Elon Musk finally let the world peek behind the curtain at SpaceX, and honestly? The S-1 filing is wilder than a Starship launch. We’re talking about a company that’s literally betting billions on making humanity multiplanetary—and Musk’s personal compensation package is absolutely unhinged in the best way possible.
Let’s start with the headline number: Musk could pocket up to $737 billion if he hits his performance targets. That’s not a typo. We’re talking about roughly $583 billion from a one-billion-share award that vests when SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion market cap AND establishes a permanent Mars colony with at least one million people. There’s also another $154 billion tied to building orbital data centers that can deliver 100 terawatts of compute annually. So yeah, Musk has some pretty serious skin in the game—literally the entire game.
Here’s where it gets really interesting: the filing shows that SpaceX is spending way more on AI than on rockets. In the first quarter alone, the company dropped $7.7 billion on AI (mostly xAI’s Grok project) compared to just $1 billion on space operations. For all of 2025, it was $12.7 billion on AI versus $3.8 billion on space. That’s a plot twist nobody saw coming. The company that’s famous for launching rockets is apparently doubling down on AI infrastructure.
Speaking of infrastructure, Anthropic is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for compute access. That’s $15 billion in guaranteed revenue just from one AI company. SpaceX is basically building the data centers that power the AI revolution, and they’re getting paid handsomely for it.
Now, about Musk’s control: he holds 85.1% of the combined voting power through his 5.5 billion shares. Translation? He’s not going anywhere, and neither is his vision. Even after going public, Musk maintains an iron grip on the company’s direction. This isn’t a typical IPO where founders dilute their power—this is Musk saying “I’m still in charge, deal with it.”
The filing also revealed something pretty wild about Grok, SpaceX’s AI assistant. The company literally warned investors that Grok’s “NSFW mode” could be risky business. They’re basically saying “yeah, our AI can get spicy, and that might be a problem.” It’s refreshingly honest in a way most tech companies would never dare.
What makes this whole thing fascinating is that SpaceX isn’t just a rocket company anymore—it’s a sprawling tech conglomerate with ambitions that make most Silicon Valley startups look like lemonade stands. They’re building rockets, data centers, AI models, and apparently planning to colonize Mars. The S-1 filing confirms what we’ve suspected: Musk is playing 4D chess while everyone else is still figuring out checkers.
The IPO is coming, and when it does, investors will be betting on whether Musk can actually pull off his interplanetary dreams. Based on this filing? He’s definitely not thinking small.
