Cori, you were one of the journal reporters going through the 400 pages of this S-1 today.

What stood out to you? One of my favorite sections to read whenever an S-1 is published is the risk factor section.

About a quarter of the whole S-1 regular filing was devoted to its potential risks.

And a lot of those risks are things that we've been talking about in the journal and in the industry and just in dinner party conversations online.

There's this discussion of self-preserving qualities of AI models that would cause them to avoid being shut down and can generate responses that almost resemble blackmail in an effort to convince humans to allow them to keep operating.

And how AI could lead to the development of new bioweapons or destabilize the geopolitical order.

And in addition, if their models do cause harm, They can't insure themselves like you would think a typical business is able to insure itself because a catastrophic AI-related incident could be so big that no one would be able to cover the potential damages.

So do we have a sense of how enthusiastic investors are for an anthropic IPO?

We haven't heard from them directly.

directly.SpaceX sees this as, okay, SpaceX has this very dominant position where they're able to launch things into space fairly easily when you think about it.

Um, they have gotten this down pat.

So they are able to do this, and they figured, "You know what? We can be the ones to operate orbital data centers, and we can do that for both for xAI and for other AI companies that might need that."

But SpaceX didn't take the usual approach.

Typically, when a company launches its roadshow pitch to investors or they go around, they get feedback from investors saying, "Hey, how much do you, would you pay? Uh, we're thinking in this price range.

This, like, $5, $10 price range." SpaceX turned that on their head and said, "You know what? We don't want drama on this IPO roadshow.

We're just gonna tell you this is the price.

And Corey, though it's not the first time investors have had a chance to kind of peek under the hood because SpaceX submitted some paperwork several weeks back, uh, but fascinating insights into the profitability or lack thereof of the business.

We did see about three weeks ago when SpaceX made its regulatory filing public, we did see what it earned in revenue in 2025, and that was, uh, nearly $19 billion.

But now with this price point of $135 a share, folks can start to calculate price to sales.

And when you look at those numbers, you can see that SpaceX is trying to be priced at about 93.6 times its sales.

SpaceX was unprofitable in 2025.

It lost almost $5 billion.

Um, most of the money that it makes is from subscriptions to its Starlink satellite internet service and its rocket launches.

Obviously, a lot of enthusiasm ahead of the listing, but that post-listing period obviously a vital one as well.

Turning to SpaceX, WSJ reporter Cory Dreibusch says that sources have told the Journal that its CEO, Elon Musk, could land another big payday.

Elon Musk is poised to really have a lot of control over SpaceX when the company goes public.

SpaceX's board has already granted him a moonshot pay package, packages that typically are very large in dollar amount and are given to CEOs of companies once they hit huge, very long shot goals.

As for SpaceX, which is expected to go public in June, Cory says Musk could control it through what are called super voting shares.

Musk and key executives are expected to hold Class B shares that get 10 votes each, and every other share is going to have one vote each, a dual share class.

It's much more popular for founder-led companies and specifically for tech founder-led companies.

And corporate governance experts for a while have pushed back on this, but investors we've spoken to, current investors and even those who are looking at the IPO, say they welcome those moves.

They said, "You know what? Musk's interests for SpaceX, those align what our interests for SpaceX are." And obviously, a lot of these shareholders have held on to SpaceX stock even without seeing the financials.

So what's pushing Musk to make SpaceX public?

SpaceX has been a private company for over two decades, and what really has sparked it all ties back to this boom in AI.

There's been this rush to build lots of data centers for AI computing.

For several years, there's been some talk in certain circles about what if we just put these data centers into space? That way we don't have to worry about licensing or land or the pollution that might happen on Earth.

So that idea prompted, as you can imagine, a lot of skepticism from engineers given the technical challenges, but it has continued to gain traction, and in the past year, SpaceX was able to make some progress in figuring out the logistical and technical workings.

So that sort of sparked this idea we should go public sooner.

This is gonna be very expensive.

Are they in a rush to get this done?

How did it look, especially among tech companies?

Yeah, so the US IPO market, it's been pretty choppy these last several years, especially after the big boom times of 2020, 2021.

As we remember, in late '21, the US Fed decided to signal that it was gonna start raising interest rates, and that sent shares of companies, recent IPOs, especially in the tech space, especially those that were more high growth and a little riskier, it sent their stocks falling.

A lot of those companies have not, their stock prices have not recovered.

Those stocks are still trading lower, which meant that a lot of companies decided, "We don't want to enter into this market.

We're going to stay private for longer." I'd say that this past year, 2025, was one of the first years we started tech companies going public again, and we saw some really good successes, at least initially.

Software company Figma went public, and its stock soared in its first day of trading.

How did that perform in its debut, and what kind of indication does it give us for the blockbuster IPO market next year?

How did it look, especially among tech companies?

Yeah.

So the US IPO market, it's been pretty choppy these last several years, especially after the big boom times of twenty twenty, twenty twenty-one.

As you remember, in late twenty twenty-one, the US Fed decided to signal that it was gonna start raising interest rates, and that sent shares of companies, recent IPOs, especially in the tech space, especially those that were more high growth and a little riskier, it sent their stocks falling.

A lot of those companies have not...

Their stock prices have not recovered.

Those stocks are still trading lower, which meant that a lot of companies decided we don't wanna enter into this market.

How did that perform in its debut, and what kind of indication does it give us for the blockbuster IPO market next year?

So, Corrie, can you start by taking us through just how SpaceX has remained a private company, despite it being so old and sporting this incredibly high valuation?

Sure.

So, it is pretty rare for a company to remain private as long as SpaceX has, particularly one that is backed by venture capital firms.

SpaceX's size and its stature for most companies would have forced it to go public.

But not SpaceX.

There's quite a few reasons why.

For one, SpaceX, by nature of the business, has government contracts and maybe some of the business that it does wants to remain private, it doesn't want to reveal all of these contracts in its financials, which as a public company, you must do.

From what you gleaned from your reporting, why has Elon Musk kept it this way for so long?