SpaceX just went public, and it wasn’t subtle about it. The company priced 555.5 million shares at $135 each on June 12, raising $75 billion in what is now the largest IPO in history. Early trading pushed the valuation past $2 trillion, making SpaceX not just the most valuable aerospace company on Earth but one of the most valuable companies, period.
The ticker is SPCX. The ambition is interplanetary. And the money is earmarked for something that sounds like science fiction: putting data centers in orbit.
SpaceX has filed with the FCC to deploy up to 1 million satellites designed to function as space-based AI compute nodes. Not communication relays. Not GPS helpers. Full orbital data centers.
Initial demonstration tests are targeted for late 2027, with broader satellite deployment planned as early as 2028. The company’s internal roadmap calls for 1 GW of orbital computing power by the end of 2026 and a scale-up to 100 GW within roughly 3.5 years after that.
The IPO proceeds are being channeled into three core areas: expanding the Starlink satellite constellation, increasing launch capacity across the Falcon and Starship fleet, and building out this orbital compute layer.
The xAI connection
In February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI, folding Elon Musk’s AI venture directly into the aerospace company. That deal brought along the Colossus data centers, which were already among the most power-dense AI training facilities on the planet, along with the Grok family of AI models.
The acquisition effectively merged SpaceX’s launch infrastructure with xAI’s compute-hungry AI workloads. Instead of building ever-larger ground-based facilities and fighting for power grid access in Texas or Virginia, the combined entity is betting it can bypass terrestrial constraints entirely.
What this means for investors
The $75 billion raise dwarfs previous tech IPOs and signals that institutional investors are willing to underwrite genuinely speculative bets on space-based infrastructure at a scale previously reserved for sovereign governments.
SpaceX trading above $2 trillion on day one puts it in the same valuation neighborhood as Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The difference is that those companies generate hundreds of billions in annual revenue from mature product lines. SpaceX’s orbital compute business doesn’t exist yet.
The risk side of the ledger is substantial. Regulatory approval for 1 million satellites is far from guaranteed. The FCC filing is just that, a filing. International spectrum coordination, orbital debris concerns, and environmental reviews from multiple agencies stand between SpaceX and its constellation ambitions.
There’s also the competitive question. Amazon’s Project Kuiper is already deploying broadband satellites, and several Chinese state-backed ventures are pursuing similar orbital infrastructure goals.