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The Takeaway

BlackRock has discussed investing $5 billion to $10 billion in SpaceX’s initial public offering next month, people familiar with the matter said. The massive order, for an offering that could raise as much as $75 billion, would represent a vote of confidence in Elon Musk’s company from the world’s largest asset manager.

The investment would highlight the close relationship between Musk and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, both of whom traveled to China with President Donald Trump in recent days. The investment would also reflect a growing Wall Street consensus to participate in the largest IPO in history even while SpaceX is seeking a stratospheric valuation and planning to give investors almost no ability to challenge management decisions.

A large BlackRock check would provide SpaceX with an anchor investor and could also help win over other large investors. Commitments of this size are rare: Investment bankers have found fewer than a dozen instances over the past quarter century when investors wrote checks of $1 billion or more in an IPO. Still, SpaceX’s IPO is unprecedented in size and the company will need several investment firms to invest multibillion-dollar pots of money, a person close to the deal said.

BlackRock, for its part, may feel the need to play catch-up. It invested in SpaceX privately, for a stake now worth at least $300 million, according to public mutual fund filings. But it has a much smaller stake than the positions other large public investors, including Fidelity, Baillie Gifford and Franklin Templeton, have already built.

A BlackRock spokesperson declined to comment. The amount that BlackRock ultimately offers to invest could change based on how SpaceX prices its IPO and other factors leading up to the deal. SpaceX is expected to begin its official roadshow in early June, people close to the deal said.

In the run-up to the IPO, Fink has been warming to Musk. He interviewed Musk on stage at Davos earlier this year, praising the returns of Tesla, in which BlackRock owns a big stake. “Imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon when Tesla went public and how much returns for all the pension funds that invested side by side,” Fink said.

Fink closed the talk by saying, “There’s so many myths around Elon Musk. I can tell you he’s a great friend, and I constantly learn so much from him. I’m totally inspired by his vision for the future, and I don’t think it’s a bad future, and I agree with his optimism.”

SpaceX has been courting large investors, last month hosting a two-day trip to its Starbase launch pad on the southern tip of Texas and to its xAI data centers in Memphis. The trip included large contingents from mutual funds BlackRock, T. Rowe Price, Capital Group and Fidelity Investments, investors on the trip said.

“The bullish camp says, ‘You’ve never not made money betting with Elon,’” said one investor at an asset management firm who traveled on the trip.

The IPO will test the outer bounds of investors’ belief in Musk. SpaceX is going public at a valuation that would represent a steep multiple of sales, with its crucial AI strategy in flux. Key AI researchers have left the company, and much of the growth of its space business hinges on a huge, fully reusable rocket still in the testing stages.

Investors are largely drawn to SpaceX because of its significant lead over competitors in rocket launches, and its promise to use that advantage to send more lucrative payloads, such as advanced chips that can power AI models, into space.

SpaceX, meanwhile, has planned to warn investors they will have minimal say in the governance of the company and limited legal recourse. The company’s confidential IPO prospectus, excerpts of which The Information viewed, states that “mandatory arbitration” would limit shareholders’ legal rights. The company also plans to concentrate voting power with Musk, who will own a separate share class giving him 10 votes for each share, The Information previously reported.

BlackRock would make the investment in SpaceX out of its $536 billion of actively managed funds. The value of the deal depends on the size of the overall offering and its price.