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

The people familiar with the financing told CNBC that the company’s valuation is soaring to about $ 74 billion.

The people raised the new funds at $ 419.99 per share, people said – or just a cent lower than the $ 420 price that Elon Musk infamous in 2018 when he declared he was ‘funded’ to To make Tesla private.

The latest increase also represents a jump of about 60% in the valuation of the company from its previous round in August, when SpaceX increased about $ 2 billion at a valuation of $ 46 billion.

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

In addition to building a war chest for its ambitious plans, SpaceX was able to sell companies and existing investors an additional $ 750 million in a secondary transaction, one of the people said.

In particular, SpaceX has raised only a fraction of the available funding on the market, and one person told CNBC that the company received an insane demand “of about $ 6 billion in offers in just three days.

The latest influx of cash comes as SpaceX continues to develop two capital-intensive projects.

Starlink is its ambitious project to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, called a constellation in the space industry, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers across the planet. SpaceX leadership previously estimated that Starlink would cost about $ 10 billion or more to build, but believes the network could bring in as much as $ 30 billion a year – or more than ten times the annual revenue of its existing rocket business.

SpaceX has so far launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink, while launching early service in a public beta to customers in the US, Canada and the UK. The company recently expanded the scope of the public beta to allow prospective users to pre-order Starlink service for $ 99. Advance notifications tell users that SpaceX is targeting coverage in your area mid to late 2021, while other pre-orders say 2022.

The company announced in a federal communications commission last week 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 intends to eventually repel Starlink and make it public. He said Starlink “should go through a deep gulf of negative cash flow over the next year or so.”

“Once we can predict the cash flow pretty well, Starlink will give a scholarship,” Musk said.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket represents its other ambitious effort, while the company is constantly building and testing prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas. The company successfully launched several Starship prototypes and landed safely after short flights to approximately 500 feet altitude. But the two most recent high-altitude flights, despite passing several development milestones, exploded during impact during landings.

The Starship prototypes are constructed of stainless steel, with the undertaking to develop a rocket system that is reusable in the same way as a commercial aircraft. SpaceX is developing Starship with the goal of sending cargo and as many as 100 people at a time on missions to the moon and Mars.

Despite the explosive endings on the last two flights, SpaceX saw the launches as a step forward in the development of the rocket. The next Starship prototype is on the company’s launch page, and SpaceX is expected to embark on another test flight in the coming weeks.

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