Speculation surrounding the future public listing of Elon Musk's aerospace venture, SpaceX, has intensified, with prominent investor Chamath Palihapitiya offering an alternative prediction to a traditional Initial Public Offering (IPO). Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and CEO of Social Capital, suggested on his podcast 'All-In' that SpaceX might forgo an IPO and instead pursue a reverse merger with Tesla. He theorized that Musk could leverage this move to consolidate control and power over his two seminal assets under a single cap table.

A reverse merger is a process where a private company becomes publicly traded by merging with an already public firm, thereby bypassing the typically costly and lengthy traditional IPO process. While Palihapitiya, known for his 'blank-check' companies, presented this forecast, Elon Musk himself has not publicly commented on the possibility of such a consolidation in recent times. It also remains unclear whether Palihapitiya's remarks were based on specific insider information or purely speculative. Notably, while Palihapitiya isn't closely associated with Musk, his podcast co-hosts, Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, have long-standing ties with the SpaceX boss dating back to his PayPal days and were involved in his acquisition of Twitter Inc.

Interestingly, Palihapitiya had previously predicted that SpaceX's internet-from-space initiative, Starlink, would go public in 2023, a forecast that did not materialize. However, despite these alternative predictions, Elon Musk himself confirmed reports regarding SpaceX's public listing plans. In December of the previous year, Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) to state that reports of his company planning to go public in 2026 were “accurate.”

Further details regarding the potential IPO emerged from a Bloomberg report, which indicated that SpaceX is moving forward with plans for a listing that aims to raise significantly more than $30 billion. If realized, this transaction could become the largest listing of all time. According to the report, SpaceX's management and advisers are reportedly pushing for a listing as early as mid-to-late 2026. However, the exact timing of the IPO remains subject to market conditions and other factors, with some suggesting a potential slip until 2027.