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SpaceX raises another $100M
- Sabinus 9y agoWhy would SpaceX want more funding?
- modeless 9y ago$450M, not $100M, right?
- sjbase 9y agoThis appears to be an amendment adding $100m to a July 2017 filing, which was for ~$350m: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141217000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141217...
- jngreenlee 9y agoAlso says "common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock" So maybe this is about shares conversion?
- leroy_masochist 9y agoIt's likely an artifact of the nitty-gritty details of SpaceX's corporate structure; usually when you see something like this, it's reflective of a clause in their corporate charter saying something along lines of, "from now on, all additional equity stock issued for fundraising purposes will be in the form of a warrant that will convert to common once the preferred holders are able to cash out." - fmr investment banker
- pdshrader 9y agoPrivate venture-backed companies sell stock in the form of "preferred stock", which comes with certain rights like liquidation preferences (they get their money back first) and protective provisions (i.e. "SpaceX can't do Y without getting our permission first"). Preferred stock is "convertible" into common stock because, upon an IPO or other exit, it's generally desirable for those early investor special rights to go away, as they won't make sense anymore. Liquidation preferences would be obsolete, and the veto rights in protective provisions don't usually belong in a public company. - Source: venture lawyer, but not your lawyer
- CamelCaseName 9y ago$450MM total, this is an amendment to increase last month's raise of $350MM by an additional $100MM. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/elon-musk-s-closely-held-spacex-raises-another-100-million https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/elon-musk... >Space Exploration Technologies Corp. added another $100 million to its latest fundraising round, bringing the total to nearly $450 million, according to an amended regulatory filing. >The closely held company founded by Elon Musk had disclosed in August raising about $350 million the previous month. The round values the company at more than $21 billion, according to Equidate.
- jngreenlee 9y agoMaybe it was over-subscribed and they decide to go for the interest
- jngreenlee 9y agoUses Rule 506(b): "If the issuer will not use general solicitation or advertising to market the securities then the sale of securities can be issued under Rule 506(b) to an unlimited number of accredited investors[4] and up to 35 other purchasers."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_(SEC)#Rule_506 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_(SEC)#Rule_506
- ProAm 9y agoIm not sure why you posted this? Is this important? (honest question)
- burger_moon 9y agoIf I understand correctly I believe they are pointing out that after a certain point in raising funds they will be forced to go public because they will have too many investors.
- cryptoz 9y agoElon seems pretty bent on having SpaceX do regular trips to Mars and back before IPO. I would guess that he will ensure that SpaceX stays within the private company rules so as not to go public until the Mars trips are commonplace. Also, does this mean that SpaceX could raise funds indefinitely without going public as long as they come from the same source?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- londons_explore 9y agoAnd those 35 sources can do credit swaps and various other kinds of deals with other sources...
- josephagoss 9y agoIs this true, I heard it a while ago: They will be forced to release the same financial information to the public as public companies do once they have too many investors however they do not have to go public in the sense of floating their stock.
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoOh, man. I read SpaceX, exactly as written in the title. My brain convolved it with Tesla, and I started reading the comments thinking 'This won't do much to increase Tesla's runway'. Need... deprogramming... now...
- keepper 9y agoAnd this is why Blue Origin will ultimately come out ahead in the private launch race. This, for the most part, is technology that once shown possibly, is possible to replicate. But what it takes is money, lots and lots of money. Bezos has that....
- m3kw9 9y agoThat’s probably the same game rules Elon is playing, make the best tech, get competitors licking their chops, they make it main stream and bring down prices of essential parts down. The market is so big even if they come out ahead, he still wins
- btilly 9y agoSpaceX has consistently developed technology for a small fraction of what it costs anyone else. As a case in point, Blue Origin started before SpaceX. They have put more money into development than SpaceX. But they have yet to launch a single rocket into orbit. And yet, Blue Origin is not bad. They appear to be in the same ballpark of costs as NASA originally estimated for development on the Falcon 1. They are just failing to rewrite the rules the way that SpaceX has consistently done. That said, if SpaceX ever fails as a business because Elon takes one risk too many, I'm sure that Blue Origin will happily buy the technology...
- timthelion 9y agoWell, Blue Origin is in a certain dimension re-writing rules. They are using a new more efficient engine design. SpaceX has been pretty conservative with engines if I'm not mistaken.
- letlambda 9y agoThe Raptor engine(under development) is comparable to the BE-4.
- DiThi 9y agoThe Raptor engine in development is also very efficient (full flow staged combustion of methalox). And while the Merlin series has been conservative in most aspects, Merlin 1D has a few unique characteristics, like the pintle injector (previously used in the Apollo LM), phased-shutoff (or whatever the spelling is, from Tom Mueller's interview from half a year ago), use of subchilled propellants and a very tightly manufacture process that makes it very cheap to produce. On top of that it's now the engine with highest thrust-to-weight ratio in history that has flown, despite being open cycle (gas generator). And not a single M1D failed so far.
- jcasman 9y agoIs that a lot or a little? How am I supposed to judge? It looks like SpaceX is well over $1B with a B in funding in total now. In comparison Blue Origin just gets money from Bezos, so "no" funding? Big wikipedia list of private space companies (no funding info): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_co... Overall venture funding going up (from 2015): http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space-startups-last-year/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space-sta...
- askafriend 9y agoWell, Pinterest also has over $1 Billion in funding, if that makes you feel any better. Sure reality is more nuanced than that, but it's a fun comparison to make.
- tradersam 9y agoJesus F. Christ, you’re right. Just shows where humanity’s overall priorities are, funny enough.
- drcross 9y agoInstagram cost 19 billion. You can buy 73 of the worlds largest container ships for that amount of money.
- rokob 9y agoInstagram cost $1B, Whatsapp was $19B. In hindsight, Instagram was a steal at that valuation too.
- jhayward 9y ago> Whatsapp was $19B. Just for comparison, $19 billion is what the first operational fusion power reactor is budgeted to cost. Instead of Whatsapp, the world could have fusion power. Tell me that makes sense.
- mrwong 9y agoMusk should do a SpaceX ICO
- leroy_masochist 9y agoMarsCoin has a nice ring to it
- quickthrower2 9y agoSaturnCoin would have a much better ring.
- vidarh 9y agoThere is already a MarsCoin. According to coinmarketcap.com it has a "market cap" of about $100k, and a volume in the ast 24h of $148.
- microtherion 9y agoThat was my thought in response to "Can anyone make money on the moon?". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782634 I'd call it "Moonbucks".
- dopamean 9y agoI know it's probably in the docs somewhere but I'm feeling lazy: how much does it cost SpaceX to launch a rocket? I'm sure there's some variation so a range or average will suffice. Thanks. Edit: Turns out that was a bit of a silly question. Thanks for the replies.
- mikeash 9y agoThey charge around $60 million for a commercial launch. I’m not sure how big their profit margins are, but that at least gives you a ballpark idea.
- azernik 9y agoThat is closely guarded information. The customer price of a launch is in the $60M-$80M range, so that's an upper bound.
- btilly 9y agoSpaceX doesn't publish their costs. But http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities says that they will let you launch 50k pounds of stuff into orbit for $62 million. Their BFR system is aiming to launch more weight at a cost of a few hundred thousand dollars per launch. But they need to find customers to recoup several billion in development costs on it.
- DiThi 9y ago> at a cost of a few hundred thousand dollars per launch They only stated publicly that will cost "less than Falcon 1" per launch. That means less than ~$6 million. The few hundred thousand dollars figure is the cost of the fuel, which will become the main cost after full reusability is achieved.
- mLuby 9y agoOff the top of my head I'd guess it's $30M for the rocket launch itself: - SpaceX charges $60M per launch. - Elon said fuel is $200k-$300k when explaining the value of reusability. - majority of cost is probably engine, followed by fairing, which Elon has said is expensive enough to want to reuse. Keep in mind that there're a lot of operational and R&D expenses, and the launches have to cover that too, so I assume a healthy margin on each launch.
- pjy04 9y agoMaybe they're using all this money to also do stock buybacks.
- swarnie_ 9y agoWhat stock?
- londons_explore 9y agoEven though they aren't publically traded, they still have shareholders. And some of those shareholders might want to sell.
- WalterBright 9y agoI wish SpaceX was traded on the stock exchange so I could buy stock in it. I had to settle for buying some TSLA.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Matt3o12_ 9y agoI am glad that they are not. While I would like to invest in them, them being public would mean that Elon has to spend a lot of time doing what investors want (making the most money) instead of doing what he envisions the company to do (going to mars). There is a reason Elon regret ps that Tesla is public but it was the only way it could have survived. By staying private, Elon can choose whom to allows to invest in so that the missions stays what he wants it to be. It’d rather not make money from SpaceX then have them going on the wrong path and become yet another government competing space company that does little innovation and just sucks up government money.
- WalterBright 9y agoUnfortunately, the amount I'm capable of investing in SpaceX is not worth Elon's time, so appealing to him is not going to work. I just want a piece of the action in one of the greatest ventures of our time! Lots of people complain about how unfair it is that the US has billionaires, but without billionaires would we have SpaceX? I doubt it.
- lmm 9y ago> Lots of people complain about how unfair it is that the US has billionaires, but without billionaires would we have SpaceX? I doubt it. A thousand million-dollar startups can probably do more innovation between them than one billion-dollar startup. Maybe we would've ended up with a different structure - maybe one company would make a better engine and sell it to Boeing or whoever, and another would make better structural components, and another would come up with the landing systems by licensing control systems from yet another... but I think without billionaires (and remember Musk is one billionaire of many, he's by no means the median example) we'd get more value for society overall.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- peter303 9y agoDoes cash flow cover operations with existing technology? They will launch 18 or 19 times in 2017, most with paying customers. I could see new capital going to new technology like the Falcon Heavy and Human launches.
- andygates 9y agoExisting F9 operations - commercial launch and ISS resupply - is comfortably profitable.
- exabrial 9y agoWhoah, I'm actually surprised they're not cash-flow positive
- regnerba 9y agoThey spend everything they earn, plus more, on R&D. The whole goal of SpaceX is to get to Mars. No one else would take them there so they want to build spaceships and rockets that will. To fund that they build the Dragon 9 and are working on their satellite internet constellation. Everything SpaceX does is meant to fund getting to Mars. So they could potentially be cash positive, but Mars.
- marvin 9y agoAdding to this: Reinvesting everything you can in a productive way is exactly what you want in a low-interest rate economy. It can be debated whether you should also raise more/borrow in order to further increase investment, if you are capable of investing it in a constructive way.
- phpnode 9y agoFalcon 9 is the rocket, dragon is the capsule