On June 12, nearly a quarter century after its founding, SpaceX will register for what is expected to be the largest IPO in history. The company is set to be valued at $1.75 trillion. The sheer scale of money at stake is hard to fathom: It could mint the world’s first trillionaire in Elon Musk and bestow thousands of SpaceX employees with generational wealth.
But what has generated this wild valuation?
For one thing, SpaceX has created an entirely new realm of commercial activity for humankind. Through its innovations, Musk’s company has lowered launch costs and increased launch frequency to the point where private businesses are planning to build data centers, manufacturing hubs, and labs in orbit. SpaceX has turned the economics of space on its head, opening a world of possibility for founders whose ambitions stretch beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Delian Asparouhov is one such founder.
The Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur—known for his work at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and his creation of the annual Hill & Valley Forum—has long dreamed of space. Specifically, he’s dreamed of industrializing it.
From an early age—middle school, he says—Asparouhov was consumed by a vision of a space-based economy: in-orbit manufacturing, asteroid mining, extracting lunar ice and helium-3 from the moon. For much of his life, this vision of humanity’s future was stuck on Earth, and his dreams confined to the realm of sci-fi.
