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

Last week, SpaceX completed another round of $ 850 million in monster capital financing, people familiar with the financing told CNBC, which raised the company’s valuation to about $ 74 billion.

The company raised the new funds at $ 419.99 per share, those people said, or just a penny below the $ 420 price Elon Musk made famous in 2018 when he said he had “secured funding” to make private Tesla.

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

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

In addition to SpaceX continuing to build a war box for its ambitious plans, the company’s privileged and existing investors were able to sell an additional $ 750 million in a secondary transaction, one of the people said.

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

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

Starlink is its ambitious project to build an Internet network interconnected with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to provide high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet. SpaceX’s leadership has previously estimated that Starlink will cost about $ 10 billion or more, but believes the network could contribute up to $ 30 billion a year, or more than ten times the annual revenue of its existing rocket business.

So far SpaceX has launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink, beginning to deploy the service early in a public beta for customers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Starlink service for $ 99. Booking messages ask users that SpaceX “is targeting coverage in your area by mid-2021,” while other advance orders say 2022.

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

Musk also reiterated last week that SpaceX plans to end Starlink and make it public. He said Starlink “has to go through a deep abyss of negative cash flows over the next year or so.”

“Once we can predict the cash flow reasonably well, Starlink will go public,” Musk said.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket represents its other ambitious endeavor, with the company constantly building and testing prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas. The company has successfully launched multiple prototypes of starships, landing them safely after short flights at about 500 feet altitude. But its two most recent high-altitude flights, despite having surpassed multiple development milestones, have exploded during the landing attempt.

The Starship prototypes are constructed of stainless steel, with the company’s goal of developing a rocket system that can be reused in the same way as a commercial aircraft. SpaceX is developing Starship with the goal of launching cargo and up to 100 people simultaneously on missions to the Moon and Mars.

Despite the explosive endings of the last two flights, SpaceX has seen the launches as steps forward in rocket development. Starship’s next prototype is in the company’s launcher, and SpaceX is expected to test another test flight in the coming weeks.

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