Set to be the biggest listing in the US – and the world – when it makes its debut on the Nasdaq on 12 June, SpaceX is targeting a valuation of close on $2 trillion, in a move that will make owner South African-born Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire if all goes to plan.
The Motley Fool has estimated SpaceX’s valuation at about $2 trillion on a fully diluted basis. Using the share count disclosed in the company’s filing and the $135 initial public offering (IPO) price, other reports have placed the valuation closer to $1.75 trillion.
Musk is set to own 85% of the company, says Aswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, based on the company’s 377-page pre-listing prospectus.
Forbes says SpaceX, which will list under the SPCX ticker, going public at $135 per share would make Musk the world’s first trillionaire, worth an estimated $1 trillion. Pretoria-born Musk, the world’s richest man, is currently worth $801 billion, according to Forbes’ “real-time billionaires” website.
“SpaceX is a growing company that is money-losing and cash-burning, that will be an Elon Musk vehicle, with all the pluses and minuses that entails,” notes Damodaran.
Learn from history
The Motley Fool also points out that “stocks that go public with large market values typically lag the broader market over time”. Given SpaceX’s current sales, with revenue of $19.3 billion over the past four quarters, the analysis company says its IPO will have a ratio of price-to-sales of 103.
“Very few stocks have ever achieved such an expensive valuation, and all of them have subsequently declined sharply,” The Motley Fool says. “History says the stock could lose about three-quarters of its value once it reaches its peak valuation. Of course, it’s impossible to say when that will happen,” the analysis company states.
Calling SpaceX’s financial results “somewhat disappointing,” The Motley Fool points out that revenue gained 33% in 2025 to $18.6 billion, a growth rate that was slower than the 2024 gain of 35%.
Damodaran points out that “notwithstanding the star role played by AI and the appeal of the rockets in the space launch business, it is Starlink that carried the company in 2025”.
SpaceX’s loss came in at $4.9 billion in 2025, widening through the year to a peak of $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter to end-January, which The Motley Fool says is because of “heavy spending on rockets and AI infrastructure”.
When taking cash into account, SpaceX is carrying debt of almost $2 billion, which will have minimal impact on the company’s value, says Damodaran.
Rockets, satellites and Grok
SpaceX started out as a rocket and satellite company but its purchase of xAI resulted in its operations being divided into three business segments: space, connectivity and AI, The Motley Fool points out.
The Motley Fool anticipates SpaceX’s AI unit to grow quickly over the next few quarters, especially as Anthropic last month agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month to access compute capacity from the Colossus supercomputers. “The three-year deal could lead to a sizable acceleration in revenue growth in the second half of 2026,” the financial analysis company says.
Colossus, xAI’s compute centre leased to Anthropic for an “eye-popping $1.25 billion a month”, should kickstart revenues next year, with the potential of tension in future years if xAI plans to go head-to-head against Anthropic in the AI products market, says Damodaran.
SpaceX officially acquired xAI for $250 billion earlier this year, enabling it to add the Colossus compute cluster as an asset.
Anthropic and rival OpenAI are also set to list this year, with expectations that they could become among the largest technology IPOs in history. Anthropic is currently set to be worth $965 billion and OpenAI some $852 billion based on recent fund-raisings reported by wire service Reuters.
SpaceX, too, is expanding its AI capabilities, having bought xAI − founded in 2023 to develop advanced AI models and products including the Grok chatbot − from its owner, billionaire Musk, earlier this year in an all-stock deal, according to reports at the time.
For context, xAI had been valued at roughly $80 billion when it acquired X (formerly Twitter) in March 2025, meaning its valuation more than tripled in less than a year before being folded into SpaceX, financial news website MarketWatch says.
Space race
The company’s space revenue is derived from launch and mission services provided with Falcon rockets and, eventually, Starship systems.
Since May 2020, SpaceX has safely flown 78 crewmembers from 20 countries to and from space across 20 missions aboard the Dragon spacecraft, including seven commercial and private astronaut missions that have expanded access to space in low-Earth orbit, according to its website.
“Starship will now expand that access further – to the Moon and Mars with two upcoming commercial human spaceflight missions,” SpaceX says.
The concept of flying to Mars originated from a combination of early science fiction and post-World War II rocket engineering, with the first detailed and mathematically-backed blueprint drafted in 1948 by German-American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.
The Motley Fool notes that connectivity revenue comes from subscriptions to Starlink, the world’s largest satellite-based broadband internet service. Starlink continues to try to secure a licence to operate in South Africa due to ownership restrictions.
AI revenue comes from cloud services, including access to the Colossus supercomputers and the Grok frontier models.
Risky business
SpaceX’s prospectus contains several warnings, including that its future growth depends heavily on Starship.
If SpaceX cannot develop Starship as planned, launch it often enough, or achieve its intended performance, it could slow plans to launch new satellites, expand mobile connectivity services and build space-based AI infrastructure, potentially affecting revenue and future growth.
The company also states its AI products and social media platform X face growing regulatory scrutiny around the world. New rules covering privacy, online content, AI and consumer protection could force changes to how its products operate, increase costs, lead to fines, or make it harder to attract and retain users and customers.
SpaceX adds that its Starlink satellite internet service operates under a complex web of telecommunications, cyber security and data privacy regulations around the world. Changes to these rules could increase costs, restrict services in some markets or require changes to how the company operates.
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