SpaceX Plots $20bn Bond Deal Days After Record IPO

EBM NEWSDESK ANALYSIS- Nick Staunton

Elon Musk’s company raised $75 billion last week in the largest IPO in history. It is already back in capital markets — this time for debt.

Back to the Markets Within Days

SpaceX is preparing to meet with investors as early as next week to discuss an investment-grade bond offering expected to total at least $20 billion. The timing is notable: the company priced its IPO shares at $135 on 12 June, raising $75 billion and instantly becoming the largest public listing in history — nearly tripling Saudi Aramco’s previous record of $25.6 billion set in 2019.

That listing pushed SpaceX’s valuation briefly above $2 trillion, up from an initial valuation of around $1.75 trillion, and made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Within a week, the company is returning to capital markets, this time for debt rather than equity.

What the Bond Will Actually Do

The headline number obscures a more mundane purpose. The proceeds are earmarked primarily to refinance an existing $20 billion bridge loan maturing in September 2027 — a facility that accounts for the majority of SpaceX’s $29.1 billion in long-term debt as of 31 March, according to the company’s IPO filing.

The bridge loan was originally arranged by the same group of banks expected to lead the new bond sale — Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Investor calls could begin as early as Monday, though the final size and timing may still change. This would mark SpaceX’s first issuance of investment-grade US dollar bonds, and the company has reportedly secured ratings from three major bond graders, which should help lower its borrowing costs relative to the bridge facility it replaces.

The AI Spending Problem

The refinancing rationale is straightforward. What makes the bond deal significant is what it signals about the scale of capital SpaceX needs to fund its expansion into artificial intelligence infrastructure — data centres, power generation and computing hardware — on top of its existing rocket and satellite businesses.

That expansion is not yet profitable. SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.28 billion on revenue of $4.69 billion in the first quarter of 2026, compared with a $528 million loss in the prior year period. The company is spending aggressively ahead of revenue, betting that its AI ambitions — including its recently acquired coding platform Cursor, its Colossus data centre build-out and next-generation Starlink V3 satellites — will eventually justify the outlay.

Oppenheimer analyst Tim Horan raised his price target on SpaceX to $250 from $190 following the bond news, arguing the company is uniquely positioned as a vertically integrated AI business spanning capital, data, large language models, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent. Horan expects the Colossus data centres, Starlink V3 and Cursor to drive significant revenue growth between 2027 and 2030, while acknowledging risks around regulation, execution and the technical difficulty of operating advanced AI chips in space.

A Volatile Debut on the Stock Market

The bond announcement lands against a backdrop of share price volatility that complicates the narrative of unambiguous market enthusiasm. SPCX shares fell sharply in the days following the IPO — down nearly 5% on Wednesday and as much as 10% intraday on Thursday — as investors weighed whether the company’s valuation can be sustained given the scale of AI-related spending ahead. Wall Street’s current consensus rating is Moderate Buy, based on three Buy ratings and one Sell over the past three months.

The filings also revealed that SpaceX holds 18,712 Bitcoin, acquired at a cost of approximately $661 million and valued at roughly $1.29 billion as of 31 March — a near-doubling of the original investment. That disclosure triggered a short squeeze in SpaceX perpetual futures markets, with implied valuations briefly suggesting a $3 trillion market capitalisation.

A Familiar Pattern for Musk

The structure of this fundraising — equity first, debt second, in rapid succession — follows a pattern Musk has used extensively across his businesses. He has relied heavily on debt markets to grow and acquire companies, securing substantial bank commitments and structuring complex financings. It has not always gone smoothly: his 2022 acquisition of Twitter loaded that company with approximately $12.5 billion in borrowings, creating a hung debt situation that banks initially struggled to sell to investors.

The SpaceX bond deal is a considerably stronger proposition than that Twitter debt was at the time. Investment-grade ratings, a clear refinancing purpose, and a company with genuine revenue-generating businesses in rockets and satellites — alongside the loss-making AI division — give underwriters a more straightforward sell than a leveraged buyout of a struggling social media platform.

What It Signals

The speed with which SpaceX has returned to capital markets after its IPO says something about the scale of investment the AI infrastructure race demands. Raising equity capital, even at a record-breaking $75 billion, was evidently not sufficient on its own. The company needs both equity and debt simultaneously to fund data centres, power infrastructure and computing hardware at the pace its ambitions require.

For European investors watching the AI infrastructure buildout from the sidelines, the SpaceX bond deal is a useful data point on the actual capital intensity of the sector — considerably higher than headline valuations alone tend to suggest.

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