‘China follows Musk very closely’: China’s space firms prep IPOs to compete with SpaceX

What’s notable about that anticipation is who is doing that speculation in the first place. As the company made headlines for barring investors from Hong Kong and China from partaking—a rare move for a company trying to maximize liquidity—China’s emerging commercial space firms are similarly preparing IPOs that signal the country is competing with SpaceX and Starlink long-term, according to analysts and company filings. 

“It’s always hard to chalk everything up to a single company 8,000 miles from China, but when you look at Starlink’s progress and the milestones they’ve hit, and then you line that up with China’s announcements and decisions around space and satellite Internet, it’s pretty clear,” Blaine Curcio, the founder of a consulting firm focused on the Chinese space sector, told Fortune.

When SpaceX launched its record-breaking 94th batch of Starlink satellites in November, the China National Space Administration released an action plan “opening national scientific research projects to private enterprises” the same month, according to a May report from Beijing-based research firm Equal Ocean.

“This is the first time that the China National Space Administration has incorporated commercial aerospace into the overall national space development layout, committing to opening up resources and channels within the system to private enterprises,” the report emphasized. 

Curcio, a Chinese space industry expert, said that this is because “China follows [Elon] Musk very closely” and that “people in China recognize that what SpaceX has done is by any measure pretty damn impressive.”

That’s partly why LandSpace, dubbed China’s version of SpaceX, became the first Chinese space company to pull off a reusable rocket test in December—and the parallels don’t end there. Similarly to SpaceX, LandSpace is expected to IPO on China’s Nasdaq—the Science and Technology Innovation Board—a move seemingly greenlit because of national interest in competing with SpaceX, according to filings in the Shanghai Stock Exchange. 

In direct competition with SpaceX

The document recommending LandSpace’s listing by its underwriter China International Capital Corporation notes that while the company is currently unprofitable, it’s also “directly addressing major national needs such as low-orbit satellite internet engineering” and is up against the “first-mover advantage of SpaceX” and the U.S. leveraging Starlink. LandSpace’s listing prospectus mentioned SpaceX 37 times in the context of rivalry, also using the phrase “first-mover advantage of SpaceX” in the section about international competition. 

“It is understandable that LandSpace cites SpaceX repeatedly in its prospectus, as it views it as a competitor and industry benchmark,” Yiming Qian, a corporate finance professor at the University of Connecticut with knowledge of Chinese IPOs, told Fortune. “Benchmarking itself against SpaceX demonstrates its ambition and signals its value and high potential.”

That potential, however, does leave something to be desired. Qianfan—China’s Starlink rival—just crossed 200 satellites in orbit, well behind its original target of 648 by end of 2025, and each satellite costs over $1.5 million to manufacture compared to roughly $250,000 for SpaceX’s first-generation Starlink satellites.

Seemingly also competing with Starlink’s goal of global connectivity is ADA Space (Guoxing Aerospace in Chinese), a tech company that develops AI-powered satellite networks to send image data down more efficiently than traditional satellite technology, which relies on ground stations.

“China has found it difficult to build a global network of ground stations [because] there’s a lot of countries that don’t want to have Chinese ground stations,” Curcio said, explaining reducing reliance on ground-based infrastructure is why there’s interest in processing satellite data in space.

The term “AI computing satellites” appears over 100 times in ADA Space’s preliminary paperwork for an IPO, filed on May 14 through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. While it didn’t explicitly mention SpaceX like the LandSpace IPO filing did, ADA Space notes that “a global leading commercial aerospace company has recently announced plans” to deploy “up to one million satellites,” a description lining up with SpaceX’s announcement to regulators that it intends to launch one million space-based satellites. 

Paul Lau, the head of capital markets at KPMG China, told Fortune that the major accounting firm believes “specialist tech will be the key theme for Hong Kong and Chinese mainland IPO markets” in 2026, particularly “AI-related businesses”. 

“KPMG also expects other emerging specialist tech firms, such as those in the space tech sector, to tap into these markets,” Lau said.