Inside SpaceX: What investors are really buying
On 12 June 2026, SpaceX (SPCX) became a public company.
The IPO was historic before the first share even changed hands. SpaceX priced the offering at $135 per share, raising approximately $75 billion and implying an initial market value of roughly $1.77 trillion. The stock opened on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX at $150 per share and quickly became one of the most closely watched listings in public-market history.
At the time of writing, only a few trading days after the IPO, SpaceX trades around $180 per share. Based on the approximate share count implied by the IPO valuation, that places the company’s market value at roughly $2.36 trillion. In other words, investors are no longer debating whether SpaceX is an interesting growth company. They are being asked to value one of the largest companies in the world.
That distinction matters.
SpaceX is often described as a rocket company, but that description is no longer sufficient. Rockets remain the foundation, but they are only one part of the investment case. Public investors are buying a vertically integrated infrastructure platform that now spans launch vehicles, satellite communications, government and defense networks, artificial intelligence and, in the most ambitious version of the story, computing and industry beyond Earth.
That is what makes SpaceX so compelling. It is also what makes it so difficult to analyse. The company combines proven operational achievements with long-duration optionality. Falcon is real. Starlink is real. Dragon is real. But Starship, orbital manufacturing, Mars logistics and space-based AI infrastructure remain future opportunities that still require years of execution.
The public-market question is therefore not whether SpaceX is an extraordinary company. It clearly is. The better question is how much of that extraordinary future is already reflected in the share price.
What investors are really buying
The simplest way to understand SpaceX is to separate the company into three layers.
The first layer is the proven infrastructure: Falcon, Dragon, launch operations and existing government relationships. These are operating businesses with customers, revenue and technical history. They created SpaceX’s credibility and remain the foundation of the company’s strategic advantage.
The second layer is the financial engine: Starlink. This is the business that changed SpaceX from a launch company into a recurring-revenue communications platform. Starlink monetises the cost advantage created by reusable launch. It gives SpaceX direct access to consumers, enterprises, airlines, ships, telecom partners and governments around the world.
The third layer is optionality: Starship, Starshield, artificial intelligence, Cursor, orbital compute, lunar infrastructure and Mars. These are the areas that can justify a much larger long-term valuation if they work, but they also carry the greatest execution risk.
This combination is unusual. A traditional aerospace company may build launch systems. A telecom operator may sell connectivity. A defense contractor may serve government customers. A software company may build AI products. SpaceX increasingly does all of these things inside one system.
That system is the real investment case.
Reusable rockets lower the cost of reaching orbit. Lower launch costs allow SpaceX to deploy Starlink satellites more cheaply and quickly. Starlink generates recurring revenue. Those cash flows help finance Starship, next-generation satellites, defense infrastructure and artificial intelligence. If Starship eventually works at scale, the cost of deploying infrastructure into orbit may fall again, expanding the markets that SpaceX can serve.
The flywheel is simple in theory: reusable launch enables satellite scale; satellite scale enables recurring cash flow; recurring cash flow funds the next generation of launch and space infrastructure.
The challenge is that each layer has a different risk profile. Starlink is already a real business. Falcon is already proven. Starship is still a technical and commercial option. AI is increasingly important, but also expensive and highly competitive.
Investors must therefore avoid treating SpaceX as one single story. It is not only a rocket story, not only a telecom story, and not only an AI story. It is a portfolio of related but very different businesses, connected by infrastructure, capital and ambition.
Where the money comes from
The most important financial point is that Starlink is not a side project. It is the largest revenue contributor inside SpaceX and the clearest driver of current operating profitability.
In 2025, SpaceX generated approximately $18.7 billion of revenue, up about 33% from the prior year. The mix shows how much the company has changed. Starlink and related connectivity services, reported under SpaceX’s ‘’Connectivity’’ segment, generated roughly $11.4 billion of revenue. The Space segment, which includes launch services, spacecraft activity, government missions and Starship development, generated approximately $4.1 billion. Artificial Intelligence, which includes xAI/X-related AI activity, generated around $3.2 billion.
That means Starlink-related connectivity represented about 61% of SpaceX’s 2025 revenue.
This is why the market cannot value SpaceX purely as a launch company. The rockets matter enormously, but the current financial engine is connectivity. Falcon created the cost advantage. Starlink monetises it.
The profitability mix is even more revealing. Connectivity generated approximately $7.2 billion of segment-adjusted EBITDA in 2025 and roughly $4.4 billion of operating income. Space generated positive adjusted EBITDA but remained burdened by heavy research and development, particularly Starship. The AI segment, by contrast, remained deeply loss-making, with large operating losses as SpaceX/xAI invested in models, compute infrastructure and product development.
At group level, SpaceX reported adjusted EBITDA of roughly $6.6 billion in 2025, but still generated a net loss of approximately $4.9 billion. This difference matters. Adjusted EBITDA shows that parts of the business are already economically powerful, but net losses remind investors that SpaceX remains highly capital intensive. Satellites need to be built and replaced. Rockets need to be developed. Launch sites require infrastructure. AI requires chips, data centres, engineers and power.
SpaceX is not an asset-light software company. It is an infrastructure company with software-like ambition.
The question for investors is therefore not whether revenue can grow. The more important question is whether SpaceX can convert that revenue growth into sustainable free cash flow while funding Starship, satellite replacement, defense expansion and AI.
Starlink: The financial engine
Starlink changed the nature of SpaceX.
For years, SpaceX was defined by launch. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy gave the company a technological and cost advantage. Dragon proved that SpaceX could safely transport cargo and crew. These achievements were essential, but they were largely tied to launch cadence, government contracts and mission activity.
Starlink introduced a different model.
It gave SpaceX a recurring-revenue business with global reach. The product began as satellite broadband for households in underserved locations, but the opportunity is now broader. Starlink serves consumers, businesses, aircraft, ships, governments, emergency responders and mobile-network partners.
This matters because the highest-quality revenue may come from enterprise and mobility. Airlines care about reliable in-flight connectivity. Shipping companies need broadband at sea. Energy and mining businesses need to connect remote assets. Governments need resilient communications in crisis situations. These customers may be willing to pay more than residential users, and once Starlink is integrated into operations, switching away can become more difficult.
Direct-to-cell connectivity is another potential growth driver. If Starlink Mobile can reduce dead zones by connecting ordinary mobile phones through satellites, SpaceX could expand its addressable market without requiring every user to buy a dedicated Starlink terminal. This would move Starlink closer to telecom infrastructure rather than only satellite broadband.
The opportunity is large, but the economics need to be watched carefully. Starlink subscriber growth has been impressive, but average revenue per user has been declining as the company expands internationally and adjusts pricing in lower-income markets. That is not necessarily negative. Lower pricing can unlock enormous demand. But if ARPU falls faster than network costs, margins can come under pressure.
The key question is not whether Starlink can add millions of users. It probably can. The key question is whether revenue per unit of network capacity remains attractive as the business scales globally.
Investors should therefore follow subscriber growth, ARPU, churn, terminal costs, satellite replacement costs, enterprise adoption and segment margins. Starlink is the current engine of SpaceX’s valuation, and any change in the market’s confidence around Starlink economics will likely have a major impact on the stock.
Falcon, Dragon and the launch moat
Falcon is the industrial system that made Starlink possible.
The defining feature of Falcon 9 is reusability. Instead of discarding the first-stage booster after every mission, SpaceX lands it, refurbishes it and flies it again. This lowers launch costs, increases launch cadence and gives SpaceX more operational data than competitors that launch less frequently.
That learning curve is a major moat. In aerospace, reliability is not proven through promises. It is proven through repeated missions. The more often SpaceX flies, the more it learns, the more confidence customers have and the harder it becomes for competitors to catch up.
Falcon also creates an accounting complication. When SpaceX launches satellites for external customers, the value appears directly in Space revenue. When SpaceX launches its own Starlink satellites, the economic value is partly captured later through Connectivity revenue. That means the launch business is more valuable than external launch revenue alone might suggest.
Dragon adds another important dimension. It gives SpaceX a proven human-spaceflight capability, deepens the relationship with NASA and demonstrates that the company can operate under exceptionally demanding safety requirements. Human spaceflight may not be the largest revenue pool inside SpaceX, but it supports the company’s strategic position and technical credibility.
This is the difference between SpaceX and many early-stage space companies. SpaceX does not only have a vision. It has operating infrastructure, customer relationships and a track record of execution.
Falcon and Dragon are the proven parts of the story. They are the reason investors can take the more ambitious parts of the story seriously.
Starshield and Starship: Strategic value and optionality
Starshield moves SpaceX deeper into national security.
The logic is straightforward. Modern defense depends increasingly on resilient communications, real-time data and distributed satellite networks. A large constellation of lower-cost satellites can be harder to disable than a small number of expensive specialised assets. SpaceX can design satellites, launch them, operate the network and potentially replace capacity faster than most competitors.
That makes SpaceX strategically important to governments, especially the United States and its allies. Starshield could become a durable, high-value business if it becomes embedded in defense architecture. Government demand can also be less cyclical than consumer demand, particularly in a world where space is becoming a more important military domain.
But defense exposure comes with risks. It increases dependence on government procurement, classified programmes, export controls, political oversight and geopolitical controversy. The more important SpaceX becomes to national security, the less it resembles a normal commercial company.
Starship is different. It is the largest long-term option inside the valuation.
If Falcon is the proven infrastructure, Starship is the transformational bet. A fully reusable Starship system could carry far more mass to orbit at a much lower cost per kilogram. That would not simply improve the launch market. It could make new markets possible.
Larger Starlink satellites could be deployed more efficiently. Lunar infrastructure could become more realistic. Commercial space stations could become cheaper to construct. Orbital manufacturing, satellite servicing, large-scale defense payloads, scientific instruments and eventually Mars logistics could all become more plausible.
The problem is that these opportunities are still future markets. Starship is not yet a mature commercial earnings stream. It remains a capital-intensive engineering programme with technical, regulatory and operational risk. Rapid reusability, orbital refuelling, heat-shield performance, launch-site approvals and high-cadence operations all need to work before the most ambitious projections become financially relevant.
This is why Starship should be treated as a call option. It could be enormously valuable, but it is not the same as current cash flow.
The valuation challenge is deciding how much investors should pay today for markets that may only become economic many years from now.
AI, xAI and Cursor: The new capital allocation question
Artificial intelligence has changed the SpaceX story.
For most of its history, the company’s logic was unusually coherent. Reusable rockets lowered launch costs. Starlink monetised those lower costs. Starlink cash flows helped fund Starship. Every layer reinforced the next.
The move into AI makes the story more ambitious but also less clean.
Through xAI and now Cursor, SpaceX is entering one of the most competitive and capital-intensive markets in the world. The company has agreed to acquire Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, in a $60 billion all-stock transaction. Cursor is one of the leading AI coding platforms and gives SpaceX something xAI has not yet fully established: a widely used enterprise-facing product with developer distribution.
Strategically, the logic is understandable. Cursor brings the application layer. xAI brings models and compute ambitions. SpaceX brings capital, global connectivity infrastructure and the longer-term possibility of space-based compute.
Financially, the logic is more complicated.
The Cursor transaction is being paid in SpaceX shares. That allows SpaceX to preserve cash shortly after the IPO, but it also dilutes existing shareholders. More broadly, it shows how SpaceX may use its high public-market valuation as acquisition currency. If the share price remains strong, that can be powerful. If the valuation falls, the same strategy becomes more expensive.
AI also competes for capital. Frontier AI requires enormous investment in GPUs, data centres, power, talent and model development. The market is dominated by extremely well-funded competitors such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta. Cursor may strengthen SpaceX’s enterprise AI position, but it does not remove the risk that AI remains loss-making for longer than expected.
This is now a central part of the investment case. AI could become the next layer of the SpaceX platform, connecting global networks, software workflows and compute infrastructure. Or it could become a capital-intensive distraction attached to a company that is already funding satellites, rockets and Starship.
The market will need evidence that xAI and Cursor can convert spending into durable revenue and eventually profitability.
What could drive the stock from here
SpaceX’s share price will likely be driven by three different forces: operating fundamentals, market structure and narrative.
The fundamental drivers are clear. Starlink subscriber growth, ARPU, enterprise adoption, margins, satellite capacity, launch cadence, Starship milestones, defense contracts, AI revenue, capital expenditure and free cash flow will determine whether SpaceX can grow into its valuation.
Starlink will likely matter most in the near term because it is the clearest financial engine. If Starlink continues to scale while maintaining strong margins, investors will be more willing to fund the company’s larger ambitions. If growth slows or pricing pressure intensifies, the market may become less patient.
Starship will drive long-term expectations. Each successful milestone can expand the perceived size of SpaceX’s future opportunity. Each delay can remind investors that some of the largest use cases remain far from commercial maturity.
AI will be judged differently. The market will want to see whether xAI and Cursor can create a credible enterprise AI business, or whether the division remains primarily a spending programme.
Market structure will also matter. SpaceX has a limited public float relative to its overall valuation, which can amplify price moves when demand is strong. Under Nasdaq’s new fast-entry rules, SpaceX is expected to enter the Nasdaq-100 roughly a month after its IPO, pending the formal index announcement. Once included, passive funds tracking the index would need to buy the stock, creating a potential source of forced demand in the weeks following the listing.
But the same market structure can create volatility. Options activity, retail flows, ETF demand, index buying and limited availability of shares can push the stock away from fundamentals in both directions.
Lock-ups are another key factor. SpaceX does not have a simple one-date lock-up structure. Instead, existing investors may be able to sell shares in staged increments after 70, 90, 105, 120 and 135 days following the public listing, with additional releases later in the year and a longer lock-up for Elon Musk. That means share supply could increase in waves from late August through the end of 2026.
The first year after the IPO may therefore be shaped not only by quarterly results, but also by float, index flows, lock-up releases and investor positioning.
Key risk factors
- Valuation: SpaceX came public at a valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion and quickly traded to a market value above $2 trillion. At those levels, investors are not only paying for Starlink and Falcon. They are paying for continued Starlink growth, Starship progress, defense expansion, AI execution and a large amount of future optionality. If any of those assumptions disappoint, the stock can fall even if the company continues to grow.
- Starlink economics: Starlink is the financial engine today, but it requires constant investment in satellites, launches, ground infrastructure and terminals. Subscriber growth has been strong, but ARPU pressure is real as the business expands internationally. If pricing declines faster than cost reductions and network utilisation improve, the market may reassess the quality of Starlink’s growth.
- Starship execution: Starship is the largest long-term option in the valuation, but it remains technically complex and capital intensive. Delays in reusability, orbital refuelling, regulatory approvals, heat-shield performance or mission economics could push the most valuable use cases further into the future.
- Artificial intelligence: xAI and Cursor bring SpaceX into one of the most competitive markets in technology. AI could create a major new growth layer, but it also requires enormous investment. The $60 billion Cursor transaction introduces dilution and raises the capital-allocation bar. If AI remains loss-making or fails to gain enterprise traction, it could weigh on the overall investment case.
- Share supply: SpaceX’s early trading has benefited from strong demand and limited float. As lock-up releases begin, early investors, employees and venture-capital backers may be able to sell portions of shares they have held privately for years. That does not guarantee selling, but it changes the balance between supply and demand.
- Governance and key-person dependency: Elon Musk is central to SpaceX’s vision, brand, capital access and culture. That is an asset, but it is also a risk. Musk has major commitments across Tesla, X, xAI and other ventures. Public statements, political controversy, related-party transactions or perceived conflicts of interest could affect SpaceX’s valuation even if operating performance remains strong.
- Regulation and national security: SpaceX depends on launch approvals, spectrum rights, satellite licensing, NASA contracts, defense relationships and international market access. Starshield may deepen the company’s strategic importance, but it also increases exposure to export controls, government oversight and geopolitical disputes.
- Narrative compression: SpaceX is currently one of the strongest stories in public markets. But narratives can shift. Future IPOs from companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic could compete for the same pool of growth capital. A great company can still see its stock consolidate if investors rotate toward a newer story or demand clearer evidence of free cash flow.
The risk is not that SpaceX is an ordinary company. It clearly is not. The risk is that the market may already have capitalised much of its extraordinary future into today’s price.
How big could the opportunity become?
The reason SpaceX attracts such an extraordinary valuation is not only that the company is growing quickly today. It is that investors are trying to value markets that may become much larger if launch costs continue to fall and if space-based infrastructure becomes part of the global digital economy.
External forecasts already point to a large opportunity. McKinsey and the World Economic Forum estimate that the global space economy could grow from roughly $630 billion in 2023 to around $1.8 trillion by 2035, driven by satellite communications, positioning and navigation, Earth observation, launch services and space-enabled applications.
SpaceX’s own implied opportunity is even more ambitious. In its IPO materials, the company framed its total addressable market at approximately $28.5 trillion. Importantly, most of that figure is not traditional space. It includes artificial intelligence, enterprise applications, infrastructure, consumer subscriptions, advertising, connectivity and space-enabled services.
Institutional forecasts also show how wide the range of possible outcomes has become. According to Reuters, citing a Wall Street Journal report, Morgan Stanley has projected that SpaceX revenue could reach $3.4 trillion by 2040, with much of the growth expected to come from artificial intelligence. Separately, Reuters reported that Goldman Sachs expects SpaceX’s AI segment to grow from $3.2 billion in 2025 to $322 billion by 2030.
These numbers should not be treated as a base case. They are extremely aggressive and depend on SpaceX succeeding in markets that are still developing: AI software, compute infrastructure, satellite connectivity, defense systems and potentially orbital data centres. But they help explain why some investors are willing to look beyond traditional aerospace valuation frameworks.
If SpaceX were only a rocket and satellite company, the valuation debate would be more constrained. The reason the upside case becomes so large is that some investors are underwriting a much broader platform: global connectivity, AI, defense infrastructure and eventually space-based compute. In that framework, Starship is not just a rocket programme. It is the infrastructure layer that could make new categories of orbital activity economically viable.
However, investors should separate addressable market from achievable revenue. TAM is not a forecast. It is a map of possible opportunity. Capturing even a small percentage of a multi-trillion-dollar market could create enormous value, but doing so requires technical execution, regulatory approval, capital discipline and demand that does not yet fully exist.
This is the real tension in SpaceX’s valuation. The company may have one of the largest opportunity sets ever presented to public markets. But the more ambitious the opportunity, the more uncertain the path becomes.
Bear, Base, Bull and Blue-sky case
A useful way to think about SpaceX is through scenario analysis rather than a single precise price target. The company’s opportunity set is unusually wide, which means the range of possible outcomes is also unusually wide.
- Bear case: Starlink continues to grow but margins come under pressure. ARPU declines faster than expected, satellite replacement costs remain high, Starship is delayed, AI remains loss-making and lock-up releases increase share supply. In this scenario, SpaceX may still be a great company, but the stock could re-rate toward a market value of roughly $1.2 trillion to $1.6 trillion. Based on the approximate share count implied by the IPO, that would suggest a share-price range of roughly $90 to $120.
- Base case: Starlink remains the core earnings engine and continues to scale globally. Enterprise, aviation, maritime and direct-to-cell services grow gradually. Falcon remains dominant in launch. Starship progresses, but more slowly than optimistic investors expect. AI remains strategically interesting but financially expensive. In this scenario, SpaceX could justify a market value of roughly $1.8 trillion to $2.5 trillion, implying a share-price range of approximately $135 to $190.
- Bull case: Starlink becomes a global communications utility, enterprise and mobility revenues accelerate, Starshield becomes a major defense platform, Starship reaches reliable commercial reusability and AI becomes a credible enterprise software and compute business. In that world, SpaceX could ultimately justify a valuation of $3 trillion to $5 trillion, implying a share-price range of approximately $230 to $380.
- Blue-sky case: This is not the base investment case, but it is the reason some investors are willing to look far beyond traditional aerospace valuation frameworks. If Starship dramatically lowers the cost of orbital infrastructure, if Starlink becomes a global communications layer, if Starshield becomes deeply embedded in national security, and if AI/compute becomes a meaningful platform rather than a capital burden, SpaceX could eventually be valued less like a rocket company and more like a foundational infrastructure layer for the space-enabled digital economy. In such a scenario, a $5 trillion to $10 trillion market value over the long term is not mathematically impossible. Based on the same approximate share count, that would imply a share-price range of roughly $380 to $760 or more. But this would require SpaceX to capture value across several enormous markets at once: satellite communications, defense infrastructure, AI software, compute infrastructure, launch logistics and future space-based industries. That is a very different assumption from simply believing Starlink will keep growing.
These ranges are not price targets. They are a framework for understanding what the market needs to believe. At around $190 per share, SpaceX already prices in more than the IPO valuation and begins to reflect several base-to-bull-case assumptions. The blue-sky case explains why investors may remain excited, but the bear and base cases explain why entry price still matters.
Hatchworks view
At Hatchworks, we view SpaceX as one of the most strategically important companies to enter public markets in decades. The company combines several rare characteristics: a proven launch platform, a rapidly scaling satellite-connectivity business, deep government relevance, a credible long-term option on Starship and a newly expanded artificial-intelligence strategy through xAI and Cursor.
That combination makes SpaceX difficult to compare with traditional aerospace, telecom or software companies. It is not simply a rocket manufacturer, nor is it a conventional satellite operator. It is increasingly a vertically integrated infrastructure platform with exposure to launch, communications, defense, AI and future space-based markets.
However, we also believe valuation discipline matters. At a market value above $2 trillion shortly after IPO, investors are already paying for a significant amount of future execution. Starlink must continue scaling, ARPU pressure must remain manageable, Starship must progress toward commercial reusability, and AI spending must eventually translate into durable revenue and profitability.
For that reason, our preferred approach is not to treat SpaceX as a simple “buy at any price” story. We see the company as a long-term strategic asset, but one where entry price and position sizing are important. Hatchworks has initiated exposure and would consider building the position gradually across different price levels, especially during periods of post-IPO volatility, lock-up-related pressure or broader market weakness.
In our view, SpaceX is a company worth following closely for the next decade. The key question is not whether it is an exceptional business. It clearly is. The key question is whether investors can build exposure at prices that leave enough room for the execution risk that still lies ahead.
Source:https://www.reuters.com/world/musks-spacex-prices-record-75-billion-ipo-135-share-2026-06-11/
Source:https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/spacex-stock-full-day-drop-spcx-ipo-elon-musk-12000680
Source: https://global.morningstar.com/en-nd/stocks/how-spacexs-tiered-lockup-aims-help-post-ipo-trading
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-spacex-valuation-benefits-on-acquisitions-like-cursor-2026-6
Disclosure: Hatchworks is an investor in a range of equities, gold, bonds, bitcoin and other assets on a proprietary basis. The information provided in this document is not investment advice nor is it a solicitation to invest in any asset. For webinar, social media appearances you may send an email to info@hatchworksvc.com.
