Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking a
$1.75 trillion valuation in its forthcoming initial public
offering. How far into the stratosphere is that?
Going by common Wall Street metrics, the answer is, way out
there. SpaceX would immediately become the sixth most-valuable
publicly listed U.S. firm, worth more than the likes of Meta
Platforms, which has been publicly listed for more than
a decade, and Berkshire Hathaway, a company older than
SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
And yet, there is no sign that investors will think twice about
hitting the buy button once it goes public in an IPO that could
raise $75 billion or more, which would be a record. The frenzy
has grown so intense that some are pouring money into opaque
secondary markets, accepting complex arrangements and murky
ownership just for a shot at owning the shares.
“It has almost no comparable listed peer to benchmark a
valuation off of and would likely come at a significant premium
to anything else that is listed in the space tech sector, given
its size and market leadership,” said Samuel Kerr, global head
of equity capital markets at Mergermarket.
SpaceX’s valuation is grounded in its profitable,
fast-growing Starlink satellite network, which has over 10
million subscribers, and a launch business that analysts and
investors say has transformed access to orbit. The Falcon 9,
which in December 2015 became the first large rocket to make a
controlled recovery after delivering a payload into orbit,
completed 165 launches in 2025, a new annual record.
But analysts and portfolio managers are also pricing in
considerably more. Musk’s track record of building successful,
industry-disrupting companies gives analysts and portfolio
managers confidence that the unproven bets – Starship, xAI, and
an ambitious push into data-center satellites – will eventually
pay off too.
“This is a set of proven juggernaut, mega-cap businesses,”
said Daniel Hanson, portfolio manager at Neuberger’s Quality
Equity Fund, an existing SpaceX investor with close to 10% of
its $2.6 billion in assets allocated to the company. “The launch
business and the Starlink business are proven, here and now. xAI
is about optionality,” he said, referring to businesses that
could add value over time as they benefit from long-term shifts
toward AI, data and global connectivity.
Here’s a quick look at the pros and cons ahead of the IPO.
LEADING THE SPACE RACE
SpaceX has a commanding lead in deploying the low-Earth
orbit satellites that deliver internet and communications for
its Starlink service from space. Starlink is profitable and
accounts for roughly 50% to 80% of SpaceX’s revenue.
Many of the parent company’s other ambitions are yet to be
realized. These include the delayed Starship rocket program for
Moon and Mars missions and plans to launch up to one million
data-center satellites linked to its money-losing AI unit.
To justify the valuation, “investors will need to keep
strict tabs on the timing of Starship coming to market and on
the ramp-up of Starlink service direct to cellphones,” PitchBook
analyst Franco Granda said in a note last month.
Even so, SpaceX launches a rocket nearly every two days,
faster than any space program or firm in history, giving it key
capacity in a market where launch access has become a bottleneck
for rivals like Amazon, which is building its own satellite
networks.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind for a start,” said Mark Boggett, CEO
of venture capital fund Seraphim Space.
MULTIPLES ARE STRETCHED
SpaceX posted about $8 billion in profit and revenue of $15
billion to $16 billion in 2025, Reuters exclusively reported in
January. The profit figure is based on EBITDA, or earnings
before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a
standard measure of operating performance. Revenue growth has
ranged in recent years from 51% in 2024 to 100% in 2021.
Unlike listed companies covered by analysts, no consensus
projections exist for SpaceX’s growth. Reuters made several
assumptions in order to compare SpaceX’s potential valuation
with listed firms.
Reuters assumed cash flow and revenue would double in 2026
from reported levels in 2025, an aggressive rate aimed at making
the valuation multiples err on the low side.
Using those assumptions, at a market capitalization of $1.75
trillion, SpaceX would carry a price-to-revenue multiple of 56
and a price-to-EBITDA multiple of 109 – eye-popping valuations
for even the fastest-growing companies.
Tesla, which Musk also leads, is valued at 12 times
expected revenue and 79 times EBITDA, making it one of Wall
Street’s priciest stocks. Palantir is at 43 and 75 for
those metrics, respectively, after its shares soared 500% in the
past two years on optimism about its fast-expanding AI business.
Generally speaking, the higher the multiple, the harder it
is for a company’s performance to meet expectations to keep its
stock appreciating.
“Starlink is the only reason this valuation is defensible,”
said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities.
Its subscriber base “is just growing at crazy levels.”
THE FOG OF PRIVATE COMPANY VALUATIONS
In its merger with Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in
February, SpaceX was valued at $1 trillion and the Grok chatbot
developer at $250 billion.
That transaction gives analysts at least one recent anchor for
the combined entity’s value, and some investors argue it is too
conservative. It is currently valued at $1.54 trillion on
secondary trading venue Nasdaq Private Market.
“SpaceX is consistently one of the most actively traded
names on our platform because there’s nothing else like it in
the private markets today,” said Greg Martin, co-founder at
Rainmaker Securities, a trading platform for private pre-IPO
shares. “Demand has also almost always outpaced supply, and
that’s been true even during periods where broader secondary
market activity has been more muted.”