Under normal circumstances on Wall Street, if a company wants to go public and launch an IPO, it usually has to ask banks for assistance, review and commission. But when the company about to IPO becomes the largest private company on earth, SpaceX Then the situation may be completely different. according to”new york times“Reported by Elon Musk (Elon Musk) made a rather bold side request to the major investment banks, law firms, accounting firms and other consultants involved in SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO): Want to get a share of SpaceX’s pie? Then spend money on advertising on X and subscribe to your own website xAI Grok, the AI chatbot.
Musk requires banks participating in SpaceX IPO to subscribe to Grok service
Four people familiar with the matter told the New York Times that Musk explicitly required all organizations involved in SpaceX’s IPO work to purchase an enterprise subscription to its AI service Grok. Grok is part of Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, which was acquired by SpaceX in February 2026.Grok Therefore, it officially becomes part of SpaceX services.
Some banks have agreed to spend tens of millions of dollars on Grok and have begun integrating the chatbot into their IT systems, people familiar with the matter said. This means that this deal is not just a symbolic political correctness, but a real enterprise-level expenditure. For Wall Street, this is an unprecedented situation. It’s not uncommon for IPO companies to require partner banks to purchase their products or services in the past, but tying Grok subscriptions to IPO coaching eligibility on such a large scale and so directly is an industry first.
IPO size: A trillion-dollar super listing that surpasses Apple
SpaceX’s IPO is expected to raise more than US$500 billion (approximately NT$16.2 trillion), and the company’s valuation will exceed US$1 trillion (approximately NT$32 trillion). This is not only the largest listing transaction in history, but also directly surpasses Apple’s current market capitalization. For the investment banks underwriting the deal, fee income from advising on the deal is expected to exceed US$500 million (approximately NT$1.62 billion).
After years of a lack of blockbuster IPOs, Wall Street is salivating over mega-deals like SpaceX. The New York Times described the current banking industry’s hunger for the SpaceX deal as comparable to a desert traveler’s thirst for water. Because of this, although Musk’s demands are tough, there are still people who are willing to pay.
The merger of xAI and SpaceX was officially completed in February 2026. The combined new entity is valued at approximately US$1.25 trillion (approximately NT$40 trillion), bringing Grok, an AI service that originally had a small market share, into SpaceX’s huge commercial territory.
Advertising requirements: X platform kills two birds with one stone
In addition to Grok subscriptions, Musk has another request for the banks: advertising on his social media platform X. However, unlike the Grok subscription, the bank’s attitude towards this requirement is “less firm”, indicating that there is relatively more room for negotiation on this additional condition.
The X platform is also owned by SpaceX. For Musk, this means that he simultaneously controls a rocket company that is about to go public, a social platform with hundreds of millions of users, and an AI service that is actively expanding into the enterprise market. When the interests of these three business lines converge on the same IPO negotiation table, Musk’s bargaining leverage is almost overwhelming.
The Big Five underwriters: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley
This SpaceX IPO is expected to be led by five large investment banks: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. These five institutions can be called the golden signatures of Wall Street, but now they must compete under Musk’s rules of the game.
Musk’s ability to successfully market Grok’s corporate subscriptions to these banks demonstrates his unusual clout on Wall Street. The world’s richest man’s business empire covers space exploration, social media, artificial intelligence and other fields. When the core interests of these fields converge in the same negotiation, it is difficult for any organization to say “no”.
summary
From a business logic perspective, Musk’s request is not completely unreasonable. As an enterprise-level AI tool, if Grok can successfully penetrate the IT systems of top Wall Street banks, its penetration rate in the enterprise market will be greatly increased. For a company that is about to go public with a trillion-dollar valuation, opening up a new market for its products during the IPO coaching process is a shrewd plan to kill two birds with one stone.
However, this also triggered deep thinking about conflicts of interest and business ethics. How can the integrity of capital markets be safeguarded when a bank’s advisers’ advice may be influenced by the fact that it must buy a client’s products? For Taiwanese investors, SpaceX’s trillion-dollar IPO is undoubtedly one of the most high-profile global financial events in 2026. It is estimated that the financing scale of US$500 billion is approximately more than twice Taiwan’s annual GDP. Any developments related to this transaction are worthy of close attention.
Source: KOCPC Chinese