According to new reports, SpaceX is targeting an initial public offering (IPO) sometime this summer. To my surprise, the company seems willing to allocate a big chunk of the shares it plans to sell to retail investors, potentially giving individuals a chance to invest in SpaceX.
Some reports suggest SpaceX is targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation when the shares go public. That would be significantly higher than the company’s recent valuation of $1.25 trillion when it merged with xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) start-up.
When will the SpaceX IPO actually take place? And is a $1.75 trillion valuation possible?
Here’s when to expect the SpaceX IPO
Musk is clearly capable of creating trillion-dollar businesses. Tesla (TSLA +0.70%), even after years of struggles to revive its auto sales growth, remains valued at about $1.4 trillion.Â
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It’s starting to seem very likely that SpaceX will fetch at least a $1 trillion valuation. From early reports on potential demand, it seems like there will be plenty of momentum to push that price tag up well north of that figure. “The frenzy has grown so intense,” observes a recent report from Reuters, “that some are pouring money into opaque secondary markets, accepting complex arrangements and murky ownership just for a shot at owning the shares.”
SpaceX is already planning to unveil a “major investor event” on June 11. And according to prediction markets, more than 80% of bettors believe an exact IPO date will be announced before the end of that month. A public IPO prospectus, SpaceX’s management team believes, should be revealed by late May.
Put all of these pieces together and a summer IPO date seems increasingly likely.
Image source: Getty Images.
Will an IPO value SpaceX at $1.75 trillion?
Last month, analysts from Morningstar called a $1.5 trillion valuation for SpaceX “expensive and risky, but not irrational.” PitchBook also ran its own analysis, pegging SpaceX’s fair value somewhere between $1.1 trillion and $1.7 trillion. PitchBook’s analysts agreed, valuing the company at nearly 95 times their 2025 revenue estimates.
“Benchmarked against high-growth large-cap peers, SpaceX’s profile warrants a premium multiple, with around 50% EBITDA margins and around a 50% three-year revenue CAGR in addition to multiple compounding growth vectors,” PitchBook’s research concludes. “The valuation becomes progressively easier to justify over a 5-7 year horizon as Starship commercializes and the direct-to-cell business scales, with returns driven by milestone execution rather than near-term earnings growth.”
That last point is critical: SpaceX really can’t be valued based on trailing financials. Yes, the company’s Starlink division is already impressively profitable with sustained high growth rates. But that profitability is offset by mounting losses in the company’s X (formerly Twitter) and xAI divisions. In 2025, the combined company posted a net loss of about $5 billion.
Typically, it would be ludicrous to value a money-losing business at $1.5 trillion, never mind $1.75 trillion. But nearly all of SpaceX’s value is yet to be realized. If its Starship megarocket is successfully commercialized, SpaceX could pursue everything from a base on the moon to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in space. Valuing these opportunities is extremely difficult, but the important takeaway is that opportunities like these simply aren’t reflected in the company’s historical financial performance.
In a nutshell, as with many space stocks, it’s very difficult to value SpaceX on anything other than previous capital funding rounds. Its revenue and profit potential are mostly theoretical for now, and utterly unique. But based on industry reports, expect something closer to a $1.5 trillion valuation than a $1.75 trillion price tag.
