SpaceX, Elon Musk’s child of prodigy, is looking to raise a heavy $250 million in the coming month, at about $220 per share, reports CNBC citing sources. A bit of financial mathematics at that figure puts a $36 billion valuation on the company. Certainly not bad considering that SpaceX raised $1.33 billion last year at a $33.3 billion and there has been tremendous progress since. However, the $36 billion valuation is subject to changes in the market leading up to the second week of March, an estimated window for the deal.
Capital raising is essential to SpaceX’s high-flying ambitions, and there can not be a better time to command money. SpaceX has tasted major success in all of its key projects — Crew Dragon, Starlink and the Starship.
SpaceX already created history when it was successful in CrewDragon’s test launch last year. It is now undergoing final testing and prelaunch processing. Additionally, NASA confirmed in a statement on Feb. 14 that SpaceX will be the first to launch the agency’s astronauts from U.S. soil, ever since the space agency brought its space shuttle program to a halt. It has since used Russian rockets to ferry Americans to space. The only substantial competition came in from Boeing, but it ran into failures making it unable to secure the contract first.
But they way things are at SpaceX, you can never be sure of what the company’s highlight project is. While we just talked about Crew Dragon, there comes Starlink. Quite easily, one of the most ambitious of the company’s projects is the Starlink constellation system that aims to bring cheaper, faster Internet to people around the world. The plan include setting up a satellite constellation in the orbit of Earth, which will then be used by the company to make Internet hassles a thing of the past. Under the operation, SpaceX has already launched about 300 satellites in orbit, employing its re-usable(and revolutionary) Falcon 9 rockets. It is expected to start broadband services in U.S. and Canada by the end of the year, eventually reaching global distribution.
The company also has another ace in the hole, the project that Elon Musk’s daydreams are made of, the much awaited StarShip. From what we know so far, Starship will be a reusable spacecraft(like a commercial plane) and will ferry about 100 people to outer space and destinations like Moon or Mars. Musk’s ultimate goal is to put a 1 million people on Mars and have the capacity to operate 3 Starships per day for that purpose. SpaceX is building Starship at a facility in southern Texas, with launchpads under construction at that location and in Florida
The raised capital will go a long way in these operations, as the company is juggling with a lot of things right now and could use the help. Musk’s other company, Tesla announced that it is turning to the market to raise $2 billion in stock offering, just a few weeks after it had outrightly denied the prospects of any such offering.
