CNBC reported on May 19, 2026, citing unnamed sources, that SpaceX has tapped Goldman Sachs for the coveted lead-left role on its planned IPO, positioning the Wall Street giant at the front of what could become one of the most closely watched public listings in market history. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase are expected to fill out the senior bookrunner ranks, while the broader underwriting syndicate is said to include roughly 21 banks. The same reporting indicated that SpaceX’s public S-1 filing could hit EDGAR as soon as May 20 or 21. While CNBC’s sourcing confirms the bookrunner mandate, final economics and syndicate share remain market rumour until the filing is made public.

Historically, the lead-left position has been considered the key economic prize in an IPO mandate, giving Goldman the front seat on what could become one of the largest and most scrutinized public listings ever attempted. Morgan Stanley’s reported move into the second slot adds another layer of intrigue, given its prior role on SpaceX tender offers and secondary trades, where it had been positioned as the company’s long-standing capital-markets adviser. SpaceX may be prioritizing distribution firepower over relationship continuity as it prepares for a raise reportedly marketed by Bloomberg at roughly $75 billion.

NVIDIA’s Vera CPU entered early customer use on May 19, with VP Ian Buck delivering the first systems to Anthropic, OpenAI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and SpaceX. Vera is NVIDIA’s first internally designed datacenter CPU, featuring 88 Arm-compatible cores and up to 1.5 TB of memory per package. NVIDIA said SpaceX is evaluating the system for reinforcement learning and simulation pipelines, compute-intensive workloads used to train AI systems through repeated testing, feedback, and scenario modeling. NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure account separately confirmed the SpaceX delivery on X the same day.

SpaceX’s purchase further positions the company as a true AI infrastructure buyer rather than a niche aerospace customer. Its inclusion alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Oracle places it in NVIDIA’s first customer group for Vera, giving the company a more prominent role in the market for advanced AI compute. It remains to be seen whether or not SpaceX’s evaluation systems turn into meaningful volume orders.

Firefly Aerospace (Nasdaq: FLY) announced its move into a new headquarters and expanded its spacecraft facility in Cedar Park, Texas, adding two new buildings beside its existing site. The combined campus now totals 144,000 square feet, with space for spacecraft assembly and testing, mission control, avionics and component production, engineering, and business operations. The expanded campus is twice the size of Firefly’s former Cedar Park footprint and sits less than 30 miles from its 200-acre Rocket Ranch in Briggs, Texas, which includes six test stands and 217,000 square feet of rocket infrastructure. The announcement comes just weeks after Firefly’s Q1 2026 earnings report, which showed fast revenue growth but continued net losses.

The expansion reflects Firefly’s push to move beyond its origins as a development-stage space company to a full-fledged scale manufacturer. Firefly is expected to experience mounting pressure to convert its backlog and recent government awards into sustained production volume given the recent capex sink. However, Firefly's defense-adjacent contracts, including its SciTec agreement under the Golden Dome missile-defense initiative and an AFRL algorithm award announced May 11, give the company a government-backed revenue base to support the buildout.

Bloomberg reported that SpaceX is marketing its planned IPO at a valuation of more than $2 trillion, with a potential raise of up to $75 billion, following Elon Musk’s public remarks at a technology summit in Israel. The report also referenced Reuters-linked timing that could see the company’s S-1 filed as early as May 20, with pricing potentially targeted for June 11 and a public listing the following day. Musk’s $75 billion raise figure and $2 trillion-plus valuation marker were publicly stated, while the numbers being discussed with anchor investors should be treated as valuation targets rather than finalized offering terms.

At that level, SpaceX would enter public markets as one of the largest companies in the United States, with a valuation roughly two-thirds of Nvidia’s. A reported retail allocation of up to 30% would make the IPO unusually retail-heavy, which would leave fewer shares for large institutions that typically participate in deals of this scale. The next key filing will be the S-1, which will show SpaceX’s financials, risks, ownership structure, and how the reported SpaceX-xAI combination is being accounted for. By stating the headline valuation publicly before the roadshow, Musk may have amplified investor attention while limiting his ability to negotiate valuation privately.

Per Spaceflight Now, ULA confirmed that Northrop Grumman completed a successful static fire of the GEM 63XL solid rocket booster as part of the Vulcan Cert-2 anomaly investigation. ULA said the test demonstrated “nozzle design enhancements” already in development, along with advanced propellant technology intended for future motors. Vulcan remains grounded while the mid-February in-flight booster anomaly remains under investigation, and no return-to-flight date has been announced.

The test is an important step in Vulcan’s return-to-flight process, but it does not clear the vehicle to launch.  Vulcan carries the bulk of ULA’s NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 manifest competition against SpaceX, and each additional quarter on the ground narrows ULA’s ability to absorb FY26 and FY27 task orders already under contract. The issue also reaches beyond ULA because Northrop’s GEM 63XL flies on derivative configurations for other launch programs. ULA’s statement that nozzle enhancements were “already in work” leaves open whether the February anomaly is ultimately treated as a design defect or a quality escape, a distinction that could influence indemnification language in downstream task orders.

The Financial Times reported on May 13, 2026, citing two unidentified attendees, that Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting the company may seek external investment for the first time as it looks to fund a much higher launch cadence. Limp said scaling launches will “take a lot of capital,” more than a single backer can provide, and did not rule out a future IPO, according to the same report. Blue Origin currently plans 8 to 12 launches in 2026, far below its stated long-term target of more than 100 launches per year.

After 25 years of financing Blue Origin through Bezos’s Amazon proceeds, bringing in outside capital would represent a turning point for one of the world’s most closely watched private space companies. An external equity raise would give the market its first real valuation marker for SpaceX’s only direct private rival. The financing case is contingent on launch cadence, where Blue Origin’s stated ambition of more than 100 launches per year remains far above its 8 to 12 launch plan for 2026. Any effort to raise outside capital in the near term is also likely to face scrutiny following the BE-3U thrust anomaly that grounded NG-3 in April.