On June 12th, SpaceX is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. The company is targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and aims to raise up to $75 billion — making it the largest initial public offering in market history, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion raise in 2019 by a factor of three.
Most investors will watch it happen from the outside. Understanding why — and what's actually changing — matters more than the headline number.
What SpaceX Actually Is Now
SpaceX is no longer just a rocket company. In February 2026, it merged with Elon Musk's AI venture xAI in an all-stock deal valued at $250 billion, creating a single entity that now combines rocket launches, satellite internet, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and the Grok large language model.
The S-1 filing breaks the business into three segments. The Connectivity segment, driven almost entirely by Starlink, generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, representing roughly 61% of total company revenue. The Space segment, which includes launches and NASA contracts, added $4 billion. The AI segment from xAI contributed $3.2 billion.
The business that most investors are actually buying is Starlink.
The Starlink Story
Starlink reached 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries as of March 2026, up from 4.4 million at the end of 2024. The subscriber base has roughly doubled for two consecutive years.
Once the satellite constellation is in orbit, each incremental subscriber adds high-margin recurring revenue at near-zero marginal cost — economics closer to a software business than an aerospace company. Starlink's adjusted EBITDA margin reached 63% in 2025.
That's the foundation. The question investors are debating is what the rest of the company is worth.
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The xAI Problem
Before the merger, SpaceX was profitable. After consolidating xAI, the company posted a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025. In Q1 2026 alone, the loss reached $4.28 billion. The xAI segment burned $6.4 billion in operating losses on $12.7 billion in capital expenditure.
The merger turned a profitable launch-and-connectivity company into a loss-maker overnight. Whether that's a strategic investment or an expensive distraction is the central debate around this IPO.
At $1.75 trillion, roughly $600 to $700 billion of the valuation is a pure bet on xAI and orbital computing, both of which are losing money today.
The Valuation Math
Total 2025 revenue came in at $18.7 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.6 billion. At $1.75 trillion, investors are paying roughly 90 times trailing revenue for the combined entity. Nvidia, the dominant AI infrastructure company, trades at a fraction of that multiple.
The valuation only works if you believe Starlink keeps doubling subscribers, xAI becomes a meaningful AI infrastructure business, and SpaceX eventually monetizes orbital computing at scale. Analysts at Motley Fool have noted that even with rapid growth, the valuation implies poor forward returns over the next decade for investors buying at the IPO price.
What's Actually Different This Time
For most of SpaceX's 24-year history, owning a piece of it was impossible for ordinary investors. Private market access required being an institutional investor, a venture fund, or a high-net-worth individual with connections to secondary market platforms like Forge Global or EquityZen, where shares traded at significant premiums with limited transparency.
The SpaceX IPO will be accessible through Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, SoFi, and E*Trade at the same IPO price as institutional buyers. The company has committed to a 30% retail allocation — three times the typical 10% norm for mega-IPOs. That's a deliberate structural decision, not an accident.
The window between IPO price access and first-day open has historically been where the largest gains concentrate. Cerebras priced at $185 last week and opened at $350. Pre-IPO investors in the best-known technology companies of the last decade captured returns that public market buyers never saw. The SpaceX IPO is the first time retail investors are formally invited to that table at the same price institutional money pays.
Whether the valuation is justified is a separate question from whether the access itself is meaningful. Both deserve attention.
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