SpaceX IPO valued at $1.75 trillion, aims to launch AI satellites into orbit

Article by Xiao Bing, Trend Research

On June 4, SpaceX officially launched its IPO roadshow. The 62-page presentation outlined 555.6 million shares at $135 per share, aiming to raise $75 billion with a target valuation of $1.75 trillion. If everything proceeds as planned, pricing will occur on June 11, and trading will begin on Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker symbol SPCX.

This will be the largest IPO in the history of human capital markets, surpassing Saudi Aramco, Alibaba, and everything else.

Five major investment banks—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase—jointly underwrote the offering, with 21 institutions participating in distribution. Elon Musk’s lock-up period is 366 days, and other insiders’ shares will be released in tranches beginning after the Q2 2026 financial report. Fidelity has opened subscription access to all retail investors with account balances above $2,000.

The internal code name for the roadshow PPT is Project Apex, and based on its content, this name is fitting.

During its roadshow, SpaceX defined itself as "the only company building infrastructure in space, connectivity, and AI simultaneously." This is not marketing rhetoric; based on financial data, the three business segments exhibit distinct growth trajectories, profit profiles, and capital requirements, creating an extremely complex investment proposition.

Space: Ground-based

In 2025, SpaceX completed 165 Falcon series launches using only eight newly manufactured boosters. Rocket reusability has transitioned from experimental to industrial-scale production, directly reducing launch costs from the industry’s historical average of $18,500 per kilogram to $2,700 per kilogram for Falcon 9 and $1,400 per kilogram for Falcon Heavy. Starship V3 aims to reduce costs by more than 99% beyond that.

More than 80% of global orbital launches are carried out by SpaceX. In 2023, this figure was 65%, and in 2021, it was 45%. Such market concentration is extremely rare in any infrastructure industry.

However, the financial performance of the space business itself has not been impressive. In 2025, revenue reached $4.1 billion (excluding internal satellite launches and including only external customers), representing just an 8% year-over-year growth. More critically, Starship’s R&D spending in 2025 reached $3 billion, directly pushing the space segment’s operating profit into a loss of $657 million. Adjusted EBITDA declined from $1.2 billion in 2024 to $700 million in 2025.

The value of the space business lies not in how much money it generates on its own, but in the deployment capabilities it provides to the other two segments at costs far lower than those of competitors. Every Starlink satellite launch and every future deployment of an orbital AI satellite is built upon the cost curve of Falcon and Starship.

Starlink: A money printer

Starlink is SpaceX's true valuation anchor.

2.3 million users in 2023, 4.4 million in 2024, 8.9 million in 2025, and 10.3 million by Q1 2026. Coverage spans 164 countries and regions, with a median download speed of 225 Mbps and median latency of approximately 25 milliseconds, and an average uptime of 99.9%. Starlink accounts for approximately 75% of all operational satellites worldwide.

Financial data is more direct: Starlink generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, a 50% year-over-year increase, with adjusted EBITDA reaching $7.2 billion and operating profit of $4.4 billion. This is SpaceX’s only consistently profitable segment, and its profit margins are still expanding.

The roadshow PPT revealed a key technological upgrade: the V3 satellite. Each V3 satellite offers 1,024 Gbps of bandwidth, more than ten times that of the current V2 satellite. Using Starship to launch V3 satellites, each mission can carry 60 satellites, increasing network capacity by over 61,000 Gbps per launch—more than twenty times the capacity of a single Falcon 9 launch carrying V2 satellites.

The V3 satellite program will begin deployment on Starship in the second half of 2026. If Starship achieves operational reusability on schedule, Starlink’s bandwidth expansion rate will see an order-of-magnitude leap, further widening the gap with all competitors.

Starlink Mobile (satellite-to-cell) is also worth noting. Approximately 650 first-generation mobile satellites have already been deployed, covering around 1.9 billion people, with partnerships established with about 30 mobile operators, including an in-flight connectivity agreement with American Airlines announced in 2025. Second-generation mobile satellites are planned for deployment on Starship by 2027, offering 5G-level speeds and voice services. In 2025, SpaceX also signed an agreement to acquire EchoStar’s U.S. and global mobile satellite spectrum licenses for $65 million, with completion expected by November 2027.

The pitch deck presents the total addressable market (TAM) for the connected business as $1.6 trillion ($870B for broadband + $740B for mobile). At the current growth trajectory, penetration of this TAM remains very low.

In February 2026, SpaceX completed its acquisition of xAI in an all-stock transaction, resulting in a combined valuation of $1.25 trillion. This transaction is a key variable in understanding SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO valuation and the source of the greatest controversy.

The combined AI business comprises three components:

First, the computing infrastructure: Colossus I and Colossus II together deliver a combined computing power of 1 GW, touted as the world’s largest contiguous supercomputer and the first GW-class cluster to deploy GB200 and GB300 units, supported by a GW-scale Tesla Megapack battery energy storage system.

Second is the Grok large model. The pitch deck claims it achieves state-of-the-art performance on benchmarks such as GPQA Diamond and is "faster than any other leading model provider." The current version, Grok 4.3, was released in May 2026. SpaceX has also entered into a cooperation agreement with Cursor, holding an option to acquire Cursor at an implied valuation of $60 billion.

Third is the X platform, with approximately 550 million monthly active users (including Grok and X users) and around 350 million daily posts. 117 million monthly active users have used Grok’s AI features. X is launching a new advertising platform, X Ads Manager, and plans to evolve into an all-in-one app integrating information, communication, media, payments, and banking.

The monetization of AI services is currently divided into three streams: consumer (X Premium subscription + advertising), enterprise (Grok Enterprise/API + Cursor partnership), and compute capacity sales (compute capacity agreements with cloud providers, generating $1.25 billion per month until May 2029).

But the financial reality is harsh. The AI segment generated $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, with the majority coming from X’s advertising and subscription income. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $1.2 billion, operating losses reached $6.4 billion, and it consumed 61% of the company’s total capital expenditures. Morningstar expects xAI to burn through $10 billion in 2026.

The路演 PPT estimates the recent TAM for AI businesses at $3.8 trillion (infrastructure: $760B, consumer subscriptions: $600B, digital advertising: $2.4 trillion). Including the "larger opportunities unlocked by AI," the total TAM surges to $26.5 trillion.

Pages 35-36 of the roadshow PPT are the two most information-dense pages in the entire document and represent SpaceX’s biggest differentiator in its investment narrative.

The core logic is that ground-based power supply in the U.S. can no longer keep up with the growth in AI computing demand. In 2025, data center electricity demand is projected at 62 GW, while supply is only 49 GW, creating a shortfall of 13 GW. Between 2008 and 2023, U.S. electricity production saw nearly zero growth, whereas China’s increased by approximately 6% during the same period. Building data centers on land faces numerous bottlenecks, including grid approval processes, land-use planning, and community opposition.

SpaceX's approach: Move AI computing into space.

The orbital AI satellite's design logic is built on the Starlink V3 satellite technology platform. The pitch deck outlines a clear evolution path: Starlink V3 retains core components such as inter-satellite laser communication links, flight control computers, and attitude control systems, while removing the return antenna, large battery, and modem, and adding AI computing chips, additional solar panels, and a larger heat sink.

SpaceX claims that orbital AI calculations have three structural advantages:

First, solar power provides unlimited, clean energy at a lower cost, with distribution enabled through the Starlink network, bypassing the approval bottlenecks of terrestrial power grids. Satellites in geosynchronous orbit receive sunlight over 99% of the time, enabling uninterrupted AI training tasks.

Second, it uses radiative cooling, which costs less than liquid or air cooling systems. Data is efficiently routed between the orbital computing cluster and ground users via the existing Starlink network.

Third, the deployment of next-generation chips is faster. Each generation of GPU brings a stepwise improvement in token efficiency, and through Starship’s rapid payload launch cycle, upgrades can be performed faster than in ground-based data centers.

SpaceX's estimate is: launching 1 million tons of satellites annually, with each ton generating 100 kW of computing power, adding 100 GW of AI computing capacity per year, and requiring almost no ongoing operational costs.

On January 30, 2026, SpaceX submitted an application to the FCC to deploy up to one million orbital data center satellites, and the application was accepted for review by the FCC on February 2. This is the largest data center construction proposal in human history. Pilot testing of in-orbit computing nodes will begin on Starlink V3 hardware in the second half of 2026, with full deployment of AI computing satellites starting in 2028.

The power of this narrative lies in its redefinition of SpaceX from a "rocket company + satellite internet provider" to a "global AI infrastructure provider."

SpaceX repeatedly emphasized during its roadshow: “Only we can do this.”

This confidence stems from a vertically integrated supply chain that no other company can replicate: in-house developed rockets (reducing launch costs) → in-house developed satellites (reducing manufacturing costs) → self-built inter-satellite communication network (reducing data transmission costs) → proprietary AI models (directly consuming computing power) → owned end-user platform (X, 550 million MAU). From silicon to space, and from space to end devices—entirely owned end to end.

Google is also making similar efforts. Project Suncatcher, announced in November 2025, plans to launch two prototype satellites in early 2027 in collaboration with Planet to validate the feasibility of AI payloads operating in orbit. However, Google must rely on SpaceX for launches and lacks the capability to build its own satellite network.

However, outsiders have remained cautious about this narrative.

Varda Space Industries estimates that the cost per watt for orbital computing is currently about three times that of ground-based computing. Musk claims cost parity could be achieved within 2–3 years, but independent analysts generally believe it won’t be possible until the 2030s. Challenges such as cosmic radiation interfering with chip computations, thermal management in a vacuum, and latency between orbital satellites and ground stations remain unsolved engineering hurdles. Amazon AWS leadership has publicly stated that orbital data centers are “far from practical.”

But even if you halve the story’s valuation, SpaceX’s structural advantages still hold: any company that needs orbital computing will ultimately have to buy SpaceX’s launch services. Whether the orbital data center timeline is 2028 or 2035, SpaceX is the inevitable pathway.

Pages 43 and 44 of the pitch deck contain no revenue projections, no timeline—only six phrases, each followed by a scenario that sounds like science fiction: lunar economy, Mars energy production and manufacturing, peer-to-peer Earth travel, orbital manufacturing, crewed and cargo missions to Mars, asteroid mining…

The PPT title reads: "We are in the best position to create a new trillion-dollar market."

On the Moon Economy page, SpaceX provided slightly more detail, advancing three initiatives simultaneously:

First, in alignment with NASA’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon by the late 2020s, use Starship to transport personnel and establish a sustainable lunar base to validate all systems required for long-term human survival beyond Earth; second, build an AI satellite factory on the Moon that uses solar power and lunar mass drivers to launch satellites into orbit; third, leverage this manufacturing-launch chain to scale global AI computing power from gigawatt (GW) to terawatt (TW) levels.

Of these three lines, only the first has external endorsement. NASA’s Artemis contract is a real commercial order; SpaceX is the sole selected contractor for the Human Landing System, tasked with delivering humans to the Moon by the late 2020s—a goal with credible feasibility given current technological progress.

Items two and three are currently at the conceptual engineering stage. The list of challenges for a lunar factory is long: erosion of manufacturing equipment by lunar dust, precision assembly in low-gravity environments, and engineering validation of mass drivers—each of which could take decades to resolve.

As for point-to-point Earth travel (such as a 30-minute intercontinental flight from New York to Shanghai using Starship) and asteroid mining, SpaceX has not provided any timelines for these either.

But the existence of these two slides answers a question every investor must confront: What exactly are you buying with a $1.75T valuation?

Morningstar values SpaceX at $780 billion using a DCF model, anchored by Starlink’s predictable cash flows and the stable revenue from its space launch business. The nearly $1 trillion gap between $780 billion and $1.75 trillion reflects a proposition far greater than five years of profit growth: if human civilization is truly to expand beyond Earth, SpaceX is the only infrastructure provider capable of making it happen.

This proposition does not require investors to believe that a lunar factory will definitely be built or that Mars colonization will occur within their lifetime. It only requires investors to believe one thing: if any of these scenarios come to fruition, SpaceX is the only option.

Exclusivity, not certainty, is the pricing logic behind this $1 trillion premium.

In Chaoxiang Research’s view, SpaceX, like Tesla, is a belief stock.

As Morningstar analyzed, Starlink alone could support a valuation of over $600 billion, but the $1 trillion between $780 billion and $1.75 trillion represents a faith premium, pricing in decade-long call options on orbital AI computing, lunar economies, and Mars colonization. A 94x revenue multiple has no precedent among trillion-dollar companies.

In addition, xAI is the largest risk factor in this IPO, and the roadshow has not adequately addressed it.

In the $250 billion all-stock acquisition in February 2026, where Musk controlled both sides of the transaction, this related-party deal caused SpaceX to suddenly inherit the entire losses of the AI division. Prior to the merger, SpaceX briefly posted an $800 million profit in 2024; after the merger, it incurred a net loss of $4.9 billion in 2025 and a quarterly loss of $4.3 billion in Q1 2026. The AI division recorded an annual operating loss of $6.4 billion, with projected burn rate of $10 billion in 2026, while Starlink’s $4.4 billion in operating profit falls short of covering even 70% of this deficit.

Grok’s position in the competition among cutting-edge models is far from secure, and the restoration of advertising on X Platform is still in its early stages. More notably, Musk maintains absolute control through a dual-class voting share structure, leaving public shareholders with little to no leverage over future related-party transactions or capital allocation. Morningstar bluntly states that xAI poses a “substantial threat to value destruction.”

Finally, the short-term trading logic and long-term investment logic for SpaceX may be completely contradictory.

A mere 3% free float, anticipated rapid inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 (as early as July), underwriting support from 21 investment banks, and strong market enthusiasm for AI infrastructure could all create a supply-demand imbalance during the initial listing, driving the stock price well beyond fundamental support levels.

However, SpaceX’s lock-up structure is unique: insiders can begin selling 20% in batches after the Q2 earnings report, with the first full unlock occurring in December 2026, and Elon Musk himself becoming eligible to sell 366 days later (in June 2027). Combined with the gradual exposure of AI business losses in quarterly reports, a significant selling pressure window may emerge from late 2026 through the first half of 2027.

Overall, the 62-page pitch deck depicts an end-to-end infrastructure empire spanning from Earth to space, from rockets to AI. SpaceX’s launch capabilities and Starlink’s growth trajectory have already demonstrated the execution prowess of Musk’s team. The question is: where are the limits of this execution? Are they within the atmosphere—or beyond?

The answer to this question will determine whether $1.75 trillion is visionary or reckless.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of Chaoxiang Research and do not constitute any investment advice. SpaceX has not yet been officially listed, and the financial data in the prospectus are preliminary, unaudited, and subject to revision. Investors should carefully read SpaceX’s S-1 registration statement and prospectus filed with the SEC to fully understand the related risk factors before making any investment decisions.