The Bankers Behind SpaceX’s “Project Apex” IPO
The weeks leading up to SpaceX’s initial public offering will test big ideas about the space industry and the future of artificial intelligence. It will also answer a more basic question: how well Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can work together.
The Wall Street rivals’ top bankers have been holed up at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters in recent weeks alongside the rocketship company’s finance executives, people familiar with the matter said. The high-stakes assignment for “Project Apex,” the internal name for the IPO, has fallen to bankers such as Morgan Stanley’s Michael Grimes and Kate Claassen, as well as Goldman Sachs’ Kim Posnett and Kay Lee.
The two banks, which lead the vast majority of tech IPOs, typically have the top assignments on the largest tech deals, with one generally winning the coveted “lead left” position. But SpaceX hasn’t officially named the banks running the IPO—and may not name a lead left bank at all, and instead list the banks alphabetically. In fact, no bank was on the cover of a version of the confidential IPO prospectus filed in late March, a person who reviewed it said.
Spokespeople for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.
Until that decision, the fierce rivals instead have had to work together to draft the prospectus, hammer out details like lock-up restrictions and work with other banks, such as J.P. Morgan, Citi and Bank of America, helping advise or sell the deal around the world.
They’ll have time to get to know each other better. At least some of the group will now head out on the road, for a series of meetings with investors and analysts to show off SpaceX’s Starship site on the southern tip of Texas, and its data centers in Tennessee, before a more formal investor roadshow in early June and an IPO in the middle of that month. During that roadshow, SpaceX investors can field questions about SpaceX's huge debt load, which we broke here today, or Musk's new compensation package—tied to a Mars colony and data centers in space—that we broke last night.
How Goldman and Morgan Stanley pull off the expected $75 billion IPO could also determine their ability to win the next mega IPOs. The bankers, after a spell of infrequent and underperforming IPOs, have also been angling to lead expected public offerings for Anthropic and OpenAI.
One of the banks could still end up as the lead when the SpaceX document is publicly unveiled next month. The banks are in talks for the stabilization agent role, a coveted job overseeing the early hours of trading in the IPO that could bring additional fees and trading commissions, according to people familiar with the matter.
Morgan Stanley had long been considered as the favorite to win the top banking role on the SpaceX deal, according to predictions site Polymarket. That’s in large part because it helped Musk buy Twitter in 2021 and lent significant money for the deal. Grimes, Morgan Stanley’s star banker, returned to the bank recently after a short-lived stint in the Trump administration leading a government investment accelerator. He and Claasen, Morgan Stanley’s managing director of technology investment banking, worked closely with Musk on his acquisition of Twitter, now named X.
Other signs have pointed to Morgan Stanley eventually taking the top role. Its bankers including Grimes led a meeting of other banks working on the deal, known as the syndicate, earlier this month. Morgan Stanley is also leaning on Colin Stewart, one of the most senior IPO bankers in tech, whose notable recent listings include the CoreWeave and Reddit IPOs, to ensure the highly complicated deal runs smoothly.
The fact that Goldman Sachs, which represented Twitter’s board in its sale to Musk, is still in the conversation to lead the offering might be considered a win for the bank, given Morgan Stanley’s past work with Musk. While Posnett is a familiar face atop Goldman as its New York-based co-head of global investment banking, she was known more for working on big acquisitions such as Silver Lake’s $25 billion take-private of sports and entertainment giant Endeavor in 2024, than she is for Musk’s other acquisitions.
But Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has made the IPO a top priority for bankers, a person close to the bank said. Also working on the SpaceX deal is Los Angeles-based Dan Dees, Goldman’s co-head of global head of banking and markets. SpaceX marks a high-profile return to the Musk business for Dees, who has advised Musk’s Tesla in the past.
The group of SpaceX finance executives also includes two Goldman Sachs veterans: SpaceX head of investor relations Andrea Williams and vice president of finance Majla Custo.
The bankers take their orders from a SpaceX finance team that includes chief financial officer Bret Johnsen, a 15-year mainstay at the company, who has outlasted other Musk-company finance chiefs and is known as a savvy operator. He previously worked at Broadcom and Mindspeed, a semiconductor company