SpaceX has confidentially filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission setting the stage for what analysts call the most anticipated stock market listing in a generation.
The filing puts the company on track for a June listing, which would make SpaceX the first of what could be a trio of mega-IPOs, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic. For a company that has spent more than two decades quietly reshaping humanity’s relationship with outer space, the pivot to public ownership marks a profound inflection point.
At the heart of the story is a valuation figure that beggars belief: Bloomberg reported that the company could seek a valuation of $1.75 trillion, with a listing around June. To put that number in context, at $1.75 trillion, SpaceX would sit above every S&P 500 company bar Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon — and comfortably above Elon Musk’s own Tesla.
And then there is the sheer scale of the capital raise itself. With the company reportedly looking to raise up to $75 billion, it would be more than three times the size of the biggest U.S. IPO to date. China’s Alibaba raised $22 billion in 2014, putting it ahead of Visa, which raised close to $18 billion in 2008.
Even Saudi Aramco’s record-setting 2019 listing — long regarded as the gold standard for mega-IPOs — could be eclipsed if SpaceX hits its targets.
To understand why such a valuation might be defensible, one must look past the rockets and the Starship launches and into the financial engine humming beneath the surface: Starlink.
While SpaceX is best known for its Falcon 9 and Starship rockets, the $1.75 trillion valuation is anchored by Starlink, its satellite internet service. Starlink ended 2025 with 9.2 million subscribers and over $10 billion in revenue — a figure analysts project could reach a staggering $24 billion by the end of 2026.
For investors, this reframes the entire investment thesis. SpaceX is no longer competing with Boeing or Lockheed Martin. It is competing with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud — while also being the only company on earth that controls the launch vehicles, the satellite constellation, and the AI models that run on top of it.
That last point — the AI dimension — was turbocharged by a landmark corporate deal earlier this year. SpaceX bought another Musk-owned company, xAI — which is the parent of social media platform X — in February, and at the time of the merger, Musk announced plans to launch a network of one million satellites to serve as AI data centers, potentially circumventing the insatiable electricity and cooling demands that have plagued ground-based data centres.
For those unfamiliar with the machinery of Wall Street, the confidential filing route is a well-worn path. A confidential filing allows a company to submit draft IPO registration to the SEC without public review. It’s intended to protect sensitive information during the SEC review process. Companies still must publicly file a registration statement at least 15 days before a road show.
Major investment banks led by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are jockeying for lead underwriting roles in what insiders describe as the most sought-after mandate on Wall Street. CEO and principal shareholder Elon Musk is expected to control a majority of voting shares once the details are revealed.
Should the listing proceed on schedule, Musk will become the first person to helm two separate trillion-dollar publicly traded companies.
Not everyone is swept up in the euphoria. The IPO arrives against a backdrop of considerable market turbulence. Stocks have been volatile of late due largely to the U.S.-Iran war and spiking oil prices, with the Nasdaq coming off its steepest weekly drop in nearly a year.
Finance professor and IPO expert Reena Aggarwal of Georgetown University struck a note of caution. “You can have a great company, with great fundamentals and a lot of investor interest — and an IPO can still flop if the markets have turned south, if there’s too much volatility in the market,” she warned, adding: “Hopefully the current geopolitical situations will have cooled down by June and there will be less uncertainty.”
There are also operational question marks. Starship, SpaceX’s next generation of heavy rocket, is still in development and has suffered a number of mishaps and explosions during testing that have cast doubt on Musk’s ambitious timelines.
Meanwhile, xAI has its own substantial cash needs, as AI is a field with tremendous profit potential but huge near-term demands for cash to build and operate costly data centers.
Beyond the balance sheets and underwriting fees, industry observers say the SpaceX listing could catalyse an entire investment ecosystem that has long struggled to attract mainstream capital. Raphael Roettgen, founding partner of E2MC Ventures, argued the IPO could be “a giant catalyst” for the space sector, adding: “Any investment banker or analyst who thought they didn’t have to look at the space sector, they have to look at it now.”
SpaceX is also reportedly considering a 30% retail investor allocation — three times the Wall Street norm — a move that would open the most talked-about IPO in history to everyday investors, not just institutional giants.
What happens next, as the company moves toward a formal public prospectus and investor roadshow, will be watched as closely as any rocket launch SpaceX has ever conducted. The difference this time is that the payload isn’t hardware bound for orbit — it is the company itself, offered to the world.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
SpaceX’s confidential SEC filing marks the beginning of what could be the largest IPO in history, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation and raising up to $75 billion — figures that dwarf every public listing that has come before it.
The company’s true value driver is no longer its rockets, but Starlink’s booming satellite internet business and its recent merger with xAI, which together reposition SpaceX as a tech and telecommunications giant rather than merely an aerospace contractor.
However, market volatility, ongoing geopolitical tensions, and Starship’s unresolved development challenges mean the June debut is promising but not guaranteed.
This is potentially the most consequential corporate event in modern financial history, and the world is watching.
