Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking $250 million at $220 per share in new fundings, according to a report by CNBC. The funding will boost the worth of the company to $36 billion, up from $33.3 billion.
The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is working on raising new funds for continuing work on its three major projects i.e. Crew Dragon, Starship, and Starlink. However, people familiar with the company’s fundraising told CNBC that the new round is not expected to close until the mid of March.
The upcoming fund’s value is not confirmed yet as the price of the shares depends on the market conditions. The shares could fluctuate between now and the second week of March, changing the final details of funding.
Why SpaceX looking for funds?
SpaceX historical steady fundraising clears out that how the space giant has raised so much capital. It is now among the most popular pre-IPO tech companies in the world. The company’s capital is on a continuous rise as its shares are most in-demand.
Elon Musk’s space company raised over $1 billion in 2019 and needs more funds for the development of its three major projects i.e., Crew Dragon, Starship, and Starlink. But, it looks like an unlimited amount of funding is available in the market for SpaceX.
Crew Dragon is the spacecraft that SpaceX built to take NASA astronauts to International Space Station and other space missions. The Crew Dragon capsule was developed from $3.1 billion, which it won from NASA’s commercial crew program, with additional SpaceX’s own hundreds of millions of dollars investment. SpaceX roughly charges $60 million for one Falcon 9 rocket used for Crew Dragon’s launch, and last year in 2019, SpaceX launched 13 Falcon-9 rockets.
Starship, a next-generation rocket, is meant to be a fully reusable rocket. It is like a commercial airplane that will carry almost 100 people to the moon and Mars. Starship has a cargo capacity of 100-metric tons. SpaceX is finishing a lease deal with the Port of Los Angeles.
The deal will close with the 18 acres of land to have a major manufacturing facility near SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthrone, California. Elon Musk’s company needs funds to build more Starship launchpads in other locations. Starship is a long-term project, and SpaceX is continuously in need of funds for it.
READ: SpaceX reveals giant Starship rocket.
READ: Elon Musk estimates 1000 Starships and 20 years for a sustainable city on Mars
Starlink is a project of SpaceX in which the company planned to build mega constellation — a plan to create a global network of 12,000 small satellites to provide high-speed internet in every corner of the world. SpaceX has been launching 60 Starlink satellites at a time since May 2019, and till now, 300 Starlink satellites are deployed in low earth orbit.
The next batch of Starlink satellites will launch on March 2, 2020, as tweeted by Elon. The space company plans to utilize funds to complete the Starlink’s target of satellites and meet the internet needs of consumers across the globe.
In the last funding round that held in January 2020, SpaceX scored $314 million from ADM Ventures and the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan.
