SpaceX is set to launch the largest initial public offering in U.S. history as early as June 12 at a valuation approaching $1.75 trillion.
With more than 555 million Class A shares set to list at $135 per share, with the goal of raising nearly $75 billion, there is no shortage of opinions on whether investors should jump on the Musk-led train.
How can SpaceX be worth $1.75 trillion when it’s losing billions?
SpaceX will list 555 million of them Class A shares of Nasdaq Under the ticker SPCX. This will be the largest initial public offering in U.S. history, and shares are expected to begin trading as early as June 12 at $135 per share. The company has a target valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion and aims to raise approximately $75 billion.
Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan all Host exclusive events This week to pitch SpaceX to its wealthy customers. Bank of America plans to light up a tower at its Manhattan headquarters to resemble a rocket launch. More than 5,000 clients across Bank of America Private Bank and Merrill Lynch were invited to the launch parties, with the events broadcast to offices across the country.
Despite the excitement and hype, a look at the company’s financial situation reveals that Starlink and reusable rockets like Falcon 9, the combined company, which now includes social media platform X and artificial intelligence company xAI, is losing a huge amount of money.
In the first quarter of 2026, SpaceX reported an operating loss of $1.9 billion. This decline was largely due to xAI, which lost $2.5 billion in the same quarter alone.
While Starlink is profitable, generating $4.4 billion in operating income, its efforts are offset by the enormous costs of building its AI technology. Meanwhile, SpaceX has generated $19.3 billion in revenue over the past four quarters.
At its IPO price, SpaceX will trade at roughly 103 times its sales over the past four quarters, which is roughly 40% more expensive than Palantir, which is currently the most expensive stock in the S&P 500.
Morningstar Analyst Nicholas Owens Estimates The company is actually worth about half that amount, roughly $780 billion. It is also believed that investors will have a better opportunity to buy the stock later at a lower price.
A Motley Fool review of more than 100 popular technology stocks found that only eight of the stocks traded at more than 100 times sales. They all declined sharply after that, with the average peak-to-trough decline of 75%.
The 10 largest U.S. IPOs by initial market capitalization have underperformed the S&P 500 by an average of 127 percentage points since listing.
Why isn’t Wall Street worried about SpaceX?
Despite its numbers, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 became the first commercially reusable orbital rocket in 2018. The company’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission also says the next generation Starship could reduce the cost of getting to orbit by 99%. SpaceX estimates its total addressable market at $28.5 trillion, which includes satellite internet, launch services and long-term ambitions such as orbiting data centers.
ARK Invest, which holds SpaceX in its ETF Argue That Starlink alone could support a $2 trillion valuation upon IPO.
JP Morgan strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou pushed back on concerns that massive initial public offerings (IPOs) will drain liquidity from existing stocks.
What is the real value of SpaceX?
Elon Musk’s companies often do business together, an interaction that goes beyond simply exchanging cash for products and services. Even investors apply the good faith of one company to another.
Tesla unveiled a $2 billion investment in xAI in January following the SpaceX-xAI and Cryptopolitan merger. I mentioned previously SpaceX’s prospectus shows the company plans to spend $697 million on Tesla Megapack batteries for xAI data centers and $131 million on Tesla Cybertrucks.
SpaceX’s revenue grew 15% year over year. Its merger with xAI values the company at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. The company generated revenue of $818 million.
Anthropic recently closed a $65 billion funding round at a valuation of $965 billion and reported run-rate revenue of $47 billion. The company said it expects to achieve its first quarterly operating profit of $559 million on second-quarter revenue of $10.9 billion.
On a price-to-sales basis, Anthropic trades at about 20 times run-rate revenue, a fraction of what xAI technology commands within SpaceX’s structure.
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