SpaceX filed its IPO paperwork, and the numbers look rough — bad for investors hoping for a profitable rocket and internet company, but the Elon hype may carry it anyway.

• SpaceX burned $9 billion in cash in just three months, with losses jumping to $4.2 billion after the XAI merger.
• Starlink is the real business now, bringing in about 69% of revenue, while rocket launches are only 13%.
• A $20 billion loan comes due in September 2027, and the company only has about $6 billion in free cash, so it needs the IPO to survive.
• Elon will hold 85% of voting power through special shares, and the filing strips investors of jury trials and class action rights.
• For scale, Nvidia makes about 20 times more money than SpaceX, yet SpaceX could still IPO at around $2 trillion thanks to the Elon premium.

Outlook: The IPO is likely coming soon because SpaceX needs the cash to pay off debt, and a wave of big AI IPOs including Anthropic and OpenAI is lining up behind it.