$135 per share. In June 2026, global financial markets are convulsing around a single number. Elon Musk's SpaceX has finally filed to go public. The offering is set at a fixed price of $135 per share, 555.6 million shares, raising approximately $75 billion at a valuation of $1.77 trillion (roughly 2,400 trillion KRW). It shatters Saudi Aramco's 2019 record of $29.4 billion by more than three times — quite literally the largest IPO in human history. Listing date: June 12, on the Nasdaq, under the ticker SPCX. If the price holds, Musk becomes humanity's first trillionaire.
On day one, SpaceX would debut as the seventh-largest company in the United States by market capitalization, leapfrogging Tesla (~$1.6 trillion). A company with $18.7 billion in revenue and a $4.9 billion net loss will start trading at a price tag larger than Microsoft. Can the number 135 be justified? And should we step onto this stage of mania?
Volatility, Mania, and the Gravitational Pull of Money
What makes the SpaceX IPO extraordinary is not merely its size. Under Musk's leadership — armed with an unparalleled narrative and fandom — the company is selling the vision of "making humanity a multiplanetary species." Even the S-1 filing abandons the customary dry legalese, declaring the need to build "a permanent human colony" on Mars with "at least one million inhabitants" so that mankind can avoid "the same fate as the dinosaurs." The fact that part of Musk's compensation package is tied to this Mars-colony milestone tells you, in compressed form, what this organization is actually betting on.
Visions are hard to price, and that very ambiguity is what amplifies volatility. In its S-1, SpaceX pegs its total addressable market at $28.5 trillion — $370 billion in space, $1.6 trillion in connectivity, and $26.5 trillion in AI. Calling it "the largest actionable total addressable market in human history" is, in effect, a declaration that the valuation anchor will be imagination rather than fundamentals.
Volatility is not a fear gauge; it is the vacuum pump of the modern speculative market. In this deal, retail investors are earmarked for roughly 30% of the float — three times the norm for a mega-cap IPO. Retail mania has been engineered into the design from the start. High volatility inflates option premiums and pulls in day traders, leveraged products, and YouTube retail investors. Immediately after listing, SpaceX is likely to ascend to the apex of meme stocks, succeeding GameStop and Tesla. The collision between short sellers and Musk loyalists stands ready to launch this stock into orbit — or slam it back to Earth.
Anatomy of the Numbers: What Starlink Earns, xAI Burns
The financial statements disclosed for the first time in the S-1 reveal that this is effectively three companies in one.
| Segment (FY2025) | Revenue | Operating P&L | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connectivity (Starlink) | $11.39B (61%) | +$4.42B (39% margin) | The only profitable cash cow |
| Space (Falcon, Dragon, Starship) | $4.09B | -$0.66B | ~$3B/yr incinerated on Starship R&D |
| AI (xAI, Grok, X) | $3.20B | -$6.36B | Losses accelerating |
| Consolidated | $18.67B | -$2.59B (net loss -$4.9B) | Accumulated deficit $41.3B |
Starlink is, beyond any doubt, a monster. Subscribers exploded from 2.3 million (2023) to 4.4 million (2024) to 8.9 million (2025) to 10.3 million as of Q1 2026, served by roughly 9,600 satellites across 164 countries. Revenue grew 49.8% year over year.
There are two problems. First, ARPU has fallen 18–23% in a single year to around $81 per month. As cheaper plans and emerging-market expansion drive subscriber-led growth, per-subscriber economics keep deteriorating. Second — and more fundamental — in February 2026, Musk merged xAI (including X) into SpaceX. A company that earned $791 million in profit in 2024 swung, post-merger, to a $4.9 billion net loss in 2025 and a $4.28 billion net loss in the single quarter of Q1 2026. xAI burned $6 billion in 2025 and incinerated another $2.5 billion in Q1 alone. Long-term debt stood at $29.1 billion as of the end of March 2026.
In short, the investor who buys SPCX at $135 is not buying a "rocket company." They are buying a conglomerate in which Starlink, a profitable ISP, simultaneously subsidizes two furnaces: xAI, an AI capital incinerator, and Mars, an incinerator with no upper bound. The S-1 itself states plainly that the company wants to be valued as an AI company.
Musk's Absolute Power: The Two Faces of 82.4% Voting Control
The most controversial element of this IPO is governance. Through a dual-class structure granting Class B shares ten times the voting power of Class A, Musk retains approximately 82.4% of the voting power even after listing. The playbook he used at Tesla — capturing the board and ramming through a trillion-dollar pay package — has been transplanted into space.
To the devoted fan, this is the unavoidable price of innovation: the logic that Musk can devote himself to Starship and Starlink, free from quarterly earnings pressure and Wall Street short-termism. But from an investor's standpoint, what your $135 buys is a near-voteless micro-stake, with every strategic direction of the company hinging on the intuition of one man.
The flow of money between related parties also deserves scrutiny. Tesla holds 18.99 million SpaceX shares ($2.56 billion at the IPO price); Valor Equity, run by board member Antonio Gracias, leases some $20 billion worth of equipment to xAI; and the S-1 even discloses an agreement to acquire the coding startup Cursor for $60 billion in Class A stock. Wedbush's Dan Ives goes as far as forecasting a Tesla–SpaceX merger next year. Structurally, there is no mechanism by which minority shareholders get a say in the capital reshuffling inside the Musk empire. None.
The Yardstick: Even Rocket Lab Is No Longer a "Rational Premium"
| Item | SpaceX (SPCX) | Rocket Lab (RKLB) |
|---|---|---|
| Market cap | $1.77T (target) | ~$66B |
| FY2025 revenue | $18.67B (+33%) | $602M (+38%) |
| Q1 2026 revenue | $4.69B (+15%) | $200M (+63.5%) |
| Bottom line | Net loss -$4.9B (2025) | Net loss -$198M (2025) |
| P/S (approx.) | ~95x | ~100x |
| Core launch vehicle | Falcon 9 / Starship (grounded by FAA) | Electron / Neutron (first launch targeted Q4 2026) |
| Backlog | Undisclosed (government-contract heavy) | $2.2B (doubled YoY) |
| Governance | Musk: 82.4% voting power | Conventional structure |
A year ago, Rocket Lab could fairly be called "the space stock closer to reality than to dreams — a rational premium." Not anymore. RKLB has quadrupled in a year (52-week low of $25 to a high of $151), and at a $66 billion market cap it trades at roughly 100x sales — on the numbers alone, more expensive than SpaceX. The fundamental improvements are real: the Golden Dome missile-defense program, an $816 million Space Development Agency satellite contract, five Neutron launches pre-sold before first flight. But the $5 billion of market cap that materialized within a day of SpaceX's S-1 going public on May 26 was not fundamentals — it was the beta of SpaceX anticipation.
The entire space sector, in other words, is being repriced inside the gravitational field of the star called SpaceX. The SPCX listing has lifted multiples across RKLB, ASTS, Planet Labs, and the satellite complex broadly — and conversely, if SPCX collapses after listing, the whole sector contracts with it. This is why "diversifying into alternative space stocks" no longer hedges the way it once did.
Price Outlook: Three Scenarios
The $135 offering price equals roughly 95x sales — and roughly 400x the operating profit of Starlink ($4.4 billion), the only profitable segment. What follows is a scenario thought experiment, not investment advice.
| Scenario | 6–12 month range | Preconditions |
|---|---|---|
| Bull (meme + AI narrative) | $180–220 (market cap $2.4–2.9T) | Day-one retail mania persists; Starship returns to flight and V3 stabilizes; xAI demonstrates accelerating Grok revenue; Tesla–SpaceX merger speculation builds |
| Base (range-bound digestion) | $110–150 | Starlink subscriber growth offsets ARPU decline; xAI losses plateau; supply and demand balance until lockup expiry |
| Bear (reversion to fundamentals) | $70–95 | Quarterly net losses of $4B+ weigh on sentiment; another Starship mishap or a prolonged FAA investigation; the AI capex cycle cools and the $26.5T TAM narrative cracks |
Three variables matter most. First, the pace of xAI's cash burn, now disclosed quarterly. Second, the timing of Starship's return to flight — the company goes public with Starship grounded after a booster anomaly on the May 22 Flight 12 (the V3 debut), with the FAA requiring a mishap investigation. Third, lockup expiry. For venture investors with no exit for two decades (Founders Fund, Fidelity, Thrive, and others) and thousands of early employees, this listing is a generational liquidity event; supply pressure around the lockup expiration is structurally pre-programmed.
Risk Matrix
| Risk | Detail | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Key-man risk | 82.4% voting power; simultaneously CEO, CTO, and chairman. Musk's political ventures and impulsive decisions are corporate risk itself | Very high |
| AI capital burn | xAI lost $6.36B in 2025, plus $2.5B in Q1. Colossus data-center capex exceeds Starlink's entire profit | Very high |
| Technology & regulation | Going public while Starship is grounded by the FAA. Failure to achieve full reusability sets back the entire Mars/lunar-economy narrative | High |
| Valuation | ~95x sales. Profitable in 2024 ($791M), loss-making after the merger — a chasm between the future the price assumes and the present P&L | High |
| ARPU erosion | Starlink ARPU down 18–23%. Pricing power weakens as Amazon Kuiper and China's Guowang scale up in LEO | Medium |
| Government dependence | Concentrated NSSL/NASA contracts. In May, NASA's $468M lunar-lander award went to Blue Origin while SpaceX was shut out — a signal that monopoly status is not forever | Medium |
| Conflicts of interest | Tesla's equity stake, the Valor lease arrangements, the $60B Cursor acquisition — transparency of related-party dealings | Medium |
| Lockup & supply | Sequential exit of VC and employee shares. Volatility expansion around the first lockup expiry is scheduled, not speculative | Medium |
$135 — To Buy or Not to Buy?
From an investment standpoint, the SpaceX listing is, in a phrase, a gamble that tests your patience.
What is certain is that this price leans far more on Musk's narrative and fandom-driven volatility than on fundamentals. Buying SPCX today is closer to acquiring a "Mars entertainment stock" with "AI capex leverage" layered on top. If you can hold for a decade or more — waiting for the moment Starlink's cash flow overwhelms xAI's losses, and for Starship to actually open up the space economy — it is not a bad bet. But the journey comes with quarterly losses in the $4 billion range, Musk's tail risks, a tug-of-war with the FAA, and the helplessness of a minority shareholder holding 17.6% of the votes.
The more realistic approach is to watch the first wave of mania from the sidelines. In the extreme price-discovery process after June 12, the stock could break above $200 or crash below $100. Better to size a position only after two or three quarterly disclosures confirm three data points: (1) the floor in Starlink's ARPU, (2) the inflection point in xAI's losses, and (3) Starship's return to flight. And when diversifying into "alternative space stocks," remember that even Rocket Lab already trades at 100x sales — it is not a hedge; it is the same beta.
The largest IPO in history symbolizes the market's desire to trade the largest dream in history. But at the table where dreams are converted into cash, if you look away from governance and cash flow in favor of "vision," your account will simply be sucked into the black hole called volatility. Bet on humanity's future — just don't let the price get launched into space along with it.
News References
- Reuters (Jun 2, 2026), "SpaceX plans to set IPO price at $135 per share, targeting record $75 billion raise" — exclusive on the fixed offering price and raise size
- CNBC (Jun 3, 2026), "SpaceX targets fixed $135 IPO price at $1.77 trillion valuation" — 555.6M shares, June 12 Nasdaq debut, Musk's 82%+ voting power, Goldman Sachs as lead underwriter, the February xAI merger ($1.25T), Tesla's SPCX stake
- SEC EDGAR, SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) Form S-1 (first filed May 20, 2026) — FY2025 revenue of $18.67B, operating loss of $2.59B, adjusted EBITDA of $6.58B, segment P&L, $28.5T TAM
- Via Satellite (May 20, 2026), "SpaceX's IPO Filing Gives First Look Into Company's Financials" — $4.9B net loss, $29.1B long-term debt, subscriber trajectory (2.3M → 4.4M → 8.9M → 10.3M)
- Morningstar (May 2026), "6 Charts on SpaceX's Pre-IPO Financials" — Starlink EBITDA +86%; analysis of the "Starlink profits subsidizing xAI spending" structure
- Fortune (May 28, 2026), "The key disclosures missing from SpaceX's S-1" — Musk's pay package tied to a one-million-person Mars colony; gaps in disclosure
- CNBC (May 20, 2026), "SpaceX's historic IPO plans: Billions in losses and Musk's massive ownership" — Valor Equity lease arrangements, the $60B Cursor acquisition agreement, Shotwell's Class B holdings
- Spectrum News (May 27, 2026), "FAA grounds SpaceX's Starship after booster malfunction" — FAA mishap investigation and flight suspension after Flight 12
- CBS News (Jun 2026), "SpaceX plans record stock market debut" — the S-1's Mars-colony language; Wedbush's Dan Ives on a potential Tesla–SpaceX merger
- Rocket Lab IR (Feb 26, 2026), Q4/FY2025 results — revenue of $602M (+38%), $1.85B backlog, $816M SDA contract, Neutron first launch targeted for Q4 2026
- CNBC (May 8, 2026), "Rocket Lab surges 34% in best day ever" — Q1 revenue above $200M, $2.2B backlog, largest launch contract on record
- TheStreet (May 2026), "Rocket Lab adds $5B in market cap on major industry news" — sector-wide repricing following the SpaceX S-1
- TipRanks (May 27, 2026), "Bezos' Blue Origin Snags $468 Million NASA Moon Deal. SpaceX Gets Shut Out" — SpaceX excluded from NASA's lunar-lander award
This column is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All figures are based on filings and press reports as of June 4, 2026.
Korean original: SpaceX IPO 0604 v2.md
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