Imagine that tomorrow a company goes public that launches rockets, dominates satellite internet, works with NASA, has strategic contracts with governments and is also into artificial intelligence. It’s SpaceX, and its possible IPO is being talked about as the biggest in history. But it’s one thing for SpaceX to be a spectacular company —which it is— and a very different thing to pay any price for it. Let’s analyze it with numbers.
SpaceX isn’t a company: it’s a conglomerate
SpaceX isn’t just Falcon, Dragon, Starship and Starlink. After integrating X and xAI, the company’s perimeter also includes that world. In practice it’s a conglomerate of three big blocks:
- SpaceX — the space and launch business
- Starlink — global satellite connectivity
- AI — xAI, Grok and X, the whole world of artificial intelligence and computing
Knowing this changes the whole context. The one making money right now is Starlink, the rockets are the strategic advantage, and AI is what’s trying to justify the future valuation.
SpaceX’s numbers (2025)
2025 income statement
Revenue: ~$18.674 billion
Operating loss: ~$2.589 billion
Adjusted EBITDA: ~$6.584 billion
Net loss: ~$4.937 billion
The company already has a brutal scale —it’s not a startup, we’re talking almost $19 billion in revenue—, but at a consolidated level it still doesn’t show GAAP net profit. In the first quarter of 2026 the picture doesn’t improve either: $4.694 billion in revenue, $1.943 billion operating loss and $4.276 billion net loss.
Starlink, the crown jewel
So where’s the appeal? In Starlink, which is the one generating the real cash flow:
- ~$11.4 billion in revenue in 2025 — roughly 61% of all of SpaceX’s billings
- ~$4.4 billion of operating profit contributed
- More than 10 million subscribers as of 2026, with brutal growth
Starlink isn’t an extra: it’s the real economic engine of the company today. The AI part —with enormous potential— is generating gigantic losses instead: about $3.2 billion in revenue with losses close to $6.4 billion. The space business is strategic but very investment-intensive, and AI “is burning money like there’s no tomorrow”.
The comparison that puts it all in perspective
To understand the size of the valuation being floated, let’s compare it with companies we know.
SpaceX vs Tesla
Tesla closed 2025 with about $94.827 billion in revenue — it bills roughly 5 times more than SpaceX, and on top of that with positive net profit and a market cap close to $1.49 trillion. SpaceX generates ~20% of Tesla’s revenue, but it could go public with a similar or higher valuation:
- SpaceX at $1.5 trillion = ~80 times 2025 sales
- SpaceX at $1.75 trillion = ~94 times sales
- Tesla, for comparison, trades closer to 15-16 times sales
In other words, SpaceX could come out with a price-to-sales multiple 5 or 6 times higher than Tesla’s — and Tesla is already a very demanding company in terms of valuation.
SpaceX vs Meta and Spotify
- Meta generates more than $200 billion in revenue and more than $60 billion in net profit, with a market cap similar to the one being floated for SpaceX
- Spotify bills ~$17 billion (a range similar to SpaceX) but is worth ~$97 billion. SpaceX at $1.75 trillion would be almost 18 times Spotify’s valuation with revenue of comparable magnitude
Of course, we’re comparing apples to oranges: they’re not the same businesses. The idea isn’t that they should be worth the same, but to put figures on the table, because so many billions end up sounding abstract.
The space sector
Against Rocket Lab (bills much less but trades at very high multiples), Iridium and Viasat (more mature, low multiples) or AST SpaceMobile (almost pure optionality with outrageous multiples), SpaceX is in a very particular spot: it has real scale and it would ask for an extreme hyper-growth multiple. That combination is the exceptional thing — not just that it’s expensive, but expensive with a scale that almost no one else has in the sector.
The bull case: why it might be worth it
It’s not all “it’s expensive and that’s it”. There are solid reasons:
- Starlink — a global satellite internet network with 10 million+ subscribers and international expansion (Direct to Cell)
- A unique strategic position — NASA (Commercial Crew, Artemis’s Human Landing System), Star Shield for governments and defense
- Starship — if it works as expected, it would change the economics of how rockets are launched (reusability)
- AI and orbital computing — if xAI and computing in orbit end up being monetizable, the narrative can multiply
There’s a geopolitical, military, technological and strategic layer that can’t be valued like a normal company.
The giant “but”
Conclusion
SpaceX may be one of the most important companies in the world — I sincerely believe it. It has Starlink, reusable rockets, contracts with NASA and defense, AI and a narrative that very few other companies bring together. But being a brutally high-quality company doesn’t mean that any price it comes out at will be a good one. The current numbers (consolidated net losses) say one thing; the valuation being floated says another. As always, this is not investment advice, just analysis: the decision to get in on day one, wait a few days or wait weeks is yours. To follow my analyses and trades, there’s the newsletter; and if you want to trade with a professional platform, take a look at ProRealTime.
