Upcoming mega-IPOs from companies like OpenAI and SpaceX will likely feature dual-class share structures. This mechanism grants certain insiders, typically founders, shares with outsized voting power (e.g., 10 votes per share). This allows them to retain control over the company's strategic direction even after diluting their economic ownership by going public.

Musk's SpaceX pay package is tied to seemingly impossible milestones like colonizing Mars. However, he can vote the associated stock and take loans against it before achieving the goals. This structure grants him immediate control while deferring taxes indefinitely on shares he may never technically "earn."

Lacking independent board oversight, Elon Musk structures deals between his companies, like SpaceX acquiring XAI, in a way that benefits his overall empire. This often involves one company's shareholders getting diluted to prop up another struggling venture.

SpaceX is leveraging its monopoly in rocket launches to break Wall Street's IPO rules. By squeezing bank fees, setting a single share price, and imposing unique conditions, Elon Musk demonstrates that market dominance allows a company to bypass standard financial norms and offer a "take it or leave it" proposition to investors and partners.

Learning from his legal battles at Tesla, Elon Musk is embedding a mandatory arbitration clause in SpaceX's IPO documents. This legal maneuver aims to prevent shareholders from pursuing certain legal claims in court, effectively shielding the company and its leadership from large, public shareholder lawsuits.

An underappreciated reason for taking SpaceX public is to facilitate an eventual merger with Tesla. It is logistically difficult for a large private company to acquire a public one without cash. By going public, Elon Musk can more easily use stock to consolidate his major ventures into one public entity.

The IPO filing reveals SpaceX used company cash to buy $131 million of recalled Cybertrucks from Tesla, another Elon Musk company. This related-party transaction suggests a strategy of propping up one venture with another's capital, a significant governance concern for potential public investors.

The primary strategic benefit of SpaceX's IPO is not just capital, but creating a validated, market-to-market valuation. This public price for SpaceX will minimize shareholder lawsuits and governance friction when it eventually merges with the publicly-traded Tesla, simplifying Elon Musk's corporate structure.

Beyond high compliance costs, companies are deterred from going public by the constant threat of "vexatious" class-action lawsuits following any stock dip and the weaponization of shareholder proposals, which makes managing annual general meetings a significant burden. These factors discourage the transition to public markets.