Good morning. Elon Musk is the face of SpaceX but behind the scenes, Bret Johnsen has spent more than a decade turning Musk’s ambitions into a financial story investors can underwrite.
Johnsen joined as CFO in 2011 after senior finance roles at Mindspeed Technologies and Broadcom. “I tell people it’s hard to be a space company and not have assured access to space,” he said in a recent interview with investor Gavin Baker, explaining why SpaceX initially focused on “making sure that we had launch nailed down” while Musk worked reduce the cost of reaching orbit. “We’re now the lowest cost per kilogram to space in the industry, and we’re looking for Starship to deliver another 10x improvement as we achieve rapid reusability,” he said.
On the communications side, Starlink has become the company’s other major growth engine, reaching more than 10 million customers across more than 160 countries with a constellation of more than 10,000 satellites, Johnsen said.
SpaceX announced a fixed IPO price of $135 per share and on Thursday, confirmed the pricing of 555.6 million shares of Class A common stock at that price. The offering is expected to raise approximately $75 billion in gross proceeds before underwriting discounts and expenses. SpaceX also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 83.3 million additional shares at the IPO price.
“I think the IPO will be judged as successful within the next few days or weeks, and is just a milestone in the company transitioning some of its shares into public hands,” Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens told me.
The all-primary structure, with no existing shareholders cashing out, underscores that the deal is about financing capital needs rather than providing liquidity. A 366-day lockup for current holders, including Musk, reinforces that message.
But as Columbia Business School professor Shivaram Rajgopal notes, Johnsen’s task goes beyond the usual pre-IPO cleanup of controls and unit economics.
“Most IPO CFOs have to clean up the accounting, tighten controls, and sell the story of the firm,” he told me. Johnsen, by contrast, must translate Musk’s vision into disclosures that persuade investors to buy “a piece of a controlled company with virtually no governance rights at an astronomical valuation.”
The company is essentially “a Musk conglomerate”—part satellite telecom provider, part defense contractor, part AI company, and part Mars colonization project, Rajgopal said.
“He can do all of this because Musk has a massive retail investor following and the institutions getting in now are hoping to make a buck riding the momentum before the cold reality of fundamentals catches up in a year or two,” he added.
That leaves Johnsen with a demanding to-do list once SpaceX lists, which is expected on Friday. “Profitability is still a ways off,” Rajgopal said. The CFO will be judged on whether he can provide segment-level transparency, sustain growth while demonstrating economies of scale, and prove that this “clunky conglomerate” structure creates value, he said. Investors will also be watching for meaningful independent governance and whether the risks tied to Musk’s dominance can be managed, he added.
If Johnsen can marry the bold promises in his narrative—assured access to space, 10x cost improvements, and global demand for Starlink—with disciplined disclosure, capital allocation, and risk management, he will have done more than take SpaceX public. He will have defined a new playbook for CFOs stewarding founder-controlled, multi-business giants into the public markets.
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]
Leaderboard
Fortune 500 Power Moves
Dan Durn, EVP and CFO of Adobe (No. 192) is departing the company on June 15 to become the new CFO of Marvell Technology, Inc., a data infrastructure and semiconductor solutions provider. Durn was appointed CFO at Adobe in 2021. He also led the finance, technology, security and operations organization.
Steve Day, SVP of corporate finance and CFO of Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration Business Unit, will serve as interim CFO. Day brings 20 years of financial leadership experience at Adobe.
Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
More notable moves this week:
Elaine Shen was promoted to CFO of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers. Shen will oversee all financial aspects of the Lakers, including shaping strategic growth. She succeeds Joe McCormack, who will shift to an executive advisory role as SVP of finance for the Lakers. Shen joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 2016 and has held a variety of strategic roles across the organization in both business and basketball operations. Most recently, Shen served as the Lakers associate CFO. Before being hired by the Lakers, Shen worked at Aon and Wachovia Bank.
Brian Herb was appointed CFO of McAfee, a global cybersecurity company. Herb brings more than two decades of financial and operational leadership experience at high-growth companies. Most recently, he served as CFO of CCC Intelligent Solutions. Prior to CCC, Herb spent more than 20 years at Experian, rising to serve as CFO for Experian’s North American business. He began his career at Ernst & Young.
Ashlee Weisser was promoted to CFO of First Watch Restaurant Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: FWRG), a daytime dining concept restaurant, effective June 8. She succeeds Mel Hope, who announced his planned retirement earlier this year and will continue to serve in an advisor role. Weisser joined First Watch in 2023 as SVP of financial planning and analysis, with over 15 years of experience guiding financial strategy and success at several national restaurant concepts, including most recently as CFO at Maple Street Biscuit Company. Earlier in her career, she held several finance roles of increasing responsibility at Bloomin’ Brands, Red Robin and Darden Restaurants.
John McCauley was appointed CFO of Vanta, an automated security and compliance software company. McCauley brings more than two decades of experience scaling high-growth software companies. He joins Vanta from Calendly, where he most recently served as chief operating officer and helped expand the business to more than 20 million users across over 230 countries. He was previously CFO at Seismic. Earlier, he was in finance leadership at ServiceNow.
Dave Lowrance, chief financial and administrative officer at Savara Inc. (Nasdaq: SVRA), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, is stepping down due to health-related reasons, effective July 15. As part of this transition, the financial and administrative responsibilities of the role will be separated. Robert Lutz, the company’s chief operating officer since 2023, will assume the additional role of CFO. He brings more than two decades of operational leadership experience. Before joining Savara, Lutz served as chief financial and business officer of iBio, Inc.
Abhey Lamba was appointed CFO of inDrive, a global mobility and delivery platform. Most recently, he served as CFO at RingCentral. Before that, he was VP of infrastructure finance at Amazon Web Services. Earlier in his career, Abhey held senior finance leadership roles at Cisco and Autodesk, and spent 15 years as an equity analyst at Mizuho Securities, UBS and ISI Group.
Big Deal
Global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has released a report which found U.S. employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May—up 16% from April and 3% from a year ago—the highest May total since the pandemic. It marks the third straight month of rising cuts. Year-to-date, employers have announced 397,755 cuts, down 43% from the same period in 2025, though that comparison is skewed by federal workforce reductions. Stripped of that distortion, 2026 is running roughly even with 2024.
“The labor market is being reshaped by technology in real time,” Andy Challenger, labor and workplace expert and chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in the report. “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is technology. Technology, already the year’s biggest job cutter, saw its steepest cuts since early 2023, even as it remains the sector with the most hiring plans this year.”
Going deeper
Here are four Fortune weekend reads:
“SpaceX lowballed its bankers on fees. Goldman Sachs has another way to win big” —Shawn Tully
“The chaos at CBS News shows the limits of ‘blow it up’ leadership” —Claire Zillman
“American taxpayers have spent $33 billion on sports stadiums. They got fewer seats—and higher prices” —Catherina Gioino
“Notion takes a quiet approach to designing AI features: ‘You can’t have every new tool screaming at you’” —Angelica Ang
Overheard
“AI is extraordinary at optimization. Give it a goal and it will find a faster, cheaper path than any team you could assemble. What it cannot do is decide which goal is worth pursuing, or make the judgment call when the model has no answer.”
—Gordon Ritter, founder and general partner at Emergence Capital, writes in a Fortune opinion piece. Over more than 15 years, he has founded and built technology companies, including Software As Service, co-founded with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and later becoming the foundation for the Salesforce Platform. Whistle Communications, another of his ventures, was acquired by IBM, where he went on to lead its $3 billion Global Small Business division.
