The secrets revealed in SpaceX’s IPO filing

The second is that of losses brought on by the February merger with artificial-intelligence startup xAI, which has burned up massive amounts of cash building out large data centers in an effort to catch up with the competition. xAI had $3.2 billion of revenue last year.

The company recently signed a deal with Anthropic, whose Claude AI tool competes with SpaceX’s Grok. SpaceX will rent out compute capacity across its two large data centers for $1.25 billion a month, in a deal that stretches through May 2029.

Total capital expenditures came in at $20.7 billion, much of which came from xAI, which spent $12.7 billion. The launch and satellite businesses spent $8 billion combined in capex last year.

Musk has 85% control

Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of colonizing Mars, has a firm grip on the leadership and ownership. The CEO is the biggest shareholder and controlled 85% of the voting power on May 1 thanks to supervoting Class B shares that get 10 votes for every 1 vote held by Class A shares being sold to the public.

Together with other board members and executives, insiders owned about 20% of the Class A shares and 94% of the Class B shares, giving them 86% of the combined voting power. The structure will make it all but impossible for investors to kick Musk out of his role as chief executive.

Mars-or-bust pay package

Musk took home $54,000 in salary in 2025 but most of the billionaire’s compensation is made up of two massive equity packages.

In January, SpaceX gave Musk a package worth 1 billion Class B shares, which vest if the company establishes “a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants” and hits a series of market-cap goals that expand the company to $7.5 trillion.

In March, the board granted him another 302.1 million shares, replacing an earlier xAI award, which vest if the company completes “non-Earth-based data centers” as well as 12 market capitalization goals that expand the value of the company to $6.6 trillion.

This SpaceX package comes just months after Tesla shareholders approved a separate compensation package for Musk that could be worth around $1 trillion if he hits ambitious targets at Tesla, where he is also CEO.

Eight board members

SpaceX has eight directors, with Musk serving as the board chair. The other directors include longtime SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, Google executive Donald Harrison, as well as investors Antonio Gracias, Steve Jurvetson and Luke Nosek. Randy Glein, a longtime board observer, joined the board in February, as did Ira Ehrenpreis, a longtime Tesla board member.

Gracias, the founder of Valor Equity Partners, has served on the board since 2010 and his firm is one of the company’s biggest investors, with a 7.3% stake. That would be worth more than $100 billion based on an expected valuation of $1.5 trillion.

SpaceX’s top executives hold stakes in the company that could make them billionaires. Shotwell, who made $86 million last year, mostly in the form of stock options, owns 5.5 million Class A shares and 7.1 million Class B shares.

Many related parties

Musk’s companies are helping each other out, including sharing corporate aircraft and buying each other’s products or services. For example, SpaceX bought $131 million of Cybertrucks from Tesla in 2025 at the “manufacturer’s suggested retail price.” The SpaceX prospectus provided the first glimpse of the dollar figures for those payments to Musk’s other companies. In 2025, SpaceX also purchased $506 million worth of Megapack energy storage products from Tesla. Meanwhile, Musk’s xAI has paid Tesla about $731 million since the beginning of 2024 through February 2026.

SpaceX and Tesla are also collaborating on a massive chip factory called Terafab and on an artificial-intelligence project called Macrohard. In total, Tesla is mentioned 87 times in the SpaceX prospectus. “We plan to explore other areas of strategic collaboration with Tesla in the future,” the document said.

Government contracts

Spending by U.S. federal agencies accounted for about 20% of SpaceX’s revenue last year. Clients across the federal government include NASA, but also the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

The company didn’t spell out many details about its national-security work but noted the National Reconnaissance Office, a U.S. spy agency focused on space-based intelligence work, is a customer. SpaceX has been working with the NRO over the past few years to develop a classified satellite network.

Staggered lockups

Musk and certain significant investors have agreed to not sell their stock for 366 days after SpaceX starts trading.Other pre-IPO investors are held to a 180-day lockup. Those investors have the chance to sell earlier, though, through “early-releases.”

Up to 20% of early-release eligible shares may be sold shortly after SpaceX reports its first quarterly results. An additional 10% of those shares are released if SpaceX’s stock remains at a certain level leading up to its first earnings date.

There are additional releases of shares at staggered intervals, including after the company reports its second quarterly earnings as a public company. Musk and other insiders aren’t eligible for early releases.

Write to Becky Peterson at becky.peterson@wsj.com and Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com