SpaceX valued at $74 billion
February 18, 2021
By Chris Forrester
SpaceX has wrapped a fundraising round of a reported $850 million (€704.4bn) to help pay for his new Starlink launches and development work on his Starship/Mars project.
CNBC reports that the new cash was generated by the sale of shares at an impressive $419.99 per share and thus giving the privately held business a value of $74 billion.
Forbes says that prior to this latest cash-raising exercise, founder Elon Musk held 48 per cent of the SpaceX business. If he has not diluted his shareholding then the SpaceX element of his overall fortune would be valued at about $32 billion, and an increase from the $20 billion valuation previously entered against his name.
Forbes gives Musk an overall worth of $173.4 billion, although this places Musk at Number 2 on the world’s richest individuals and places him behind Jeff Bezos.
Musk’s SpaceX is now beginning to benefit from actual living subscribers. There are said to be 10,000 early-beta adopters and a slew of would-be satellite subscribers to Starlink around the plant signing up with a $99 (or equivalent) deposit prior to receiving broadband signals.