The Government That Built the Rocket
Elon Musk, DOGE, Golden Dome, and the $2 Trillion Payday
Published May 2026
The world's richest man spent four months inside the federal government cutting programs, eliminating agencies, and slashing budgets in the name of fiscal responsibility. Now, with impeccable timing, he is preparing to take his rocket company public in what may be the largest IPO in American history. The two facts are not unrelated.
SpaceX filed for its initial public offering this week, revealing its finances publicly for the first time. The company lost $4.9 billion in 2025 despite bringing in $18.7 billion in revenue. It could raise as much as $75 billion in the offering, which would make it the largest IPO ever recorded, surpassing Saudi Aramco. The company is targeting a valuation above $2 trillion, and it will trade under the ticker symbol SPCX, possibly as early as June 12.
At the center of it all is Elon Musk, who will emerge from this offering in a position of almost incomprehensible financial and structural power. Between his 12.3% stake in common shares and 93.6% in Class B shares — which carry 10 votes each — Musk controls 85.1% of the company's voting power, effectively guaranteeing he maintains control regardless of how many shares the public buys. He will serve simultaneously as CEO, chief technology officer, and chairman. The IPO will not dilute his control in any meaningful sense. It will simply make him substantially richer, with some estimates suggesting he could become the world's first trillionaire.
To understand why this matters beyond the financial pages, you have to understand what SpaceX is and who its most important customer has always been. SpaceX holds a $255 million contract to launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope, a $178 million contract for NASA's Europa Clipper, a $256.6 million contract for the Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan, and contracts worth an estimated billions more to launch Pentagon satellites that allow security forces to communicate, geolocate, and coordinate intelligence. As of 2024, the company already held more than $22 billion in government contracts spanning NASA resupply missions, classified intelligence satellites, and military broadband. Over the past decade, Musk's companies are estimated to have received around $15.4 billion in government contracts on top of that.
This is the context in which Musk's 130-day tenure running the Department of Government Efficiency must be understood. He was given access to federal spending data, personnel records, and agency budgets across the entire executive branch — ostensibly to cut waste. At the request of the DOGE team, the General Services Administration adopted Starlink broadband services. Musk called for the FAA to adopt Starlink as well. And the Department of Justice dropped several lawsuits and investigations into both SpaceX and Tesla during Musk's tenure at DOGE.
The conflict of interest was flagged immediately and repeatedly. House Judiciary Democrats wrote to the Attorney General warning that Musk's role at DOGE created conflicts under 18 U.S.C. § 208, which explicitly prohibits federal employees — including Special Government Employees like Musk — from participating in government matters that affect their own financial interests. The White House's response to those concerns was remarkable in its candor. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that if a conflict of interest arose, the entrepreneur would make the decision to remove himself from the conversation. In other words: Elon Musk would decide when Elon Musk had a conflict of interest.
Now add Golden Dome. Trump's proposed space-based missile defense system — inspired by Israel's Iron Dome, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost between $161 billion and $542 billion over two decades — has become the latest and most consequential theater of Musk's government entanglement. The U.S. Space Force awarded 12 companies including SpaceX contracts worth up to $3.2 billion to develop prototypes for space-based interceptors. SpaceX is also poised to receive a separate $2 billion contract from the Department of Defense for a satellite constellation to track missiles and aircraft, which could ultimately deploy up to 600 satellites. SpaceX, in partnership with Palantir and Anduril — companies whose founders all supported Trump — pitched a joint bid featuring a subscription-based model, a significant departure from Pentagon procurement practices, under which the federal government would pay recurring fees to access and operate a defense system it doesn't own. That means the United States military could find itself permanently dependent on a private company controlled by a single individual for core national security infrastructure. The individual in question is the same one who spent four months reviewing the federal government's spending decisions from the inside.
SpaceX also acquired xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company, earlier this year, and merged the two — xAI had itself previously merged with X, formerly Twitter. The combined entity is now preparing to go public as a rocket company, a satellite internet provider, an artificial intelligence firm, and a social media platform simultaneously. All under a man who spent the first months of 2025 with a master key to the federal government's finances.
The salary picture inside SpaceX adds another layer. The median total compensation at the company is $176,500, with senior technical and engineering roles reaching significantly higher, and software engineering managers reported at nearly $500,000. At the bottom end, roles like dining room attendant start at around $39,741. The range is enormous, and the culture is notoriously demanding — employee reviews consistently describe expectations of 60-plus hour weeks with pressure to contribute beyond that. The compensation model has long relied on the mission — and Musk's celebrity — to attract talent willing to accept below-market cash pay in exchange for equity that, until now, had no guaranteed exit. The IPO makes good on that promise for some. Workers hired more recently, or in lower-tier roles, will benefit far less. The workers who actually built the rockets will get varying slices of the windfall. The taxpayers who funded the contracts that made the rockets viable will get Golden Dome — eventually, maybe, at a cost that could reach half a trillion dollars.
Musk's fixation on excessive government spending is worth examining against his own history. When Tesla's application for a low-interest government loan was held up in 2008, Musk personally appealed to the head of the EPA to remove the obstacle. The companies that owe their survival to government support, contracts, and favorable regulatory treatment are the same companies now being taken public on the strength of that foundation — and whose founder spent four months deciding which other government programs deserved to survive.
The IPO is expected to begin trading as early as June 12. When it does, Elon Musk's net worth will increase by a number that is difficult to write without losing track of the zeros. The more important number is the one that doesn't change: 85.1% of the votes, permanently, in a company whose single largest customer is the American taxpayer — and whose position at the center of American national defense was built, at least in part, while its owner held the keys to the federal government's budget.
Note: SpaceX IPO details are drawn from the company's S-1 filing released May 20, 2026. Golden Dome cost estimates are from the Congressional Budget Office. Salary data reflects aggregate reporting from Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, and Comparably as of May 2026.