SpaceX — the rocket company led by Elon Musk — raised $337.4 million in equity financing.
According to Reuters, the company reported the fundraising round to the SEC on Wednesday. The news follows SpaceX hitting a $100 billion valuation in October, CNBC reported:
SpaceX has an agreement with new and existing investors to sell up to $755 million in stock from insiders at $560 a share, according to multiple people familiar with the deal — increasing the company’s valuation to $100.3 billion. The company did not raise new capital at this time, sources said, with the purchase offer representing a secondary sale of existing shares.
The new share price is an increase of 33% from SpaceX’s last valuation of $74 billion at $419.99 a share in February, when the company raised nearly $1.2 billion. The company had a similar secondary transaction in February, with a deal for insiders to sell up to $750 million at the time.
SpaceX’s new valuation makes it one of the rare private “centicorn” or “hectocorn” companies in the world — a $1 billion unicorn 100 times over. Musk’s SpaceX is now the second-most valuable private company in the world, according to CB Insights, behind only China’s Bytedance and jumping past fintech firm Stripe.
Currently, SpaceX is preparing to test its Starship rocket — a massive vessel that will one day carry mankind to Mars. NASA leased SpaceX launchpad 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida — the same platform that once sent Apollo vessels to the moon.
“Construction of Starship orbital launch pad at the Cape has begun,” Musk tweeted earlier this month.
“39A is hallowed spaceflight ground — no place more deserving of a Starship launch pad!” he added. “Will have similar, but improved, ground systems & tower to Starbase.”
Starship — equipped with 29 Raptor engines — stands 400 feet tall and is able to carry over 220,000 pounds into orbit. Space.com explained that the launchpad will be the starting point for Mars missions:
In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease agreement with NASA that lets the company use Pad 39A, the jumping-off point for all but two of the agency’s crewed Apollo missions and most of its space shuttle flights. SpaceX already launches its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from the site, but the giant Starship requires new infrastructure.
SpaceX is developing Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and beyond. The vehicle consists of two fully reusable stages: a first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft called Starship. A fully stacked Starship stands 395 feet (120 meters) tall — about 30 feet (9 m) higher than NASA’s famous Saturn V moon rocket.
NASA confirmed to CNBC that SpaceX is “within the rights of their lease agreement to make launch infrastructure improvements within the boundaries of the pad.” The agency is not financing the new construction.
On Tuesday, Musk predicted that SpaceX will be able to send humans to Mars within 10 years. He said that “engineering the vehicle” necessary for the trip remains a primary challenge.
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