The SpaceX IPO is a culmination—not only of the rocket and AI company’s journey but of a decades-long shift in venture capital.
Consider: In 2002, the year Elon Musk founded SpaceX, venture capital was in the aftermath of the dotcom bust and far smaller as an industry than it is today. Though it’s hard to say exactly the size, contemporary reports note that U.S. VCs deployed $20.3 billion into private companies in 2002. Some numbers come in higher, others lower, but regardless: Those 2002 numbers for all of VC are quaint next to the tens of billions poured into one funding round in OpenAI or Anthropic today.
