From SPCX to the Stars: Why Everyone’s Debating SpaceX’s $2 Trillion Valuation

From SPCX to the Stars: Why Everyone’s Debating SpaceX’s $2 Trillion Valuation

I’ll never forget watching a Falcon 9 booster land itself upright on a drone ship for the first time. It felt like science fiction. Now, years later, that same company, SpaceX, has become the subject of a very different kind of spectacle. On Friday, June 12, 2026, SpaceX raised about $75 billion in the largest IPO in history. The stock priced at $135, jumped 19% on its first trading day, and sent the company’s market cap soaring past the $2 trillion mark.

That was just the opening act.

This morning, SpaceX shares gained another 6% in premarket trading, hovering near $170. And as the ticker SPCX flashes across screens from New York to Shanghai, Wall Street has erupted into one of the most fascinating valuation debates I’ve seen in years.

On one side, bulls see the birth of a $14 trillion colossus. On the other, bears call the stock “significantly overvalued” at current levels.

So who’s right? And more importantly, what should you, as an investor, a space enthusiast, or just a curious observer, actually make of all this?

Let’s walk through the numbers, the narratives, and the not‑so‑tiny details that everyone seems to be missing. I promise, by the time you finish this piece, you’ll understand exactly why this valuation debate matters, not just for SpaceX, but for the future of investing in ambitious, loss‑making giants.

The Three‑Engine Rocket: Breaking Down SpaceX’s Business Segments (Act I)

Here’s the thing: SpaceX isn’t really one company. It’s three entirely different businesses operating under the same ticker. Trying to value SPCX without understanding this is like trying to guess the weight of a spaceship by looking at only one of its engines. So let’s break it down, piece by piece.

Starlink: The Cash Engine That’s Actually Running Out of Room

If you’ve ever been on a flight with free Wi‑Fi, or you live in a rural area that finally has decent internet, you’ve probably encountered Starlink without even knowing it.

That business is enormous. In 2025, the Connectivity segment, which is basically Starlink, generated $11.39 billion in revenue and posted $4.4 billion in operating income. It currently serves over 10.3 million subscribers across more than 160 countries.

Here’s where it gets interesting, though. Starlink is capacity‑constrained in some of its most important markets. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said recently that demand is actually outrunning supply in key regions. That’s a good problem to have, but it also means the revenue story in the short term depends almost entirely on how fast SpaceX can launch the next generation of satellites.

And who launches those satellites? That brings us to engine number two.

Launch & Starship: The Lead That Scares Competitors

SpaceX performed over 160 successful launches in 2025 alone, accounting for an estimated 83% of all Earth‑orbital payload mass delivered globally. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly ten times as many launches as its closest rival, Rocket Lab.

But the real game‑changer is Starship, the fully reusable super‑heavy rocket still in development. Analysts at Wolfe Research estimate that successful Starship reusability could cut launch costs from roughly $14 million per Falcon 9 flight to under $5 million for Starship, with marginal costs eventually approaching just $1 million in fuel.

That’s not an incremental improvement. That’s rewriting the laws of orbital economics.

Yet here’s the catch: Starship hasn’t reached orbit yet. And while the engineering challenges are solvable, CFRA analyst Keith Snyder warns that "delays or technical setbacks in Starship could ripple across nearly every major growth initiative" for SpaceX. Remember that for later, we’ll come back to it.

xAI & Orbital Data Centers: The “Poetry” Behind the Price

Now for the engine that has everyone scratching their heads.

In February 2026, SpaceX merged with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI. That merger added an AI business that includes the Grok chatbot, X (formerly Twitter), and a sprawling data center operation that’s already signing massive compute deals.

How massive? SpaceX recently signed a $1.25 billion per month agreement with Anthropic for AI compute capacity, that’s $15 billion annualized, nearly equal to SpaceX’s entire 2025 revenue from every other business combined.

And that’s just the terrestrial part. The real headline ambition is orbital data centers, AI computing power literally housed in space. SpaceX is targeting 10,000 Starship launches per year to deploy 1 million orbital data centers.

Paulina Roszkowska, a finance lecturer at Bayes Business School, put it bluntly: “Aside from those phrases about data centers in the orbit, which are high promises, if you are asking for 70, 80 billion contribution, I think that you owe investors a little bit more than poetry”.

Ouch. But also… fair.

So that’s the three‑engine rocket: a profitable satellite internet business, a dominant but expensive launch operation, and a bleeding‑edge AI play that’s either the future of computing or a very expensive pipe dream.

Now let’s look at what the professionals are saying about the whole package.

The Bull Case (Act II): “We Can Look Out 25 Years”

If you’re a bull on SpaceX, you’re not looking at next quarter’s earnings. You’re looking at the next two and a half decades.

What Wall Street’s Most Bullish Analysts Are Saying

Oppenheimer initiated coverage of SpaceX with an Outperform rating and a $190 price target, implying about 40% upside from the IPO price. Analyst Timothy Horan called SpaceX "the only vertically‑integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent".

Wolfe Research set a $175 price target, describing SpaceX’s competitive moat as “an ocean of opportunity that we don’t see others crossing”.

Jim Cramer, whose hot takes we’ve all learned to love or loathe, suggested SpaceX could quickly hit a $6 trillion valuation. And hedge fund billionaire Ron Baron went even further, suggesting that orbital AI data centers could drive SpaceX to $14 trillion within a decade.

The $14 Trillion Moonshot Scenario

Here’s where that number comes from. SpaceX claims a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion, with nearly all of that tied up in its AI division. Morgan Stanley analysts believe SpaceX’s revenues could hit $3.4 trillion by 2040, mostly from AI.

That’s not a forecast. That’s a prayer. But it’s a prayer backed by real contracts, including a $26.4 billion annualized compute deal with Anthropic and Google.

How a Tiny Stock Float Could Keep SPCX Running Hot

One technical factor that bulls love to point out: SpaceX has a very small public float. Only a relatively limited number of shares are actually available for trading. When demand outstrips supply like that, even modest buying interest can push the stock higher. It’s not fundamental value, it’s just math. But math pays, too.

The Bear Case (Act III): “A Little Bit More Than Poetry”

Now for the other side. And honestly? The bears have some very compelling points.

Morningstar’s $63 Fair Value vs. the $170 Market Price

Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens values SpaceX at just $63 per share and describes the stock as “significantly overvalued”. That implies a fair market cap of about $780 billion, less than half the $2 trillion valuation the stock is currently trading at.

How do you get a gap that wide? Morningstar’s model uses a discounted cash flow analysis that assumes SpaceX’s AI business is worth around $170 billion, not the trillion‑plus that bulls are projecting.

The $5 Billion Loss No One Can Ignore

SpaceX lost nearly $5 billion in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, the company posted a net loss of $4.28 billion. Capital expenditures in that single quarter reached $10.1 billion, compared to $4.1 billion the year before, with most of that spending going toward AI infrastructure.

Here’s the uncomfortable question: What happens if the AI boom slows down? What if the demand for compute capacity doesn’t materialize as quickly as projected?

Why One Analyst Issued a Rare “Sell” Rating

CFRA gave SpaceX a rare “sell” rating with a $115 price target, a nearly 29% drop from Friday’s closing price. The firm cited three concerns: an extremely ambitious growth strategy, elevated valuation expectations, and “significant capital intensity”.

In other words, SpaceX needs everything to go perfectly, Starship must fly, Starlink must grow, and orbital data centers must become real, all at the same time, just to justify its current price. That’s a lot of pressure.

Who’s Winning the Space Race After the SpaceX IPO?

Before we get to the investor takeaways, I want to zoom out for a second. Because the SpaceX IPO isn’t just about one stock. It’s about the entire global space economy.

With a $2 trillion valuation and $75 billion in fresh capital, SpaceX now has access to a pool of money that dwarfs nearly every other player in the space industry, government agencies included.

Blue Origin, SpaceX’s primary American rival, remains privately held. Even with Jeff Bezos’s personal wealth behind it, Blue Origin simply cannot match the public market firepower that SpaceX now commands.

China’s state‑backed programs continue to develop reusable rockets, but they operate on a completely different model. The SpaceX IPO has sharpened the contrast: one superpower’s space ambitions are now partly underwritten by global public markets and retail investors, while the other’s remain a direct extension of state policy.

Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace are strong alternatives for investors who want space exposure without the SPCX premium, but their launch cadence is still a fraction of SpaceX’s.

The long‑term takeaway? The cost of entry for serious space competition just got a whole lot higher.

How to Think About SpaceX Stock as a Regular Investor

So where does that leave you?

I’m not a financial advisor, and I’m certainly not telling you to buy or sell anything. But I can share a framework that might help you think through the trade‑offs.

First, ask yourself your time horizon. NewStreet Research says investors “have to be looking out over a kind of 20‑ to 25‑year time frame” to justify the current valuation. If you’re a short‑term trader, SPCX could be extremely volatile. Retail investors bought over $100 billion in shares, and Steve Westly, a former Tesla board member, warned that “some of them are going to get panicky if SpaceX misses a few quarters”.

Second, pay attention to Starship milestones. CFRA noted that Starship is an “execution bottleneck”, delays there impact Starlink, orbital data centers, and launch revenue simultaneously. If Starship succeeds, the bull case becomes much more plausible. If it stalls, the bear case starts to look conservative.

Third, watch the AI contracts. The $26 billion in annualized compute deals are real money. But they come with 90‑day termination clauses. That’s not exactly locked‑in revenue. You’ll want to see those contracts extend and diversify over time.

Finally, don’t ignore the valuation multiple. Even after the first‑day pop, SpaceX trades at roughly 95 times trailing revenue. Nvidia, one of the most successful growth stories of the past decade, trades at around 31 times earnings. Premiums like that imply a lot of future growth that may or may not materialize.

The Final Countdown: What Happens Next

The SpaceX valuation debate is ultimately about one thing: whether you believe the future will unfold the way Elon Musk and his team have promised.

If you think orbital data centers are inevitable, that Starship will fly commercially soon, and that AI compute demand is insatiable, then $2 trillion might look like a bargain.

If you think the IPO prospectus lacks detail on governance and execution risks, that the AI boom has bubble characteristics, and that Starship remains an unproven rocket, then today’s price likely feels unsustainable.

Here’s what I know for sure: SpaceX has changed the space industry forever. It has launched more rockets in a single year than most countries have in a decade. It has built a satellite internet business that’s already profitable and growing. And it has convinced some of the smartest investors in the world to bet on data centers in orbit.

Whether that adds up to $2 trillion, or $14 trillion, or $780 billion, is a question the market will answer over months and years, not minutes and days.

In the meantime, I’ll be watching Starship test flights, Starlink subscriber numbers, and the fine print on those AI contracts. Because in this debate, the truth isn’t in the headlines. It’s in the details.

What’s your take on the SpaceX valuation? Are you a bull, a bear, or just waiting for the next launch? Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear your perspective.