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Elon Musk’s SpaceX plots $20bn bond deal after record IPO

AI and rocket group is tapping debt markets after raising $86bn in stock market debut

Images of a SpaceX rocket launch are displayed on large electronic screens in Times Square near the Nasdaq MarketSite.SpaceX ended Thursday’s trading session with a market capitalisation of about $2.4tn, making it the sixth biggest company in the world© Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

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George Steer and James Fontanella-Khan in New York and Michelle Chan in London

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SpaceX is planning to raise $20bn in a bond sale as soon as next week, days after Elon Musk’s AI-to-rockets company clinched the biggest initial public offering in history.

The company has mandated Wall Street banks to pitch the fixed-income deal to investors, according to people familiar with the matter. One of the people said the 10-year debt is expected to be priced at around 1.35 to 1.5 percentage points above US Treasuries during initial discussions.

The proceeds would be used to pay back a $20bn bridge loan that SpaceX took out in March after Musk merged his debt-laden AI start-up, xAI, and social media platform X into the rocket company, a second person said. Final pricing and deal size will depend on market conditions, the people added.

SpaceX’s move to tap debt markets, which was first reported by Bloomberg, comes just a week after its initial public offering, which raised $86bn. The company’s shares have surged 37 per cent since their Wall Street debut on Friday, although they have pulled back modestly over the past two days.

Large tech companies have rushed in recent weeks to raise funds in both debt and equity markets to finance their vast investments in AI infrastructure, including data centres and chips, as well as research.

Chipmaker Nvidia this week sold $25bn of investment-grade debt in its first bond sale in five years. Google earlier this month increased the size of its record equity raise to $85bn, while AI start-up Anthropic has tapped private credit groups Blackstone and Apollo for a $35bn debt package ahead of its expected IPO.

SpaceX, too, has made a huge bet on AI. The conglomerate’s valuation rests on an assumption that its AI division — which made a loss of $6.4bn in 2025 — has a total addressable market of $26.5tn. Analysts at IPO underwriter Goldman have predicted a 100-fold surge in SpaceX’s AI revenues to $322bn by 2030.

SpaceX ended Thursday’s trading session with a market capitalisation of about $2.4tn, making it the sixth biggest company in the world. Moody’s on the same day gave the company an investment-grade credit rating of Baa1, one notch above heavily indebted AI player Oracle.

“SpaceX’s Baa1 issuer rating reflects the company’s exceptional franchise strength as the world’s leading orbital launch provider and operator of the largest low Earth orbit satellite broadband network, Starlink,” Moody’s said.

But it warned that “the rating is constrained by elevated execution and financial risks associated with the company’s large-scale AI infrastructure build-out, which is characterised by high capital intensity, sustained negative free cash flow, and a wide range of potential monetisation outcomes.”

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday the company added former Sequoia Capital managing partner Roelof Botha to its board. Botha had been hired to PayPal by Musk earlier in his career.

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