SpaceX raising over $500 million, double what Elon Musk's company planned to bring in - CNBC

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks across the sky, launching and then turning back to land.

SpaceX

WASHINGTON — SpaceX is raising half a billion dollars in new funding, according to documents seen by CNBC on Monday, as the Elon Musk company continues work on three ambitious projects.

The company authorized $500.06 million at a price of $220 per share, the documents show, and values SpaceX at around $36 billion — up from $33.3 billion last year. Notably, the round is about double the $250 million that SpaceX was looking to raise, as CNBC reported previously.

SpaceX did not respond to CNBC requests for comment.

In 2019, SpaceX raised $1.33 billion across three funding rounds. It's one of the most valuable private companies in the world and, with consistently oversubscribed capital raises, SpaceX shares rank among the most in demand of any pre-IPO companies.

The company's steady fundraising comes as it continues development on three ambitious programs: Crew Dragon, Starlink and Starship. While NASA has awarded SpaceX over $3.1 billion to develop the Crew Dragon capsule, Musk has said SpaceX has spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" of its own funds to develop Crew Dragon.

Crew Dragon and Starship represent SpaceX's efforts to fly people in space. But Starlink is an ambitious plan to create a global network of small satellites to provide high-speed internet to any place in the world. Known as a "megaconstellation," Starlink is expected to consist of an interconnected system of about 12,000 satellites.

SpaceX's sixth Starlink launch is scheduled for Sunday, vice president Jonathan Hofeller said at the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. The company will launch another 60 Starlink satellites on this mission, adding to the 302 satellites its launched already.

Hofeller's division of SpaceX has been ramping up its efforts in recent months, with Starlink production increasing so that the company can get the network up and running.

"We produce six satellites per day," Hofeller said.

While SpaceX expects it will cost about $10 billion or more to build the Starlink network, Hofeller said the company's fundraising so far has largely not been directed to the Starlink division, as "we've been able to fund the development of Starlink primarily from our internal businesses." He declared the company is in a "different position" in how it raises funds compared to other companies that are building satellite networks.

"That's why, in general, we've been very quiet about what we're doing because we don't need to go out and raise money for this particular venture," Hofeller said.

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