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[Updated] Insider reveals possible SpaceX IPO, Tesla shareholders will reportedly have early access

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SpaceX is preparing to IPO this year, according to a leaked report posted to a trading forum and tipped off to Teslarati. A user by the name of Jushuatree provides very specific detail in what will likely be the most anticipated and talked about IPO in the last decade.

Updated: SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell issued a statement confirming that there are no plans for a SpaceX initial public offering, contrary to Empire Capital’s original communication to its investors.

Updated: Teslarati was able to connect with Empire Capital Partners via phone call and speak to a representative in regards to the reported email sent by the firm. Empire Capital Partners confirmed the email, however also qualified it by saying they were reaching out to clients floating the idea of a SpaceX IPO in an attempt to gather more interest from clients in Tesla, Inc. They do not have any evidence of SpaceX preparing for an IPO, and they believed the best way to gain potential early interest is through an investment in Tesla.

The post reveals that Empire Capital Partners, a hedge fund focused on the technology sector, is soliciting interest in a pre-IPO for SpaceX and telling investors that the company has positioned a large stake in Tesla. Reportedly, Tesla investors will have exclusive early access to buy into the “Biggest opportunity of the decade” as soon as the initial public offering is released.

While news of a SpaceX IPO will likely trigger mass interest from institutional investors and Tesla shareholders, it’s important to note that a long process awaits before the Elon Musk-backed space company goes public. SpaceX has not yet filed an S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which can take upwards of 30 days to review, not including any time required for additional amendments made to the filing. The S-1 filing allows the company to submit financial information to the SEC ahead of launching on the public markets. Companies looking to make an initial public offering then proceed with a “roadshow” to convince institutional investors to invest in the company. After that, the company would set the pricing of the IPO and begin the offering.

[Update: Empire Capital Partners, in fact, has no relation with a hedge fund run by Scott Fine and Peter Richards. The compay’s official entity is Empire Capital GP, LLC]

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Empire Capital Partners is a global asset manager, based in Connecticut, with $1.13B in assets and was founded in 2005. ECP was founded by Scott A. Fine and Peter J. Richards, and they have participated in several large IPOs including Box, Square, Twitter, Fitbit, and Esty. The company lists SpaceX as a partner on their website and a featured investment that is “live” to their customers.

According to the insider note posted to Sharetrader, ECP has a “10-year history of substantial financial investment” with SpaceX. The note indicates that the hedge fund has been working on the deal for the past 18-months and looking forward to presenting “the biggest pre-IPO opportunity of 2017, maybe even the decade” to its investors.

“Empire Capital Partners is proud to present to you, the fantastic opportunity, in which you are able to take full advantage by getting involved at the ground level. This is sure to be the biggest pre-IPO opportunity of 2017, maybe even the decade. SpaceX is the brainchild of Elon Musk, a highly undervalued company founded in 2002. SpaceX raised $1 billion from Google Inc. and Fidelity Ventures in January 2015. This investment accounts for less than 10% of the company’s estimated value, conservatively between $10 and $12 Billion US Dollars.” reads the email sent to Joshuatree.

SpaceX will list on the NYSE, while Tesla is listed on the NASDAQ. Tesla’s IPO in 2010 went for $17 per share and raised over $226M. Tesla has since raised several billion dollars from the public markets since, including $1.4B in March this year, and continues to see strong demand from investors.

Musk stated in 2015 that a SpaceX IPO would be unlikely in the future, stating, “It will go public once we have regular flights to Mars.” Since then, Musk has seen incredible success in the public markets. Tesla continues to set record highs and currently worth over $51B, becoming one of the largest automakers in the world. Additionally, the overall conditions in the market are at near all-time highs – a prime condition for a SpaceX IPO.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk and has since risen to become a multi-billion dollar company with over 5,000 employees. The company has completed dozens of flights over the past couple of years and landed several lucrative contracts with NASA, The Department of Defense, SES, and Iridium. Outside of SpaceX’s current operations, Musk has even larger plans for the company. Musk revealed in June 2016 that SpaceX intends to build a rocket capable of reaching Mars and transporting large masses of people. Called, Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), SpaceX is looking to build a 40-story tall re-useable rocket capable of carrying hundreds of people to the red planet. The company has lofty goals to start testing the ITS rocket after 2020 but requires significant funding for the program. At its inception, Elon Musk injected roughly $100M in capital into the company.

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We’ve provided a copy of the original e-mail tipped off to Teslarati and reportedly sent by Empire Capital Partners to its clients.

We are currently positioning the bulk of our clients into ‘Tesla Motors Inc.’ a company trading on the NASDAQ in New York under the trading symbol ‘TSLA.’ The company has an ancillary company preparing for a formal listing in the New York Stock Exchange, as an IPO (Initial Public Offering) called SPACE X. The reason we are putting all our preferred clients into TESLA; is what we know. Not only is TESLA going to show solid gains in the short term – yielding clients anywhere upwards of 20%. We have insight that the SPACE X IPO will be the most lucrative, and sought after IPO of 2017! Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, and CEO of Tesla, Solar City and Space X has announced – the existing shareholders of Tesla will have exclusive option to buy into the Initial Public Offering of Space X as soon as they are released. Elon Musk likes to take care of his own. We have bought an institutional position in TESLA and are using the shares that we have acquired to bring new clients on board at a discount, in order to show them how Empire Capital Partners can deliver in 2017. Our goal is simple. We want to show you the power of information and get you involved in the Space X IPO. The minimum investment into TESLA is $10,000.00 USD and that would allow you to take advantage of the Initial Public Offering of SPACE X once it is announced. You can find additional information about TESLA at http://www.tesla.com

Empire Capital Partners has, with SpaceX, a 10 year history of substantial financial investment. We have spent the last 18 months in analytical research having crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s.

Empire Capital Partners is proud to present to you, the fantastic opportunity, in which you are able to take full advantage by getting involved at the ground level. This is sure to be the biggest pre-IPO opportunity of 2017, maybe even the decade. SpaceX is the brainchild of Elon Musk, a highly undervalued company founded in 2002. SpaceX raised $1 billion from Google Inc. and Fidelity Ventures in January 2015. This investment accounts for less than 10% of the company’s estimated value, conservatively between $10 and $12 Billion US Dollars.

Although SpaceX is known by the general public for its work on reusable rockets, the well-known giant Google has other interests Google’s interest peaked with Musk’s recent announcement when he outlined a plan for a global communications system that would use satellites to beam low-cost internet around the world.

Elon exclaimed, “Larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” He added, “at least five years and $15 billion to build and will implement 700 tiny satellites 750 miles above the Earth.” Google has long had similar ambitions itself by spreading internet around the world, including to remote regions. Google would then boost the number of people who have access to its services and of course all the extra revenue that comes with it! SpaceX points out that two thirds of the world have no access at all. It’s why we’re so focused on new technologies. New technologies that have the potential to bring hundreds of millions more people online in the coming years.”

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Facebook and Google have already been working with balloons and drones trying to figure out how to spread Internet access. The internet space race is on! With Google heavily investing such large amounts into SpaceX, TALK ABOUT A WINNING COMBINATION! GOOGLE AND ELON MUSK! Now might be the time to sell those Facebook shares and back SpaceX by investing into the only clear winner of that race.

Even combining Google and SpaceX’s achievements and technologies, there are still a lot of big questions and challenges around how Musk’s satellite vision will work. Another big challenge would be installing ground-based antennas and computer terminals to receive the satellite signals. One thing that you can count on, the sure fire bet!

IF ELON MUSK PUTS HIS MIND AND MONEY INTO IT. IT WILL HAPPEN!

Fidelity invested in SpaceX in January 2015, putting up $16.75 million to join Google in a $1Billion investment. Fidelity now values its SpaceX stake at $19.25 million, a 15% increase. SpaceX said the two new additional investors owned just under 10% of the company. Google put the vast majority of cash into SpaceX’s billion-dollar financing round — $900 million for a 7.5% stake in the company. That implies SpaceX’s new valuation is $12 billion and puts the company ahead of companies like Dropbox, Snapchat and Airbnb, but behind Xiaomi, Uber and Palantir.

As a private company, SpaceX’s financials are fairly opaque, it has booked as much as $7 billion in future revenue from 60 commercial launch bookings over the next several years, and last year won a $2.6 billion contract to build the Dragon 2 and transport astronauts to the International Space Station. It also is bidding for a second contract to ferry cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), which is expected to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

SpaceX now ranks fourth on The Wall Street Journal’s list of billion-dollar private companies, securing an easy $12 Billion valuation.

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SpaceX’s value exceeds that of rivals. United Launch Alliance, a key SpaceX competitor in the US, is reportedly the subject of a $2 billion takeover bid by the space firm Aerojet. But ULA has older technology and less commercial business than SpaceX. Arianespace, the European private launch contractor, was valued between $340 and $640 million as France prepared to sell its stake in the firm this summer, but it does not manufacture its own rockets.

Christian Prenzler is currently the VP of Business Development at Teslarati, leading strategic partnerships, content development, email newsletters, and subscription programs. Additionally, Christian thoroughly enjoys investigating pivotal moments in the emerging mobility sector and sharing these stories with Teslarati's readers. He has been closely following and writing on Tesla and disruptive technology for over seven years. You can contact Christian here: christian@teslarati.com

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Investor's Corner

Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car

Analysts say the Roadster demo puts a Tesla and SpaceX merger back on the table.

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Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)
Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)

The Roadster unveiling near Waco ended Thursday night, and by Friday morning much of the investor reaction had less to do with the car than with who owns the rocket technology inside it.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the event “puts the Tesla/SpaceX relationship on the table in a tangible way,” pointing to the propulsion, pressure vessel and control hardware sitting on a Tesla product. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management called the demo “a ridiculous display of engineering” with “no commercial value” beyond embarrassing traditional automakers, though he said it showed Musk wants the two companies together.

The more specific forecast came a day earlier from Barclays. Analyst Dan Levy told clients a deal could be announced before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must happen by December 6, and that an announcement in late October or early November could make shareholder approval harder. Barclays expects SpaceX to be the buyer in an all stock deal, with Tesla holders receiving SpaceX shares at a premium, based on market values of roughly $2.1 trillion for SpaceX and $1.5 trillion for Tesla. If nothing lands around the meeting, the bank still sees an announcement within 6 to 12 months.

The Roadster demo just added more weight to merger speculations. Tesla’s demo used cold gas thrusters and pressure tanks of the kind SpaceX uses on Falcon 9, and Musk described the car as a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers, as we mentioned in our breakdown of the three Roadster configurations.


Musk has not publicly addressed a deal since the event, as far as we have seen. His most direct answer remains the one he gave at the All In Summit, when he said that with so much collaboration, “who can imagine what action one might take” without ruling anything out. Ives has held to a 2027 timeline since his March note, and Musk pushed back on the China piece of the speculation when ARK floated a year end announcement in August.

The next test is Tesla’s third quarter earnings call on October 21. However, we recall in July that Musk told analysts, “we can’t talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call,” so a clear answer wouldn’t be expected.

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Elon Musk breaks his silence on the Starlink impact to Ukraine drones

Musk says the US military and president set Starshield limits, not SpaceX, amid Ukraine complaints.

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Elon Musk says the speed limit cutting out Ukraine’s military Starlink terminals is not SpaceX’s decision. In a post on X Wednesday, Musk wrote that “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” He added that Starlink is a commercial service limited to civilian or defensive activities and “cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”

He was replying to Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former defense minister, who had thanked Musk for restoring connectivity at speeds up to 160 km/h and said removing the Starshield limit entirely is “now critical for Ukraine’s defense.”

The complaint started Tuesday night, when Ukrainian officials said military terminals began losing service above roughly 100 mph. Presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said the defense forces got no warning and several missions were disrupted, as Teslarati reported earlier Wednesday. The 7th Rapid Reaction Corps told Reuters connections dropped for 10 to 20 seconds at speeds well below the limit, which made drones harder to control. Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, asked Musk on X whether he is “playing politics with your products again.”

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That is why the Starlink and Starshield distinction matters. SpaceX introduced Starshield in 2022 as the government version of Starlink, with an initial focus on Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads. It won a Space Force contract in 2023 with a $70 million ceiling. In December 2024, the Pentagon moved Ukraine’s terminals onto Starshield, covering about 3,000 units across two contracts. Ukraine’s military connections therefore run through a service that Musk now says sits under Washington’s control.

SpaceX pitches subscription model for Trump’s Golden Dome

While Musk’s post describes who holds authority, it does not infer that anyone ordered the limit, and neither SpaceX nor the US government has confirmed who set it. Ukrainian officials have pointed to the timing, which follows President Trump’s push for an energy ceasefire and Musk’s Saturday post that “Zelensky has gone too far.” The BBC noted Trump denied threatening to restrict intelligence sharing with Kyiv, and no evidence has been presented that Washington requested the cap.

The episode also revives a promise from 2025. After Poland accused him of threatening Ukraine’s access, Musk said Starlink “will never turn off its terminals” and would not be used as a bargaining chip. Poland has since supplied more than 29,000 terminals to Ukraine. Teslarati also covered Kyiv’s search for Starlink alternatives in 2025, and the latest dispute gives that search new urgency.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla opens the Q&A for its biggest earnings call yet

Tesla opens its Q3 earnings Q&A, and Cybercab, Robotaxi, Optimus and regulators loom over October 21.

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Tesla has opened its shareholder question portal for the Q3 2026 earnings call, with the Say Q&A page already listing questions. Investors have until 4:00 p.m. EDT on October 20 to submit and vote on what management should answer.

The call is set for Wednesday, October 21. Tesla will post results after the market closes, with a live webcast at 4:30 p.m. CT, or 5:30 p.m. ET, through its investor relations site.

Say ranks questions by the number of shares behind the votes, which gives institutional holders extra weight over the retail crowd.

Ahead of Q2, retail investors asked why Robotaxi growth had stalled, when Cybercab would start customer rides, and where the Optimus Gen 3 ramp stood, while an institutional holder asked how Tesla and SpaceX would split Terafab duties. Cybercab has since answered one of those. Tesla said last week it has 300 plus Cybercabs serving Austin, up eightfold in 30 days, with Dallas named as the next city. The questions now are likely to move from when to how fast.

There is also a regulatory question hanging over the call. NHTSA has demanded sworn answers on how the pedal free Cybercab was certified against federal safety standards, with responses due October 30, nine days after the call. Whether an analyst raises it live is unknown, but it is the kind of exposure that tends to find its way into a Q&A.

The numbers will not be the main draw. Tesla already reported 486,532 deliveries and 13.7 GWh of storage for the quarter. Consensus sits around 43 to 45 cents per share on roughly $27.8 billion in revenue, according to Zacks, after a Q2 report that missed on EPS. Goldman Sachs, which holds a Neutral rating and a $360 target, argues the outlook for Robotaxi, FSD and Optimus will matter more to the stock than the quarter itself.

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The call also lands six days after the rescheduled Roadster event, which Tesla will stream on X on Thursday, October 15, at 7:55 p.m. CT. If the Roadster shows up with a production date or a SpaceX thruster package, expect it to climb the voting list before the deadline.

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