Gibson Dunn, Davis Polk Grab Roles in SpaceX’s Largest-Ever IPO

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is advising SpaceX on what could become the largest initial public offering in history, targeting a valuation of as much as $2 trillion. Davis Polk & Wardwell is guiding the underwriting banks, with Goldman Sachs securing the lead underwriter role.

Gibson Dunn capital markets partners Hillary Holmes, Harrison Tucker, and Atma Kabad in Houston lead the firm’s team, alongside New York-based George Sampas, the co-chair of the firm’s M&A practice group and head of cross-border M&A.

Davis Polk capital markets and M&A lawyers underwriting SpaceX’s IPO includes partners Byron B. Rooney, Stephen A. Byeff, counsel Joze Vranicar of New York, and partner Alan F. Denenberg of California.

Law firms that once relied on NASA to help generate legal work now are winning private space work driven by private companies including SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. That ecosystem has drawn in firms including Sullivan & Cromwell, Baker Botts, Morgan Lewis, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, and Holland & Knight.

Gibson Dunn previously advised SpaceX, which owns the Starlink satellite and internet company, on its $17 billion acquisition of EchoStar’s wireless spectrum licenses in September 2025. Sampas, Holmes and Tucker were also on the team to advise SpaceX’s merger with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, a deal that set the combined company a valuation of $1.25 trillion.

Sampas and Robert Little, the Dallas-based global co-chair of the M&A practice group and member of the firm’s executive committee, steered SpaceX on its agreement to pay as much as $60 billion for AI company Cursor.

Holmes, who co-chairs the firm’s capital markets practice and co-leads its Houston office, said in March that her firm was “in the spotlight at the center stage” of work in Texas involving capital formation, energy and infrastructure, and space innovation.

SpaceX said in the filing that it applied to list on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the symbol “SPCX.” Gibson Dunn in March advised Nasdaq in creating the national securities exchange expected to draw capital markets and IPO work in the competitive Texas legal market.

Wall Street’s Sullivan & Cromwell ($442.5 billion) and Gibson Dunn ($329.9 billion) won top ranks on Bloomberg Law’s league tables in April, due largely to the combination of SpaceX and xAI. The firms leaped over perennial leaders Latham and Kirkland after landing outside the top 10 dealmakers last year.