SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

&gt; Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space.<p>Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.

Forbes seems to have always been wrong about Musk&#x27;s net worth unless I&#x27;m missing how it works. By my estimations, now he should be worth around $23B. $11B from Tesla. $11.5B from SpaceX.<p>Obviously they haven&#x27;t updated for this news yet, but they still won&#x27;t be at $23B.<p>Regardless, going from having invested all is PayPal money by 08 and in dire straits to being $20B+ 9 years later is awesome. And depending on what narrative you believe, money to this degree isn&#x27;t what he cares about anyway.<p>Kudos to Elon, SpaceX, and everyone working there.

I mean, SpaceX is great and all, but it&#x27;s no Cargill or even in the same league as Cargill or other similar companies like Koch (which is #2 in the US):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cargill" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cargill</a><p><pre><code> Revenue: US$109.6 billion (2017)[1] Net income: US$2.835 billion (2017)[1] Total assets: US$55.8 billion 25% of all United States grain exports 22% of the US domestic meat market</code></pre>

&quot;World&#x27;s most valuable privately held companies&quot;. Sounds weird, no?<p>What about Vitol (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vitol" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vitol</a>), Saudi Aramco, Koch Industries (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Koch_Industries" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Koch_Industries</a>) ... etc ?

As much as I&#x27;d love to invest I&#x27;m glad they&#x27;re avoiding the short term outlook being publicly traded would demand.

It makes me sad that SpaceX, a company that actually invents and makes stuff, is mentioned alongside Uber whose only product is evading taxes and regulations

The best thing Mr. Musk can do, in my humble opinion, is to never, ever take SpaceX public.

Shouldn’t the title include some qualifier like “tech company”, because there are private companies like Cargill out there that have yearly revenue above $20 billion.

In somewhat related news:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.axios.com&#x2F;founders-fund-partner-leaves-to-launch-spacex-focused-fund-2466277199.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.axios.com&#x2F;founders-fund-partner-leaves-to-launch...</a>

Thinking about it a bit more, I don&#x27;t believe that Blue Origin and SpaceX are competitors. In a sense yes, but they will not fight for customers. I believe there is very much demand for their services.

And what about Basecamp with its 100 billion valuation?

In what world is SpaceX valued at $20B while Uber is valued at $69B?

No it is not. One of the most valuable private startups maybe.<p>Here&#x27;s the top 15: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_largest_private_non-governmental_companies_by_revenue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_largest_private_non-go...</a>

So what are the most valuable private companies? Ikea, Bloomberg, Dell, Koch, Cargill, Bechtel, most of the big 5 accountancy firms...<p>I&#x27;m not so sure SpaceX is &quot;one of the world&#x27;s most valuable privately held companies&quot;.

Space-X is, at long last, getting their launch rate up. 9 Falcon-9 launches so far this year. For a while, they had commercial customers canceling because they were way behind on their launch schedule. It&#x27;s quantity of successful launches that makes money in that business.<p>Not much is happening at the Brownsville TX site, where Space-X still hasn&#x27;t done much more than pile up dirt and wait for it to settle. They&#x27;re building on beach sand. They really need that site so they can have more pad time.

Excellent news, even if the round is peculiarly undersized. First time I&#x27;ve seen them be so coy with the identity of the investor, too.

It&#x27;s surprising how little money was taken in this round. You&#x27;d have expected something closer to $1B. I&#x27;m sure $350M will help enough and it has been over 2 years since the last funding. So maybe it&#x27;s fine. They can keep raise again soon if need be.<p>Especially with Bezos pumping $1B into Blue Origin a year.

Bezos is coming .. already $1B a year from Amazon stock. And Amazon is more successful every year. I am very curious how things will go.

Is it just me or does it seem absurd that a company like Snap would have a comparable market valuation to SpaceX...

as an engineer doing non-hardware engineering, it is always satisfying to watch SpaceX succeed from afar.

Is a private company&#x27;s value akin to a public one&#x27;s market capitalization? How is this determined?

Gradatim Ferociter baby

No surprise there.

Privately held, taxpayer funded, like most of Musk&#x27;s endeavors.