It's finally official: SpaceX will IPO in 2026.
For about a week, multiple media outlets have reported rumors that the biggest and most profitable private space company in the world was contemplating, first, a private placement of stock at an $800 billion valuation ("to provide liquidity for employees and investors," according to Elon Musk) and then, a full-scale initial public offering (IPO) of stock that would make SpaceX a public company worth $1.5 trillion.
The $800 billion price would be twice SpaceX's private market value at its most recent capital raise.
The $1.5 trillion price would be nearly 4x.
Image source: SpaceX.
Why is SpaceX IPO'ing?
In a column last week, Eric Berger at Ars Technica confirmed the rumor -- or at least the IPO part. He was also able to guess why SpaceX is going public. (And Elon Musk confirmed he guessed right.)
"Raising large amounts of money in the next 18 months would allow Musk to have significant capital to deploy at SpaceX," wrote Berger. And what Musk intends to do with this money is "develop a modified version of the Starlink satellite to serve as a foundation for building data centers in space."
Ultimately, SpaceX's CEO wants to put "satellite factories on the Moon" and build an "electromagnetic railgun" there to "accelerate AI satellites to lunar escape velocity without the need for rockets." This will permit SpaceX to launch ">100TW/year of AI" data center satellites into space to provide artificial intelligence (AI) services to everyone down on Earth (much like SpaceX already provides internet services to Earth via its Starlink satellites).
IPO'ing SpaceX, therefore, is a means to the end of SpaceX dominating AI on Earth.
What does SpaceX do?
As business plans go, this sounds like a bit of a long shot -- maybe even a "moonshot." But it's far from the only arrow SpaceX has in its quiver.
With just a couple of weeks to go in 2025, SpaceX has already launched its Falcon 9 rockets more than 160 times -- more than half of all launches conducted by all companies (and nation states) around the world. The company hit a milestone of 500 successful landings in October -- the most of any company on Earth. (No. 2 is Blue Origin, which has landed once.) One specific Falcon booster, designated "B1067," has launched and landed an incredible 32 times, with turnaround times between flights as short as three weeks.
SpaceX is launching roughly one rocket every two days, with the vast majority of these launches carrying satellites for the company's Starlink satellite internet constellation.
Starlink itself now has more than 9,000 satellites in orbit, mainly providing satellite internet but with many tasked with providing direct-to-cell mobile communication for cellphones and others performing tasks for the military as part of Starshield. Once SpaceX works out the bugs on its even larger Starship rocket, Starlink deployment should accelerate.
And SpaceX has a handful of other projects, ranging from building landers to put astronauts back on the moon to sending space tourists to orbit Earth -- and now potentially building AI data centers in space.
How much is SpaceX stock worth?
The last time I tried to hang a valuation on SpaceX, in 2019, it was a much smaller company, doing about $2 billion in revenue a year and with a private market value of about $30.5 billion. Six years later, SpaceX is estimated to be doing $15 billion in annual business (mostly from Starlink). Analysts at Payload Space estimate that revenue is growing at a 50% or greater pace and is likely to reach $22 billion to $24 billion next year.
Relative to that revenue, a $1.5 trillion IPO would value SpaceX at somewhere between 62 and 68 times sales -- significantly more than the 12.2 times sales the shares fetched on the private market in 2019.
On the other hand, between 2018 and 2025, SpaceX grew its annual revenue at approximately 33% per year. 2026 estimates, however (assuming they're accurate), imply the company's revenue growth is actually accelerating past 50% today. This suggests that a higher valuation may be justified, although I must admit that "68 times sales" may be a bit of a stretch.
As a general rule, I value most space stocks at no more than four times sales. Granted, "most space stocks" are unprofitable versus SpaceX, which says its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), at least, are positive, and that it's been "cash flow positive for many years."
Again, it's a good argument in favor of SpaceX deserving some kind of a premium valuation. My hunch, though, is still that when this IPO happens, it will happen at a valuation that's very hard to defend.
