Elon Musk's Starlink may go public in 2023, claims noted Silicon Valley investor

Elon Musk, world's most talked-about billionaire tech magnate, may take SpaceX's internet-from-space initiative Starlink on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) route in 2023 for the sake of a much-needed "financial flexibility", according to prominent Silicon valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya.

The Starlink IPO could make way in 2023, years earlier than planned, Palihapitiya said on his podcast 'All-In'.

WATCH |T-Mobile to use Starlink satellites to provide network access

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The comments came on 'All-In' podcast during which Chamath Palihapitiya, famous for his "blank cheque" investments, as well as two co-hosts, investors Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, predicted trends and events across Silicon valley in 2023.

"He talked about this on our pod(cast), about the difficulties and the dangers of margin loans and all of that stuff," Palihapitiya said. "He’s going to create breathing room for himself. This is the simplest and most obvious way for him to do it. It’ll give him a ton of more dry powder."

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According to a Bloomberg report, Palihapitiya isn't known to be particularly close to Elon Musk but his both co-hosts are. Both Jason Calacanis and David Sacks were involved in Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter last year.

Earlier in 2020, top SpaceX executives had opined that in the years to come, the Starlink initiative will eventually break off from SpaceX to go public.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell in February 2022 had said that Starlink was "the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public." Elon Musk, however, shortly after SpaceX president's comments had said that they "need to make the thing work" before taking it public.

The Starlink program of SpaceX consists of launching thousands of satellites into low orbits above Earth to provide broadband internet service. SpaceX has sent more than 3,300 satellites in orbit so far for its Starlink initiative.

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