Elon Musk is reportedly turning SpaceX’s IPO bankers into customers, too. According to the New York Times, banks and other advisers working on the rocket maker’s planned listing have been asked to buy subscriptions to Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, with some institutions said to be spending tens of millions of dollars a year and rolling it into their internal systems.
The request lands at an awkward moment for the dealmaking world. SpaceX is already pushing for a blockbuster IPO, and its advisers are among Wall Street’s biggest names: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup. If you are shepherding a record-sized listing, being asked to also buy the founder’s chatbot is not exactly standard procedure.
SpaceX’s IPO is getting bigger
SpaceX is said to have lifted its target valuation above $2 trillion, according to Bloomberg News. The company is also aiming to raise $75 billion, a number that would put it in the same kind of jaw-dropping bracket as the largest listings on record and well ahead of the celebrity IPOs that used to define ”mega-deal.”
That scale helps explain why the bankers matter so much. On a transaction this large, fees, access, and relationships are everything, and Musk seems happy to blur the line between business development and product sales. The irony is obvious: the same firms helping price the rocket company may also be underwriting demand for Grok.
What banks are said to be paying for
- Grok subscriptions for banks and advisers working on the IPO
- Reported annual spending in the tens of millions of dollars for some institutions
- Integration of the chatbot into internal IT systems
- Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup as active bookrunners
Musk and SpaceX did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, and the banks named in the report mostly kept quiet, too. That’s the usual choreography for a high-stakes deal, but the Grok angle adds a fresher kind of pressure: not just who gets the IPO mandate, but who is willing to buy into the wider Musk ecosystem along the way.
A familiar Musk tactic with a new twist
The move fits Musk’s well-worn habit of making his companies feed each other. Tesla, xAI and SpaceX already live under the same very noisy gravitational field, and this looks like another example of cross-promotion dressed up as enterprise software. Wall Street may grumble, but it also knows how to say yes when the asset on offer is a potential record-breaking listing.
The more interesting question is whether this becomes a one-off negotiating flourish or a template for future Musk deals. If the SpaceX IPO keeps moving toward the $75 billion target, the bank merry-go-round will get even tighter – and everyone involved will have to decide how much chatbot they are willing to swallow to stay in the room.