Elon Musk’s SpaceX raised $ 850 million at $ 419.99 a share

SpaceX completed another $ 850 million monster equity round of funding last week, those familiar with the financing told CNBC, skyrocketing the company’s valuation to about $ 74 billion.

The company raised the new currency at $ 419.99 a share, these people said – or just a hundred lower than the $ 420 price tag that Elon Musk made famous in 2018 when he announced that he had “funded ”to take Tesla private.

The latest increase also represents a jump of about 60% in the company’s valuation from the previous round in August, when SpaceX raised nearly $ 2 billion at a $ 46 billion valuation.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In addition to SpaceX building a war fund for its ambitious plans, it was able to sell existing company owners and investors $ 750 million in high-end trading, one of the people.

In particular, SpaceX only raised a portion of the funding available in the market, with one person telling CNBC that the company received a “crazy demand” of around $ 6 billion in bids over just three days.

The latest cash flow comes as SpaceX continues to develop two capital-intensive projects.

Starlink is its ambitious project to build an interconnected internet network of thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a real-time star, designed to deliver high-speed internet to users anywhere on the planet. SpaceX’s leadership has previously estimated that Starlink will cost around $ 10 billion or more to build, but believes the network could bring in as much as $ 30 billion a year – or more than 10 times that of the annual income of the existing rocket industry.

SpaceX has so far launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink, as they begin to roll out early service in public beta to customers in the US, Canada, and the UK. that public beta recently, allowing prospective users to pre-order Starlink Service for $ 99. Pre-order messages will tell users that SpaceX is “aiming to broadcast in your area in mid or late 2021, ”while other preorders say 2022.

The company revealed in a Federal Communications Commission filing last week that there are “more than 10,000 users in the United States and abroad,” in just over three months since the public beta began.

Musk also confirmed last week that SpaceX plans to finally take Starlink off and take it publicly. He said Starlink must “go through a deep leg of negative cash flow over the next year or so.”

“As soon as we can predict cash flow reasonably well, Starlink will do an IPO,” Musk said.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket represents its next forward-looking effort, with the company regularly building and testing prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas. The company has successfully launched several Starship prototypes, landing them safely after short flights to a height of 500 feet. But his two most recent high-altitude planes, despite passing many development milestones, have exploded on impact as an attempt to land.

The Starship prototypes are built of stainless steel, with the company aiming to develop a rocket system that can be reused in the same way as a commercial aircraft. SpaceX is developing Starship with the goal of launching goods and as many as 100 people at one time on missions to the moon and to Mars.

Despite the explosive stops on the last two aircraft, SpaceX has launched the shows as a step forward in the development of the rocket. The next Starship prototype is in place on the company’s start button, with SpaceX expected to try another test mission in the coming weeks.

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