SpaceX raised $25 billion in its debut bond offering, , according to Bloomberg, less than two weeks after completing its initial public offering.
Structured across five tranches, the investment-grade offering drew nearly $90 billion in orders — enough to push the final size $5 billion beyond the $20 billion originally sought, according to CNBC. Banks managing the sale include Bank of America $BAC, Citigroup $C, Goldman Sachs $GS, JPMorgan $JPM Chase, and Morgan Stanley $MS.
Despite the volume of demand, bond investors extracted a meaningful concession to participate. At a spread of 1.4 percentage points over Treasuries, the 10-year tranche came in roughly half a point wider than where Intel $INTC — a similarly rated tech company — has its own 10-year notes trading. Investors gravitated most heavily toward the deal's near-term maturities rather than its longer-dated paper — a pattern that, along with the elevated spread, points to unease over the company's cash consumption. S&P Global $SPGI Ratings expects that drain to persist at least through 2030 and to accelerate in the near term.
"The equity market owns the upside, bondholders don't," said Grant Nachman, founder and chief investment officer of Shorecliff Asset Management Co. "So you have to get paid for the risk. That's why a company can be worth trillions, yet still need to pay meaningful spread to access debt capital markets."
The bond sale ranks among the largest of the AI era. Oracle $ORCL raised $25 billion in a bond offering earlier this year, Amazon $AMZN raised about $54 billion, and Alphabet $GOOGL raised about $31.5 billion in bond sales across the U.S. and Europe, according to CNBC.
SpaceX's entry into the public bond market comes as the company pursues an array of capital-intensive projects, including expansion of its Starlink satellite internet business, development of its Starship rockets, and a broader AI buildout that includes data centers and computing infrastructure. The company said it intends to use proceeds to repay borrowings under its bridge loan facility in full, with any remainder going to general corporate purposes. SpaceX held approximately $100.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of June 19, the company said.
A three-day slide that erased upward of $600 billion in market capitalization came to an end Tuesday, when SpaceX shares posted a gain. Outside of Starlink, no other division of SpaceX turns a profit; the company's prospectus shows cumulative losses of $41.3 billion stretching back to its 2002 founding.