【AI前沿】In SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is a risk factor

ScienceAIBusinessIn SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is a risk factorThe rocket company says it’s ‘highly dependent’ on Musk’s leadership. And that his other companies are possible competitors.byAndrew J. HawkinsMay 21, 2026, 3:42 AM UTCLinkShareGiftBloomberg via Getty ImagesScienceAIBusinessIn SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is a risk factorThe rocket company says it’s ‘highly dependent’ on Musk’s leadership. And that his other companies are possible competitors.byAndrew J. HawkinsMay 21, 2026, 3:42 AM UTCLinkShareGiftAndrew J. Hawkinsis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.The SpaceX IPO is here, and it’s more than just an historic public offering that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. It also reveals more ways in which Elon Musk’s companies interact and overlap with each other, shuffling money around in ways that are often difficult to keep track of.This is evident in ways that are both obvious and less so. A CTRL-F search for “Tesla” yields 87 results, xAI is mentioned 356 times, and X 267 times. Even the Boring Company (7 times) and Neuralink (3) get a few mentions. Throughout its 330 pages of rocket launches and interplanetary wishes, you can trace the network of ways in which Musk’s companies deal with each other.It’s also evident in the ways Musk’s companies are shareholders in other Musk companies, further intertwining their fates in the process. Based on the Form S-1 filing, Tesla owns nearly 19 million shares of SpaceX’s Class A common stock, which is less than 1 percent of the total outstanding stock. Tesla’s stake in xAI was converted to SpaceX shares afterElon Musk merged his AI company with his space companyin February.The filing also reveals SpaceX bought $131 million worth of Cybertrucks “at manufacturer’s suggested retail price from Tesla.”ABloombergreportearlier this year suggested that SpaceX bought 1,279 Cybertrucks in the fourth quarter of 2025, but the IPO suggests it has probably acquired a few more than that.AsElectreknotes, without these purchases, Cybertruck registration numbers likely would have gone down year over year.Tesla’s Megapacks, the company’s giant stationary storage batteries, are used to stabilize SpaceX’s Colossus I and II data centers in Memphis, TN, during peak demand. The rocket company purchased $697 million worth of Megapacks from Tesla in 2024 and 2025.RelatedThe SpaceX IPO is a trillion-dollar gamble on the future of spaceSpaceX’s relationship with Musk’s Boring Company is much more quaint in comparison. The tunneling venture has paid about $1.2 million in office leases to SpaceX. And SpaceX spent about $1 million for the Boring Company to dig a tunnel at its headquarters in Bastrop, Texas.SpaceX was valued at $1.25 trillion earlier this year after merging with xAI, Musk’s AI company that also owns X, formerly Twitter. The tie-up means investors will be buying in at a historically high price — but Musk combined the companies at great cost to himself, and also SpaceX. The filing showed that the rocket company directed about 60 percent of its capital spending in 2025 toward xAI, or about $20 billion.But asTechCrunchnotes, xAI lost billions of dollars last year on revenue that grew by only 22 percent year over year.When going public, companies are required to list their risk factors, under the assumption that investors should know about all the skeletons in the closet before putting their money down. For SpaceX, the biggest risk is also the biggest asset: Elon Musk.For SpaceX, the biggest risk is also the biggest asset: Elon Musk.While any company, especially one as complex as SpaceX, would be expected to include a long list of risk factors in its S-1, SpaceX’s is unique in that it includes its own CEO. The filing explicitly states that SpaceX is “highly dependent on the continued services of Mr. Musk,” noting that his leadership, vision, and technical expertise are critical to the company’s future.Like other Musk-owned companies, SpaceX acknowledges that Musk isn’t always 100 percent focused on SpaceX. And it admits that Musk’s intersecting businesses may end up cannibalizing each other in some way. Conflicts could arise. And if they do, Musk is not “restricted” from doing something that directly competes with his other companies, including SpaceX.Conflicts of interest could arise in the future between us, on the one hand, and Mr. Musk and entities owned by or affiliated with him, on the other hand, concerning among other things, business transactions, potential competitive business activities or other opportunities…. Furthermore, Mr. Musk and other businesses owned by or affiliated with him may now, or in the future, directly or indirectly, compete with us for investment or business opportunities.The S-1 goes on to enumerate the ways in which Musk’s extensive entanglements could result in financial loss for SpaceX. The company i