When a company raises the largest sum in the history of stock market debuts, most observers would expect it to spend a few weeks enjoying the moment before returning to capital markets. SpaceX did not wait that long.
Ten days after completing its record listing on the Nasdaq on the 12th of June, the rocket and satellite company announced its first ever sale of corporate bonds, initially seeking to raise $20 billion. The response from investors who lend rather than invest through shares was remarkable. Orders flooded in to the tune of nearly $90 billion, more than four times the amount originally sought. By the time the books closed on Tuesday the 23rd, SpaceX had increased the total to $25 billion, making it one of the largest corporate debt sales of recent years.
The bonds were structured across five separate groups of notes, with repayment dates spread between the years 2031 and 2056. Interest rates on those notes ranged from 5.35 per cent on the earliest batch to 6.65 per cent on those not due for repayment until the middle of the century. The five banks that arranged the transaction were Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, the same institutions that had originally extended the bridging loan that this bond sale is largely designed to replace.
That bridging loan sits at the heart of why the announcement alarmed equity investors even as it attracted debt buyers. SpaceX took out the loan in March of this year, carrying an effective interest rate of 4.58 per cent, to fund its takeover of Elon Musk’s social media and computing businesses. The loan must be repaid in full by September 2027. It has always been clear that this would need to be refinanced in some form. The bond sale confirms that SpaceX intends to replace short term borrowing with longer dated obligations rather than using the cash it raised through the share listing. That preference for debt over a fresh sale of shares was explained by one analyst as a deliberate choice to avoid reducing the value of existing shareholders’ stakes.
All three of the main credit rating agencies assessed the bonds before the sale and assigned investment grade ratings, meaning they consider SpaceX a reliable borrower that is unlikely to default. Moody’s rated the debt at Baa1, Fitch at BBB Plus, and Standard and Poor’s at BBB. Those assessments allow pension funds, insurance companies and other large institutions that are only permitted to hold higher quality debt to participate, expanding the pool of potential buyers considerably.
Bond market participants were nonetheless more cautious than the sheer volume of orders might suggest. The ten year notes priced at a premium of 1.4 percentage points above American government bonds, which serve as the standard reference point. That gap is roughly 0.4 percentage points wider than the average charged to other companies with similar ratings, according to Bloomberg index data. Investors also showed a clear preference for the shorter dated notes over those with repayment dates further into the future, a pattern that typically signals unease about longer term financial visibility. As CNBC reported in its full account of the transaction, both the wider spread and the bias toward near term maturities pointed to investors extracting a price for what they saw as genuine uncertainty, even while participating in large numbers.
The contrast between the equity and debt markets’ response to SpaceX is instructive. Share prices fell sharply when the bond sale was announced, with the stock losing between thirteen and sixteen per cent in a single session, as shareholders worried about what the need for additional financing revealed about the company’s appetite for spending. Bond buyers, by contrast, piled in on a scale that suggests considerable confidence in the company’s ability to meet its debt payments over the coming years. One investment officer quoted in financial press coverage explained the difference plainly: bondholders do not share in the long term gains if a company does well, so they need to be paid adequately for the risk they are taking, regardless of how large the company’s total value appears to be on paper.
The scale of SpaceX’s spending plans makes both reactions understandable. The company has accumulated a total net loss of $41.3 billion since its founding in 2002. It lost $4.9 billion in 2025 and a further $4.28 billion in the first three months of this year. Computing infrastructure deals with Anthropic and Google, together valued at roughly $75 billion, represent commitments that will require sustained capital outlay for years. Analysts have projected that cumulative spending on its next generation rocket programme and satellite constellation could exceed one trillion dollars by the early 2030s. The only profitable part of the business at present is Starlink, the satellite internet service, which had 12 million subscribers by early June and which all three rating agencies identified as the core engine of the company’s future cash flows.
By the close of trading on Tuesday, SpaceX shares had recovered some of the ground lost earlier in the week, rising around five per cent as the bond sale’s successful conclusion reassured some investors that the company’s financial footing was more solid than the initial reaction had implied. The stock remained well below its peak but above its original offer price, leaving the company valued at approximately $2.1 trillion.
Whether the bond market’s confidence proves better calibrated than the equity market’s anxiety is a question that will only be answered over the years ahead. For now, both sets of investors have made their positions clear, and the numbers tell two quite different stories about the same company.
About the Author
Marcel Chidozie is a tech analyst and writer covering foreign news, fintech, and emerging technologies at TechRegard. Based in Nigeria, He's passionate about translating complex tech developments into compelling, accessible stories for diverse audiences. His work focuses on how technology shapes innovation across Africa and globally.
