new valuation, of $100.3 billion, includes the company in an elite list of “centicorn” or “hectocorn” – the terms used to refer to companies valuing at 100 times above a unicorn, that is a $1 billion entity.
SpaceX was yet to issue a statement on reports of hitting the $100 billion valuation. The sources cited in the reports have spoken on condition of anonymity as the aerospace firm is not a publicly traded company, which means that details related to financing remain private unless the company chooses to make it public.
The vast majority of the company’s valuation likely stems from its Starlink internet business, its ambitious Starship rocket, as well as contracts it receives from the government for space exploration.
In June, Musk said that Starlink could have more than 500,000 users – up from approximately 100,000 currently – in 12 months and could invest a total of $30 billion over the lifetime of the project. As of August, SpaceX had launched more than 1,700 Starlink satellites into space.
