Author: Block Analytics Ltd, Merkle 3s Capital
An IPO that was front-loaded by six months
On June 12, SpaceX will list on Nasdaq with a $1.75 trillion valuation, marking the largest IPO in human capital market history. This figure surpasses Walmart, JPMorgan, and the combined valuations of all major traditional energy giants. A space company still operating at a loss has a valuation higher than nearly half of the S&P 500.
But what truly underpins that $1.75 trillion valuation isn’t the Starship repeatedly exploding in Texas—it’s the more than 8,000 small white dishes overhead called Starlink. The rocket is just the ticket; satellite internet is the cash machine. This was the contrast the market slowly absorbed over a quarter following SpaceX’s filing.
What’s more worth our consideration are the related concept stocks. Since the leak of the prospectus on March 25, TSLA is up 10%, RKLB is up 88%, FLY is up 70%, QCOM is up 56%, and DXYZ is up 79%—a speculative frenzy around SpaceX has already played out for much of its course. Now, as retail investors step in, are they joining a chain or picking up the baton? Let’s examine each one closely.
Three Faces in the Prospectus
SpaceX has divided its business into three parts: Space (launches and Starship), Connectivity (Starlink), and AI (data centers and computing power). It sounds balanced, but financially, it’s a machine with severe imbalances.
Starlink is a true cash cow. As of Q1 2026, paying users have surpassed 10.3 million, contributing 61% of the group’s quarterly revenue with an EBITDA margin as high as 63%—a figure higher than that of the vast majority of SaaS companies. Once the scale effect in satellite internet crosses the tipping point, marginal costs approach zero—SpaceX has already crossed it.
Another key aspect of this story is the trend in ARPU. In 2023, Starlink’s average monthly fee remained in the $110–$130 range; in 2024, as adoption expanded in developing markets, it dropped to $90–$100; and by the second half of 2025, due to the introduction of the Direct to Cell entry plan and dilution from enterprise long-tail users, it had fallen further to $75–$85. With user numbers doubling but revenue per user halving, this is a classic “volume over price” story.
The benefit is that the TAM is expanding—markets like India, Southeast Asia, and Africa, which had never been part of Starlink’s initial business model due to their low ARPU. The downside is that gross margins will come under pressure, as hardware subsidies are higher in these lower-tier markets, extending the payback period per household from 14 months to 22–28 months. We prefer to view Starlink as a story prioritizing user growth over ARPU until 2027; a temporary dip in ARPU in quarterly earnings should not be overinterpreted, but we must remain vigilant to the potential risk of simultaneous slowdowns in both user growth and ARPU.
AI operations are the other extreme. In Q1, $7.7 billion in capital expenditures were spent, mostly on Phase 2 of the data center in Memphis, Texas. The AI compute contract with Anthropic has a monthly price tag of $1.25 billion, which sounds impressive—but the contract explicitly states that either party can terminate it unilaterally after 90 days. This means the reported AI revenue could vanish at any moment.
The Space segment continues to incur losses due to Starship’s development. The business model hinges on three interconnected components: making rockets as cheap as cabbage, generating revenue through Starlink tolls, and capturing all computing power via AI data centers. All three pieces are essential, but only Starlink is currently generating cash.
At the control level, Musk holds 85.1% of the voting rights—a control structure even more absolute than Zuckerberg’s during the Meta era, meaning retail investors are essentially buying into belief. SpaceX’s S-1 filing lists its total addressable market (TAM) at $28.5 trillion, broken down as follows: satellite broadband at $1.2 trillion, government defense launches at $400 billion, AI computing power at $12 trillion, deep space and lunar economy at $9 trillion, and the remainder from industrial aerospace. Most of these figures will only be verifiable by 2040.
TSLA: The Hidden Main Character Mentioned 87 Times in the Prospectus
If you could only pick one SpaceX-related stock, the answer isn't Rocket Company—it's Tesla.
The SpaceX prospectus mentions Tesla 87 times—far more than any other entity. The two companies share chip design teams, share Dojo’s computing architecture, and share capacity at Tesla’s Terafab chip factory in Texas. Musk’s publicly announced “Heart of the Galaxy” plan in early 2026 essentially integrates SpaceX’s computing power with Tesla’s FSD training data pool—this is not two separate companies, but a single tech empire deliberately split in two.
The capital markets have already voted with their feet. Since the filing of the prospectus on March 25, TSLA has risen 10.24%. While this gain may seem modest compared to many small-cap speculative stocks, consider that Tesla’s market capitalization is in the trillions—so a 10% increase represents an addition equivalent to the entire market value of Ford Motor Company. What are markets betting on? That after SpaceX’s IPO, Tesla’s indirect stake in SpaceX will be revalued.
A more aggressive hypothesis is a merger. There is indeed market expectation that the two companies may consolidate around 2027, but the likelihood depends on tax structures and Elon Musk’s patience with Tesla’s board. We view TSLA more as a “high-probability side pocket” for SpaceX’s listing, rather than a “merger lottery ticket.”
If you believe in SpaceX’s AI computing narrative, then Tesla’s Dojo is the closest version you can directly buy on the secondary market. If you believe in SpaceX’s cash flow narrative, then Tesla is not the optimal choice—it has no direct business linkage with Starlink.
Three direct competitors: RKLB, ASTS, FLY
The most awkward situation regarding SpaceX’s IPO isn’t SpaceX itself—it’s these three companies. They benefit from the “space stock premium” but must prove they won’t be overtaken by SpaceX.
Rocket Lab (RKLB): The small-scale alternative to SpaceX
RKLB has been the top gainer of this rally, up +88.85% since the end of March. The logic is straightforward: retail investors can't buy SpaceX, so they buy the company most similar to it. Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket has already achieved commercial, steady-state launches, and its upcoming Neutron medium rocket, designed to compete with Falcon 9, is expected to make its maiden flight by the end of 2026.
Neutron’s timeline is currently the most sensitive variable for RKLB. The company initially targeted a first flight by the end of 2025, then adjusted it to Q1 2026 in mid-2025, and delayed it again to Q4 2026 by the end of 2025. Each delay triggered a stock price correction in the 15–25% range, indicating that the market places extremely high importance on this milestone—any news regarding engine testing, integrated rehearsals, or weather windows can cause short-term price volatility.
The Archimedes engine has completed long-duration ignition tests. The second-stage recovery scheme draws inspiration from Falcon 9 but has been simplified, replacing grid fins with a more conservative parachute recovery system. If Neutron successfully makes its maiden flight by the end of 2026, RKLB will gain eligibility to compete for NASA’s NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 contract—a government procurement pool valued at approximately $5 billion over five years. Conversely, if the maiden flight is further delayed until 2027, the entire valuation anchor will weaken—market patience for "stand-in" candidates has its limits.
But RKLB’s true moat isn’t rockets—it’s quietly becoming a “space IDM,” building its own rockets, developing its own satellite buses, providing its own launch services, and operating its own constellation. This vertically integrated approach is the path SpaceX took, and the market is willing to reward it with a valuation premium.
The risks are also clear. If Neutron is delayed or its maiden flight fails, the entire "substitute" narrative will be re-priced by the market. And SpaceX’s own IPO is a massive valuation magnet—when genuine SpaceX shares become available, how much value will the substitute retain?
AST SpaceMobile (ASTS): The AT&T of Space
ASTS is taking a different path: direct smartphone-to-satellite connectivity. No dedicated terminal is needed—ordinary iPhones and Android phones can connect to space-based base stations with just a glance upward. The breakthrough of this story lies in its direct challenge to the same TAM as Starlink Direct to Cell.
ASTS has partnered with carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, and Rakuten, and BlueWalker 3 has achieved a test data rate of 14 Mbps in orbit. However, its satellite deployment is significantly behind Starlink, and it will take another 18 to 30 months for the full constellation to be operational.
High volatility is normal for ASTS—daily swings of 10% are common. If your risk tolerance for positions is low, this stock is not suitable as a core holding. But if you’re betting on the idea that "operators don’t want Starlink to dominate," then ASTS is the sharpest tool for that thesis.
Firefly Aerospace (FLY): A Strong Contender
FLY is a severely undervalued asset in this cycle. Although its price increase of +70.38% may seem substantial, its fundamental backing may be even stronger than RKLB's. Alpha Rocket has completed multiple commercial launches, and Blue Ghost lunar lander is one of NASA’s key contractors under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
FLY’s core narrative is the "Earth-Moon Ecosystem"—end-to-end capabilities from low Earth orbit to the lunar surface. As SpaceX’s Starship turns lunar economics from science fiction into reality, FLY is one of its most direct beneficiaries. While it lacks the brand recognition of RKLB, its ability to secure NASA contracts may be the strongest among the three.
The shared risk among the three is that after SpaceX goes public, the "substitute capital" currently allocated to them may be withdrawn and redirected toward SpaceX itself. This is a classic "boot dropping" risk, and the appropriate strategy is to reduce positions in advance rather than chasing higher prices.
Partner Ecosystem: SATS, PL, AMZN, TMUS, QCOM, FLYX
SpaceX's IPO is a shot in the arm for partners—demonstrating that this ecosystem can generate market value, prompting a repricing of all upstream and downstream components.
EchoStar (SATS): Major Spectrum Seller
SATS is one of the biggest winners in this ecosystem game. At the end of 2025, it sold its S-band and part of its AWS-4 spectrum to SpaceX for $8.5 billion in cash plus $8.5 billion in SpaceX stock. This transaction transformed SATS overnight from a struggling satellite TV company into a major shareholder of SpaceX.
Since the end of March, SATS has risen 23.81%, which appears modest, but this increase does not fully reflect the valuation release from SpaceX’s shares following its IPO. If SpaceX’s post-IPO valuation holds at $1.75 trillion, the actual value of SATS’s 850 million shares would be significantly higher than their book value.
Planet Labs (PL): The Most Loyal Passenger
PL is a frequent participant in SpaceX's rideshare launches, with over 90% of its satellites deployed via Falcon 9. Since the end of March, it has risen +30.76%. The company is the market leader in Earth observation, scanning the entire surface of the Earth once daily, and sells its data products to governments, agriculture, insurance, and hedge funds.
PL and SpaceX have a true symbiotic relationship. SpaceX’s IPO won’t change PL’s fundamentals, but it will prompt the market to reassess the ceiling of the Earth observation sector. If you believe in the “data as an asset” thesis, PL is the cleanest play on this trend.
Amazon (AMZN): A Dramatic Turn from Rival to Partner
Amazon's Kuiper constellation was originally Starlink's biggest potential competitor. However, in the second half of 2025, Amazon unexpectedly awarded part of its Kuiper satellite launch contracts to SpaceX—citing insufficient launch capacity from ULA and Blue Origin.
This is a classic case where business logic overrides stance. For Amazon, SpaceX’s IPO means a comparable valuation has emerged for the Kuiper project, potentially leading the market to rediscover the synergistic value of AWS + Kuiper. However, given Amazon’s massive scale, SpaceX’s IPO is more of a marginal benefit than a core driver.
T-Mobile (TMUS): Premier Partner for Direct to Cell
TMUS is the exclusive carrier partner for Starlink’s direct-to-cell service in the United States. Starting in 2025, T-Mobile users will be able to send and receive text messages via Starlink satellites in areas without cellular coverage, with voice and data services expanding in 2026. This is a revolutionary development that enables carriers to bypass traditional cell tower infrastructure.
TMUS's stock price reacted relatively modestly, but it has secured a 10-year cooperative framework. If Starlink Direct to Cell user penetration exceeds expectations, TMUS stands to be the most stable cash flow beneficiary on this front.
Qualcomm (QCOM): The Enabler Beneath the Surface
QCOM rose 56.59%, a surge that surprised many. The rationale lies in Qualcomm's deep collaborations on Starlink's satellite baseband chips, Direct to Cell mobile modems, and certain communication chips for SpaceX data centers.
QCOM is the most fundamental "seller of shovels" in the SpaceX ecosystem—it doesn't bet on any single application, yet it benefits whenever any application experiences explosive growth. This logic aligns perfectly with its position during the smartphone era.
flyExclusive (FLYX): Starlink Aviation Dealer
FLYX is a private jet charter service and one of Starlink Aviation’s key distributors in the private aviation sector. The company is small and highly agile, but its growth potential is clearly limited—the entire private aviation market is inherently constrained in size.
If you want flexibility, FLYX delivers; if you want certainty, FLYX is not the answer. This is a classic small-cap beta asset.
Premium channels: GOOGL, BAC, DXYZ, XOVR, VCX
The characteristic of this group is "indirect ownership of SpaceX shares." Before SpaceX's IPO, these were the only channels available for retail investors to gain exposure to SpaceX; after the IPO, the value of this channel will change fundamentally.
GOOGL and BAC: Giants on Easy Win
Google holds approximately 7% of SpaceX, a legacy of its 2015 investment. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, this stake has a book value of about $120 billion. For GOOGL, this is a "sleeping asset" that does not affect fundamentals but adds a significant revaluation to its financial statements.
BAC is one of the lead underwriters for SpaceX’s IPO, with expected underwriting fees ranging between $500 million and $800 million. For a bank of BAC’s size, this amount won’t alter its valuation, but it will become the “deal of the quarter.” Capital markets love star deals.
DXYZ, XOVR, VCX: The Last Chance for Retail Investors to Buy SpaceX
These three underlying assets are essentially closed-end funds that bundle SpaceX equity. DXYZ is Destiny Tech100, XOVR is ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF, and VCX is Vinia Capital. All three hold significant stakes in SpaceX shares through secondary market transactions or private shareholdings.
Since the end of March, DXYZ has risen 79.56%, with its market price trading at a premium of over 200% above its NAV at its peak. This is a very dangerous signal. This premium exists only under the assumption that "retail investors have no other way to buy SpaceX." The moment SpaceX itself goes public and retail investors can directly purchase the underlying stock, this premium will have no justification whatsoever.
A completely identical script has played out before. GBTC maintained a premium of over 30% for a long time prior to the launch of Bitcoin ETFs in 2021, and immediately turned into a discount of over 20% after the ETF approval. DXYZ, XOVR, and VCX are highly likely to replicate this pattern, and due to their higher initial premiums, the declines could be even more severe.
If you currently hold these funds, you need to seriously consider: are you profiting from SpaceX’s rising valuation, or from the scarcity premium caused by retail investors having no access? If it’s the latter, June 12 is the day this scarcity disappears.
RDW Redwire: Another Approach to Selling Shovels in Space
Redwire is not listed among the speculative stocks in the media, but we believe it deserves its own section—because its investment thesis is different from all the previous companies.
Rocket companies earn revenue from transportation fees, satellite companies earn from bandwidth fees, and Redwire earns from manufacturing components for satellites—hardware essentials like solar arrays, deployable structures, camera payloads, and space 3D printing systems. Redwire is one of the hidden champions in this niche market.
By the end of 2025, RDW acquired Edge Autonomy, a company specializing in military drones and military space payloads. This acquisition transformed Redwire from a purely commercial space company into a dual-use defense contractor. In the current structure of U.S. defense spending, dual-use targets command significantly higher valuation multiples than purely commercial companies.
More interesting is the microgravity pharmaceutical line. Redwire’s PIL-BOX microgravity culture device has already completed multiple protein crystal growth experiments aboard the International Space Station. Certain drugs produced in microgravity exhibit significantly higher purity than those made on Earth—a sector still in its early stages but with a potential total addressable market reaching hundreds of billions of dollars.
Regarding the product line, PIL-BOX currently serves top-tier pharmaceutical companies such as Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, focusing on crystal form optimization of monoclonal antibody drugs. Ground-based cultivation can only consistently produce one crystal form, while microgravity environments enable the screening of multiple crystal forms, each corresponding to different drug solubility, stability, and half-life. The commercial value lies not in "manufacturing drugs in space," but in "using space-derived data to reverse-engineer and optimize ground-based processes"—a classic high-value data business, with each experiment priced between $2 million and $5 million.
A more advanced application is stem cell culture and tissue engineering. Cell 3D culture in microgravity can circumvent sedimentation issues encountered in ground-based cultivation, theoretically enabling the creation of truly three-dimensional organ analogs. This approach is still in the preclinical stage, with the earliest data for IND submission expected no sooner than 2028; however, if successful, Redwire would no longer hold merely a space sector stock but a biotechnology stock—with a completely different valuation logic, potentially increasing its PS multiple from 3–5x for space stocks to 15–25x for biotech.
RDW is currently undervalued for three reasons: its SPAC history label, consecutive losses, and relatively modest revenue compared to rocket companies. None of these factors affect the quality of its core assets, but all of them impact retail investor attention.
On the catalyst front, the Trump administration’s proposed "Golden Dome" air defense system plan creates direct demand for Redwire’s very low Earth orbit satellites and Edge Autonomy’s payloads. This represents a government procurement opportunity potentially worth tens of billions of dollars.
The specific technical approach for Iron Dome is still under evaluation, but the established direction is a multi-layered architecture of "low-Earth-orbit multi-layer detection + high-Earth-orbit early warning + terminal interception," modeled after an upgraded version of Israel’s original Iron Dome combined with the U.S. SDI legacy. Redwire’s capabilities in low-Earth-orbit satellite buses, Edge Autonomy’s expertise in tactical drones and high-altitude payloads, and PIL-BOX’s work in space materials and sensor testing—all three business lines can align with different subcontracts for Iron Dome. The rarity of a single mid- to small-cap company possessing all three of these capabilities is one of the most overlooked aspects of Redwire’s valuation narrative.
On the timeline, the Pentagon plans to release its first solicitation in the second half of 2026, begin large-scale procurement in 2027, and complete the initial deployment before 2030. This means RDW’s current low-valuation window may last only 12 to 18 months—once orders begin to materialize, the market will quickly reclassify it from a "commercial space stock" to a "defense contractor stock," resulting in a structural multiple expansion similar to Palantir’s re-rating in 2023 when it shifted from a tech stock to a defense stock.
We won’t claim that Redwire will definitely become the next RKLB, but its investment thesis combines both “infrastructure” and “shovel seller” characteristics, making it more稳健 than simply betting on whether a single rocket company will succeed. If your portfolio already has high-elasticity exposure to RKLB or ASTS, RDW offers a cost-effective hedging allocation.
Risks and Outlook: A Story Already Priced In
After reviewing the 17 companies, we need to return to the most fundamental question—has all of this already been priced in?
More than 60 days since the prospectus was filed, nearly all related stocks have surged by double-digit, even triple-digit percentages. This suggests that the market has already priced in most of the positive factors surrounding SpaceX’s IPO. On the actual listing date of June 12, rather than a new wave of broad gains, a more likely scenario is profit-taking as the利好 (positive news) is realized.
Historical patterns also support this judgment. From Alibaba to Facebook, and from SABIC to Saudi Aramco, nearly all mega-IPOs with market capitalizations exceeding $500 billion have underperformed the broader market in their first year after listing. The liquidity suction effect is real, and the valuation anchoring effect is also real.
The fundamental risks facing SpaceX itself cannot be ignored. Starship is still in testing, and its most recent flight failed to complete the full mission profile; Starlink’s ARPU has been continuously declining, falling from an early high of $130 per month to below $80 per month today; while the AI segment is burning cash, its growth rate is far slower than that of xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic’s own businesses, which are also burning cash.
Our assessment is that SpaceX is a great company, but a $1.75 trillion valuation requires flawless execution over the next three years. Any misstep could result in a 20–40% valuation correction. On the speculative stock front, divergence will be far more pronounced than broad gains—true believers (TSLA, QCOM, SATS, RDW) and latecomers (DXYZ, XOVR, VCX) will be quickly separated by the market within three months after the IPO.
Tail risk is also worth highlighting separately. For a company the size of SpaceX, typical valuation fluctuations involve corrections of 20–40%, but what would truly prompt structural investors to exit are low-probability, high-impact events: a fatal accident involving Starship prior to a crewed mission, a black swan event related to Musk’s personal health or legal issues, the U.S. government intervening in SpaceX’s equity structure under the guise of national security, or the escalation of space militarization to the point of asset destruction.
Individually, the probability of each of these events occurring is low, but if any one of them materializes, the impact will extend beyond SpaceX’s own valuation to the entire 17-stock sector’s liquidity discount. Historical precedents—such as Tesla’s 2018 privatization turmoil and the leverage contagion triggered by the Twitter acquisition in 2022—demonstrate that assets closely tied to Musk are not insulated from tail risks. From an allocation perspective, we prefer to limit total exposure to the SpaceX ecosystem to no more than 10–15% of the portfolio, rather than concentrating solely on the aerospace theme due to short-term price gains—tail risks are hedged through position sizing, not stock selection.
When a rocket launches, everyone looks up—but the real moment of profit often comes when the rocket returns to Earth and is recovered.