Elon Musk Raises $1.9 Billion in New Funding for SpaceX

SpaceX has raised $1.9 billion in new funding to add to the 2020 records of Elon Musk. Interest in SpaceX rockets has surged since the successful trip of the Dragon Crew to space, and the company now has oversubscription of nearly $2 billion.

Bloomberg reported the funding earlier, citing sources familiar with the matter. The new funding put SpaceX valuation at $46 billion.

Fidelity Investments, a brokerage company was reported by Bloomberg as the one of the biggest participants in the latest funding.

The development followed the multi-billion military space contract the company co-won with United Launch Alliance (ULA), early in the month. CNBC reported that the US Air Force awarded the rocket builders ULA and SpaceX contracts to launch national security missions for five years starting in 2022.

SpaceX and Tesla have been winning against other giants in space and automobile business, and Elon Musk is basking on the glory. Musk recently became the fifth richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $86.5 billion, according to Forbes.

However, it’s Tesla that recorded the surge that pushed Musk up the ladder of world billionaires amidst the growth recorded in the space business. Apart from the space shuttle, Musk has been shooting up internet satellites through the Starlink, and that too, has ignited a lot of interest.

CNBC reported that there are over 700,000 people demanding the Starlink satellite broadband service in the US alone. “SpaceX seeks to increase the number of fixed earth stations authorized under this blanket license from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000,” the company said in an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). 

SpaceX was awarded the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) contract with Boeing, worth $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion respectively, to build a new spaceflight for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), back in 2010.

But now, as Forbes noted, Musk isn’t the only one in the space business. The world richest man, Jeff Bezos has joined the race for satellite internet network with the recent launch of Amazon’s satellite broadband.

While the satellite internet is heating up between the two entrepreneurs, Musk is stepping ahead with SpaceX’s commercial space trips that are designed to offer transport services at about $50 million per passenger.

Analysts said the progress in the space businesses will instigate investors’ interest in the space economy.

“Led by a string of remarkable feats by SpaceX, we are fielding a pace of incoming investor interest in the space economy on a level that may even exceed the autonomous car frenzy of 2016/2017,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a recent note.

SpaceX is working on a bigger spacecraft, the starship to accommodate more people in the future. The Starship vehicle is expected to accommodate up to 100 passengers.

The company is planning to add it to two other vehicles in its Artemis program billed to commence Moon trips in 2024. And as part of its contract with NASA, SpaceX will continue to deliver astronauts to the ISS, increasing the number of passengers up to four in coming months.

According to Forbes, the global space economy is expected to be worth at least $1.1 trillion in 2040, if the current trend is sustained.