SpaceX is expected to complete one of the largest IPOs in market history, raising roughly $75 billion at an implied valuation of around $1.77 trillion.

While there is no disagreement over the quality of the company, as SpaceX dominates the U.S. commercial launch market and operates the world’s largest satellite broadband network. SpaceX has built capabilities that no competitor can currently replicate at a similar cost or launch frequency. However, the harder question is whether investors are being offered enough upside at the proposed valuation.

The company generated $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, up 33% from the prior year, and $6.6 billion of adjusted EBITDA, and it also reported a $4.9 billion net loss and spent $20.7 billion on capital expenditures, more than its total revenue. At $1.77 trillion, the company would be valued at roughly 95 times its trailing revenue, which means that the IPO cannot be justified based only on SpaceX’s current earnings or cash flows. Instead, investors are asked to underwrite what the company may become over the next 10 to 20 years.

SpaceX's main business is Starlink, a broadband satellite internet constellation that generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025 and $4.4 billion in operating profit. It is SpaceX’s only profitable segment and its clearest commercial asset. The network reached 10.3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2026 and now serves more than 160 countries. The advantage here is that SpaceX builds the satellites, launches them using its own rockets, and controls the network. Here, SpaceX has an advantage that no telecom competitor can match, as any competitor would need to recreate both the satellite system and the launch infrastructure behind it.

Take, for example, Amazon’s Project Kuiper as the most credible challenger, yet it will require years of deployment and tens of billions of dollars to approach Starlink’s current scale. Meanwhile, Starlink is already expanding beyond consumer internet into enterprise, government, aviation, maritime communications and direct-to-device services. However, the concern here is that the subscriber growth has partly come at the expense of pricing, with average monthly revenue per user declining 18% between 2023 and 2025, reaching around $81. While Starlink may become a global communications platform, its revenue must continue growing quickly to support its valuation.

The launch business is an even more dominant part of the business, but less profitable. In 2025, SpaceX completed 165 Falcon 9 launches and controls more than 80% of the U.S. commercial launch market. On the other hand, competitors like Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, and smaller firms remain behind in cost, launch frequency, or payload capacity. Here, the key issue is that while SpaceX generated around $6.8 billion of operating cash flow in 2025, but it spent $20.7 billion on property, equipment, and infrastructure. Capital expenditures were therefore greater than total revenue, and only 43 of those launches being for outside customers.

One of the reasons for this capital intensity is the development of Starship. SpaceX invested more than $15 billion in the program, including roughly $3 billion in 2025. If Starship becomes reliable and mainline for SpaceX, it could significantly reduce launch costs and open markets that don’t work today, as well as lower the cost of deploying Starlink satellites and other orbital infrastructure. But investors aren’t being asked to pay for a successful Starship test. Instead, they're asked to pay for Starship becoming a dependable commercial system.

The same applies to orbital AI computing, which SpaceX presents as a long-term opportunity, as data centers in space could eventually benefit from solar power and large-scale deployment. For now, the business still faces basic questions around radiation, cooling, repairs, and hardware replacement. This is why a standard discounted cash flow analysis doesn’t come close to the reported IPO price. For example, using an 11.6% cost of capital, a 3% terminal-growth rate, and already favorable assumptions for revenue growth, margin expansion, and lower future capital spending, the model produces an enterprise value of around $187 billion. That doesn’t mean SpaceX is worth only $187 billion, but a DCF will naturally struggle with businesses that might not exist for another decade.

To justify the IPO price, investors need Starlink to become a global communications platform, Starship to change launch economics, defense revenue to grow, and orbital computing to become a real source of income. And while SpaceX doesn’t need every one of those outcomes, but the proposed valuation appears to assume that several will work.

Overall, SpaceX is a rare strategic asset and will likely trade at a premium to aerospace, defense, and telecom companies. One of the key selling points for the upcoming IPO for public investors is the prospect of buying direct exposure to the commercial space industry, which could create strong demand regardless of valuation. That may be enough for the shares to perform well after the listing, but it isn’t the same as saying they are cheap.

The company could eventually grow into the price, but at nearly $1.8 trillion, investors are paying today for a future in which much of the next space economy already belongs to it.