SpaceX CEO Elon Musk declared that the rocket and AI development company is now a public company, or an IPO, on Jun. 12, 2026. For over a month, many companies devoted to artificial intelligence have planned to integrate themselves into Wall Street’s stock market.
For them and Musk, it would create opportunities for shareholders to invest while converging with the frontrunners, such as NASDAQ. Analysts and economists believed in the opposite. They see signs that a potential market crash will ruin the trillionaire’s plan as he and the AI capitalists are speculated to be desperate for funding rather than contributing to innovation.
What is an IPO?
An initial public offering (IPO) is the conversion of a privately owned company into a public one by offering shares for a portion of ownership. Business entrepreneurs mainly used this investment strategy to attract public shareholders for two reasons.
Investopedia explains it best as a two-sided coin. A company IPO can be used to raise capital to boost its overall worth. By maintaining the gains, investors may see a larger return than what was expected. On the other hand, if a company owes debt, it will be offered in the stock market to help recover profit losses.
Relations to the Dot-Com Burst
IPOs were popularized during uptrends and downtrends, including the dot-com boom. Its economic history has been compared to the ongoing AI bubble because of the indicators that caused its downfall. Tech IPOs attempted to capitalize on the exponential growth of internet access in the mid-1990s. The NASDAQ index rose by 86% in 1999 and peaked in March 2000 as investors placed their faith in the new economy.
When America Online (AOL) merged with TimeWarner, the dot-com bubble imploded. New IPOs were left frozen, tech stocks plummeted, and internet startups became worthless within months. The NASDAQ index for website businesses dropped 77% from its peak in October 2002. Analysts are detecting repeated indicators within the AI boom.
How SpaceX Became an AI IPO
Over the past three years, Elon Musk has successfully integrated himself into the AI revolution after establishing his startup, xAI. He promised to have the developers use artificial intelligence responsibly to accelerate scientific discovery in hopes of giving humans a better understanding of the universe. Instead, the world received a built-in Twitter AI, Grok.
CNBC confirmed that Musk merged xAI with his rocket manufacturer, SpaceX, on Feb. 3, 2026. The tech CEO stated that his company is preparing the most ambitious innovation in the AI boom. He told the public that his next mission is to build orbital data centers.
Leading AI critic Ed Zitron has repeatedly warned of the dangers of the tech uptrend in the past year. SpaceX’s IPO has sparked new concerns about the state of AI businesses as more private companies, including its rival OpenAI, are bidding on public shares to repay debts rather than raising capital.
The Better Offline podcaster explained, “There is some investor skepticism. [SpaceX’s IPO] is a good offering for Musk. This is not an amazing one; it’s one of the largest raisers of all time. But the money for it has to come from somewhere. Selling off other equities, for example. So, it makes me think that the investor excitement is not quite there. [Even if it is], it’s not quite sufficient to turn this into some insane offering. 50-70 percent, not those are uncommon. It’s what the AI bubble needed to be bigger than ever.”
Zitron and other whistleblowers have acknowledged the company’s earnings after Musk publicized SpaceX’s S-1 application in May. The CEO claims that 93% of its revenue comes from attributing to AI enterprises, earning $26.5 trillion USD. These numbers are believed to be from xAI after the merger was made because of the amount of the rocket manufacturer’s earnings. 2% of the business is reported to have made only $370 billion during its solo venture.
Aiming for Orbital Data Centers Sounds Too Sci-Fi
Even more terrifying is SpaceX’s decline in rocket manufacturing. On Aug. 5, 2025, Slashgear marked the company’s fifth rocket explosion due to an oxygen leak. Musk isn’t afraid to fail, for his company motto is “fail fast, learn fast.” But it will not justify the cost of each launch being worth $100 million, and additional damage coverage on the Starlink satellites in those destroyed space vessels.
While SpaceX has improved, as shown by the Starship V3 launch, both NASA and investors are still cautious about its launch malfunctions. From the bottom carrier, one Super Heavy booster failed to ignite the other 32 at launch. The Starship V3 did reach orbit, but it still generates skepticism about its traveling capabilities.
Musk’s orbital data center plan is specifically for the SpaceX AI1 Satellite. He’s set on launching one million of these astral computers to assemble a low-cost megastructure in hopes of providing 2-3 years of generative AI computing. The AI1 satellite is said to contain an in-house AI processor, the Terafab Chip (D3), which Musk says is as powerful as an Nvidia GB300 AI server rack.
Outer space also provides the necessary conditions to run a data center, like infinite solar energy and below-freezing temperatures. The Terafab processors are currently claimed to be radiation-tolerant for longer durability against UV rays. Business leaders and economists plan to observe the prototypes in early 2027 to determine the cost of galactic GPU replacements.
James Chanos Foresees Another Enron Scandal Event
Veteran short seller James Chanos has watched SpaceX turn Elon Musk’s trillionaire dream into a reality. However, he viewed the company’s financial reports as troubling for the US economy. He discussed the matter on Bloomberg Television on June 12, 2026.
Host Tom Keene commented that Chanos compared the SpaceX IPO timeline to the Enron Scandal. He graciously educated him, his hostess, Scarlet Fu, and the viewers on why he sees it as sharing similarities. “[The company] is ushering in 2026 for massive equity issuance. Historically, in the 20th and 21st centuries, any time you have seen massive IPOs and secondaries relative to the size of the market, investors have been advised to be a little more cautious.
[…] The vast driver for SpaceX’s TAM was the enterprise solution for xAI, basically Grok. Instead, they did a 180 pivot and said, ‘We are going to lease out our capacity to Anthropic and Google.’ And that’s the NIO cloud model. That’s your equipment lessor, and that is a less-valued business in the marketplace than being a modeled company or hyperscaler.
[…] It’s a finance business. You are basically buying the chip from Nvidia and other manufacturers. And then leasing them out to [other AI business leaders]. It’s a rate-of-return business, not a high-tech business.”
The Enron Scandal has presented the consequences of a company falsifying its financial reports. The energy company declared its bankruptcy in December 2001 after claiming to have exceeded assets of $60 billion and revenues of $100 billion. The FBI was sent to investigate their offices in Houston and later in California.
Soon, the US House and Senate committees called for hearings with Enron’s lead staff: Founder Kenneth Lay, CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and CFO Andy Fastow. Within 18 months, investigators found evidence of inflated income.
The Public Services International traced and documented their findings from four shell companies called Slapshot, Fishtail, Bacchus, and Sundance. Enron committed fraudulent transactions by reporting to banks about sham asset sales and sham loans to dodge tax liabilities. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen was connected to these shell accounts as an Enron auditor, disguising them as joint ventures. The scandal shook the US and the world with the most complex white-collar robbery ever.
SpaceX Parties On, But for How Long?
For now, Musk and his shareholders will continue to celebrate the ongoing success of SpaceX’s IPO. The AI company’s shares soared 7% higher than their 19% gain on Jun 14. But not everyone is joining the party, as others are continuing to protest against him for the Grok CSAM investigation.
On Jun. 11, the day before the IPO was established, a 40-foot inflatable version of Musk appeared in Times Square. He was depicted shirtless, and his back said, “SpaceX‘s Grok makes AI child porn.” Protestors reminded people that Twitter allowed any images to be reimagined by Grok users, even if it’s meant for their indecent pleasure. The platform’s France HQ was later raided on Feb. 3, with officers discovering 3 million deepfakes were generated, including 23,000 containing minors.
The cases also escalated after the third batch of the Epstein Files was released on Jan. 30. Musk’s name was found in a message addressed to the late financier, containing evidence of him wanting to visit his private island. He asked, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”
