Elon Musk has built a career out of bending markets to his will. Now he's about to test whether Wall Street will follow him into orbit.

SpaceX has filed financial disclosures with U.S. regulators for what could be the largest initial public offering ever, with previous media reports suggesting the company is seeking about $80 billion — far higher than the $29 billion that Saudi Aramco eventually raised in 2019. The deal could value SpaceX at over $1 trillion, potentially making it worth more than Tesla, with some recent reports floating a target of $1.75 trillion. 

A rocket company that isn't really a rocket company

Here's the twist most casual investors miss: SpaceX's growth story isn't the Falcon 9 or even Starship. It's broadband.

According to S-1 filings, SpaceX generated $11.4 billion in revenue from its Starlink connectivity division in 2025, compared with $4.1 billion from space launch and $3.2 billion from its AI business. As industry analyst Tim Farrar of TMF Associates told NPR:

"The valuation is completely dependent on the degree to which people believe in Elon Musk. It's not dependent on the current business."

That dependence on belief is the central tension of this IPO.

The AI swing-for-the-fences

Earlier this year, Musk folded his AI venture xAI into SpaceX in an all-stock deal, with the explicit goal of building orbital data centers — server farms in space, powered by abundant solar energy and cooled by the vacuum itself. It's a moonshot inside a moonshot.

The numbers behind that bet are eye-watering. Of the $10 billion SpaceX spent in capital expenditures in the first three months of 2026, $1 billion went to space, $1.3 billion to Starlink, and $7.7 billion to AI. Translation: SpaceX is now spending more on AI than on rockets — by a factor of seven.

The burn is showing up on the income statement. In Q1 2026, SpaceX's rocket-launch business posted an operating loss of $662 million, while its AI business lost nearly $2.5 billion. Only Starlink turned an operating profit of $1.2 billion. Overall, the company reported a net loss of nearly $4.3 billion on revenue of $4.7 billion.

What investors should actually watch

For everyday investors, the IPO is seductive — and risky. "Historically speaking … it's pretty jarring how bad it is," PitchBook analyst Franco Granda said of post-IPO performance, warning that closely watched companies that soared as private firms often struggle to justify their valuations once public.

There's also the index-fund trap: if SpaceX prices high and gets fast-tracked into major benchmarks, passive funds will be forced to buy regardless of fundamentals — quietly transferring valuation risk from early insiders to retirement accounts.

The S-1 itself is sobering. It contains 36 pages of risk factors and details legal fights tied to the absorption of Musk's AI and social media companies — battles SpaceX says will likely cost $530 million. The company lost roughly $4.9 billion in 2025, despite revenue exceeding $18 billion.

Professional takeaway

Strip away the Mars posters, and SpaceX is a profitable broadband utility subsidizing two wildly ambitious science projects: a fully reusable super-heavy rocket and a space-based AI cloud. Whether that bundle is worth $1 trillion — or $2 trillion — depends almost entirely on execution and belief in one man.

For long-term investors, the questions are simple: Can Starlink keep doubling? Can Starship reach orbit reliably in 2026? Can xAI ever earn its keep? If the answer is yes to two of three, this could be the defining listing of the decade. If not, history's biggest IPO could also become its most expensive lesson in hype.