Elon Musk Ratchets Up Space War with Bezos, Targets $300M for SpaceX

SpaceX can’t seem to get enough capital for its lofty ambitions. Elon Musk’s commercial space company is raising money for the third time this year. CNBC reported that SpaceX in the latest fundraising round seeks to raise $314.2 million at a price of $214 a share.

Luckily for Elon Musk, private investors can’t get enough of SpaceX either. They were lining up for the last round in May, which raised $536 million at a price of $204 a share. The aerospace company reportedly turned away $400 million in additional funding.

SpaceX’s first equity round of 2019 placed $486 million. So the latest fund will bring the year-to-date capital infusion for SpaceX to $1.336 billion. It will value the aerospace innovator at $35.24 billion.

Shadow of SpaceX

May’s half-a-billion-dollar private placement for SpaceX shares pushed the company’s total valuation to $33.3 billion. On May 31, Elon Musk’s space company eclipsed Tesla’s market cap for the first time.

It was a major milestone for Musk and the hard-charging aerospace startup, though a disappointing one for its beleaguered car-charging sister company, Tesla.

Sky Is Not the Limit

But SpaceX is poised to rake in an easy $40 billion in annual revenue from its Starlink satellite internet system. Estimates place the total cost of execution at a comparatively paltry $10 billion.

Point-to-point space travel is another exciting possibility that Elon Musk’s drastic cost reduction via reusable rockets will enable. It could be an enormous profit-making opportunity because the one thing the world’s wealthy don’t have any more of than anyone else is time. And their time is more valuable in terms of opportunity costs.

Elon Musk vs. Jeff Bezos Space Race

SpaceX filed the June fundraising round Monday, the day before a successful Falcon Heavy rocket launch with 24 satellites and a NASA atomic clock experiment in tow.

The week before, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, Blue Origin, test fired its BE-7 rocket, which will be used in a planned Lunar landing.

The two companies have spent the last few years clawing at each other on their way to the stars. Dueling press releases and mutual trash talking among the rivals have been the least of it. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have also sued each other over patents and the right to use launchpads.

 

The competition seems to be pushing both companies to reach new heights.

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