Boycotts Hurt Tesla’s Sales. Now, Activists Are Taking On Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is facing protests against its expected initial public offering from some of the same advocacy groups that helped erase $600 billion from Tesla’s market cap early last year.

SpaceX’s IPO is poised to be the largest ever, raising tens of billions of dollars for the Musk-founded company and valuing it above $2 trillion.

If all goes as intended come June, the conglomerate that now owns a rocket manufacturer , a social media app , and an AI chatbot developer will instantly rank among the world’s top 10 largest publicly-traded companies.

The IPO “will bring an infusion of cash that Musk will control and tap for personal and political gain,” says the loosely organized activist group Divest From Tesla .

“Just as he has tapped Tesla to access tremendous wealth that he used, not for the greater good, but to sow seeds of chaos and fascism, so he will with SpaceX.”
“The commission must demand ironclad disclosures, independent oversight and safeguards against forced investment—or risk consigning workers’ life savings to the whims of a company that operates more like a Musk family venture than a transparent, publicly traded enterprise,” Weingarten said in a statement.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

While testifying last week in his trial against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Musk described the goal of SpaceX as making it possible for humans to live on other planets “to ensure the long-term survival of life and consciousness as we know it.” Musk, who is CEO and self-described chief engineer, described SpaceX as “life insurance for life as we know it” and added that offering the possibility of living among the stars was important to excite people.

“Life cannot just be about solving one miserable problem after another.”
Musk became ever more the globally polarizing figure after helping lead President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and overseeing mass cuts to jobs, contracts, and grants across federal agencies.

“SpaceX wants the public to buy into the myth of the final frontier—but this is really a desperate cash-out before the cracks in Musk's empire become impossible to ignore,” Tesla Takedown tells WIRED.

“Exploding rockets, a militarized Starlink, dangerous xAI outputs: The risks aren't hypothetical, they're mounting, and the era of the blank check for Elon must end.”
ABP, a Dutch pension fund that sold off a stake approaching $600 million in Tesla in 2024, declined to comment on potential future investments in SpaceX.

The fund’s policies bar investments in companies involved in serious controversies related to the environment or corporate integrity; activists could make the case SpaceX is in the midst of both.

Aarian Marshall contributed to this story.