Elon Musk’s SpaceX raised $ 850 million at $ 419.99 a share

SpaceX completed another monster funding round of $ 850 million last week, people familiar with the funding told CNBC, which skyrocketed the company’s valuation to about $ 74 billion.

The company raised the new money at $ 419.99 a share, those people said – or just a penny below the $ 420 price that Elon Musk infamously made in 2018 when he stated he had “secured funding” to keep Tesla private. take.

The latest increase also represents a roughly 60% jump in the company’s valuation from the previous round in August, when SpaceX raised nearly $ 2 billion from a valuation of $ 46 billion.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In addition to further building a war chest for its ambitious plans, SpaceX insiders and existing investors were able to sell an additional $ 750 million in a secondary transaction, one of the people said.

SpaceX, in particular, only raised some of the funding available in the market, with one person telling CNBC that the company was receiving “insane demand” of about $ 6 billion in offers in just three days.

The latest inflow of money comes as SpaceX continues to develop two capital-intensive projects simultaneously.

Starlink is its ambitious project to build an interconnected Internet network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to deliver high-speed Internet to consumers around the world. SpaceX’s leadership has previously estimated that Starlink will cost about $ 10 billion or more to build, but believes the network could generate as much as $ 30 billion a year – or more than 10 times the annual revenue of its existing rocket operations.

SpaceX has launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink to date, as it began rolling out early service in a public beta for customers in the US, Canada and the UK, and the company recently expanded the scope of that public beta, bringing potential users can pre-order Starlink service for $ 99. Pre-order reports tell users SpaceX is “targeting coverage in your area mid-late 2021,” while other preorders say 2022.

The company announced in a Federal Communications Commission last week that Starlink has “more than 10,000 users in the United States and abroad” in just over three months since the public beta began.

Musk also reiterated last week that SpaceX plans to eventually split off Starlink and make it public. He said Starlink “has to go through a deep chasm of negative cash flow for the next year or so.”

“Once we can predict cash flow reasonably well, Starlink will IPO,” Musk said.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket represents its other ambitious venture, with the company steadily building and testing prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas. The company has successfully launched multiple Starship prototypes, which they landed safely after short flights of up to about 150 meters. But the two most recent high-altitude flights, despite passing multiple development milestones, exploded on impact during landing attempts.

The Starship’s prototypes are made of stainless steel, with the company striving to develop a missile system that can be reused in much the same way as a commercial airliner. SpaceX is developing Starship with the aim of launching cargo and up to 100 people at a time on missions to the moon and Mars.

Despite the explosive ending of the last two flights, SpaceX sees the launches as a step forward in the rocket’s development. The next prototype of the Starship is on the company’s launch pad, and SpaceX is expected to attempt another test flight in the coming weeks.

Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis, and live programming of working days from around the world.