GoKawiilElon Musk has incredible sway over the companies he leads. And while he already calls himself “TechnoKing” at Tesla, he is a real ruler over SpaceX, wielding an unprecedented level of control over one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Musk’s monarchical grip on SpaceX was finally laid bare in the company’s IPO filing made public on Wednesday.
Post-IPO, Musk will be CEO, CTO, and chairman of SpaceX’s board, and will have more than 50% of the voting power, giving him the ability to appoint directors as he sees fit. He essentially cannot be fired.
The company has placed limits on how shareholders can file legal challenges, and it will benefit from a far more permissive regulatory regime in Texas, its home state – an environment Musk helped create when he loudly moved Tesla’s incorporation there from Delaware.
As SpaceX bluntly tells prospective investors in the filing: “This will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters and the election of our directors.”
More control than Mark
Tech founders have enjoyed increased control over public companies over the last two decades, especially as Google, Meta (then Facebook) and other tech firms went public with dual-class shares.
But Musk and SpaceX are taking things much further, according to Ann Lipton, professor of law at the University of Colorado.
Lipton argued, in a blog published last Friday, that Musk is obliterating the three most powerful levers that shareholders can typically pull to pressure a public company’s top executive.
The first is voting. SpaceX uses a dual-class structure, with Musk holding 93.6% of the Class B super-voting shares that won’t be available to the public in the offering.
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