SpaceX's $1.75 trillion IPO: 17 related concept stocks

Author: Merkle3s Capital; Source: X, @Merkle3sCapitalAn IPO Half a Year Ahead of ScheduleOn June 12th, SpaceX will debut on Nasdaq with a valuation of $1.75 trillion, becoming the largest IPO in human capital market history. This figure surpasses Walmart, JPMorgan, and all traditional energy giants combined. A space company that is still losing money has outperformed most of the S&P 500.But what truly supports this $1.75 trillion valuation is not the Starship rocket that is repeatedly exploding in Texas, but the more than 8,000 small white plates called Starlink overhead. The rocket is just the ticket; satellite internet is the cash cow. This contrast is why the market took a quarter to digest SpaceX's IPO prospectus. What's even more noteworthy are the related concept stocks. Since the prospectus leaked on March 25th, TSLA +10%, RKLB +88%, FLY +70%, QCOM +56%, DXYZ +79%—a financial frenzy surrounding SpaceX has already run its course for more than half. Are the retail investors entering now joining the fray or taking over the losses? Let's break them down one by one. The three faces in the prospectus: SpaceX has divided its business into three parts: Space (launch and Starship), Connectivity (Starlink), and AI (data centers and computing power). It sounds balanced, but financially it's a machine with a severely unbalanced focus. Starlink is a true cash cow. As of Q1 2026, it had over 10.3 million paying users, contributing 61% of the group's quarterly revenue, with an EBITDA margin as high as 63%. This is a figure higher than most SaaS companies. In the satellite internet business, once the scale effect crosses a critical point, the marginal cost is almost zero—SpaceX has already crossed that threshold. The ARPU trend is the other most noteworthy aspect of this story. In 2023, Starlink's average monthly fee was in the $110-$130 range; in 2024, with the expansion in developing countries, it dropped to $90-$100; and in the second half of 2025, due to the dilution from the Direct to Cell introductory plan and enterprise-level long-tail users, it had fallen to the $75-$85 range. Doubling the number of users but halving the revenue per user is a typical "volume-driven price reduction" story. The advantage is that TAM is opening up – low ARPU markets like India, Southeast Asia, and Africa weren't originally part of Starlink's early business model. The disadvantage is that gross margins will be under pressure because hardware subsidies are higher in low-end markets, and the payback period per user will lengthen from 14 months to 22-28 months. We prefer to view Starlink as a story of "user growth taking precedence over ARPU" until 2027, and we shouldn't be overly sensitive to single-point declines in ARPU in quarterly financial reports, but we should be wary of the potential risk of a simultaneous slowdown in "user growth + ARPU". The AI business is the other pole. Q1 capital expenditure burned through $7.7 billion, the vast majority of which was poured into the second phase of the Memphis data center in Texas. The computing power contract signed with Anthropic is worth $1.25 billion per month, which sounds attractive, but the contract clearly states that it can be unilaterally terminated within 90 days. This means that the AI revenue on paper could evaporate at any time. The Space segment continues to lose money due to Starship's R&D. The logic behind this business is: make rockets incredibly cheap, then collect tolls through Starlink, and finally consume all the computing power with AI data centers. All three pieces of the puzzle are indispensable, but only Starlink is generating cash. In terms of control, Musk holds 85.1% of the voting rights. This is a control structure even more absolute than Zuckerberg's during the Meta era, meaning that retail investors' buying is essentially driven by "faith." SpaceX's TAM (Total Monetary Amount) in its prospectus is $28.5 trillion, broken down as follows: satellite broadband $1.2 trillion, government and defense launches $400 billion, AI computing power $12 trillion, deep space and lunar economy $9 trillion, and the remainder in industrial aerospace. Most of these figures won't be verified until 2040. TSLA: The "Hidden Protagonist" Mentioned 87 Times in the Prospectus. If you could only choose one SpaceX-related stock, the answer wouldn't be the rocket company, but Tesla. SpaceX's prospectus mentions Tesla 87 times, far exceeding any other entity. The two companies share a chip design team, Dojo's computing architecture, and the production capacity of the Terafab chip factory in Texas. Musk's "Heart of the Galaxy" plan, publicly announced in early 2026, essentially connects SpaceX's computing power with Tesla's FSD training data pool—this isn't just two companies; it's a tech empire deliberately split in two. The capital market is already voting with its feet. Since submitting its prospectus on March 25th, TSLA has risen 10.24%. This increase may not seem as impressive as many small-cap concept stocks, but considering Tesla's market capitalization is in the trillions, a 10% increase means adding the entire market capitalization of Ford Motor Company. What is the market betting on? It's that Tesla's indirect stake in SpaceX will be revalued after SpaceX's IPO. A more aggressive speculation is a merger. There is indeed an expectation in the market that the two companies will merge around 2027, but the probability of this depends on the tax structure and Musk's patience with the Tesla board. We tend to view TSLA as a "high-certainty side pocket" for SpaceX's IPO, rather than a "merger lottery." If you are bullish on SpaceX's AI computing power story, Tesla's Dojo is the closest version you can buy directly on the secondary market. If you are bullish on SpaceX's cash flow story, Tesla is not the best choice—it has no direct business connection with Starlink. Three direct competitors: RKLB, AASTS, and FLY. The most awkward situation for SpaceX's IPO is not itself, but for these three companies. They benefit from the "space stock premium" but must prove that they "will not be swallowed up by SpaceX." Rocket Lab (RKLB): A Smaller SpaceX, the Only Substitute RKLB is the king of this round of gains, up 88.85% since the end of March. The logic is very simple: retail investors can't buy SpaceX, so they buy the one that most resembles SpaceX. Rocket Lab's Electron small rocket has achieved commercial steady-state launches, and the Neutron medium rocket under development is comparable to the Falcon 9, with its first flight expected at the end of 2026. The Neutron timeline is the most sensitive variable for RKLB right now. The company's target for 2024 was the first flight at the end of 2025, which was adjusted to Q1 2026 in mid-2025, and then postponed again to Q4 2026 at the end of 2025. The two postponements resulted in stock price pullbacks of 15-25%, indicating extremely high market attention at this juncture. Any news regarding engine testing, joint training, or weather windows could trigger short-term price fluctuations. At the engine level, Archimedes has completed long-range ignition testing. Its second-stage recovery scheme, while borrowed from Falcon 9, has been simplified, opting for a more conservative parachute recovery instead of a grid wing. If Neutron successfully completes its maiden flight by the end of 2026, RKLB will secure a place in the competition for NASA's NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 contract, a five-year, $5 billion government order pool. Conversely, if the maiden flight is further postponed to 2027, the entire valuation anchor will loosen—the market's patience for "substitute" stocks has an expiration date. But RKLB's real moat isn't its rockets, but rather its quiet transformation into a "space IDM"—building its own rockets, creating its own satellite bus, providing its own launch services, and operating its own constellation. This vertically integrated approach is the same path SpaceX has taken, and the market is willing to give it a valuation premium. The risks are also obvious. If Neutron is delayed or its maiden flight fails, the entire "meal replacement" story will be repriced by the market. And SpaceX's IPO itself is a valuation trap—when the real SpaceX is available for purchase, how much will the meal replacement still be worth? AST SpaceMobile (ASTS): The Space Version of AT&T ASTS takes a different path: direct mobile phone connection to satellites. No dedicated terminal is needed; ordinary iPhones and Android phones can simply look up to connect to the space base station. The crux of this story is that it directly challenges the same TAM (Transportation and Activation) as Starlink Direct to Cell. ASTS has already signed partnerships with carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, and Rakuten, and its BlueWalker 3 achieved an on-orbit test rate of 14Mbps. However, its satellite deployment is far behind Starlink's, and the entire constellation will require another 18-30 months to fully operate. High volatility is the norm for ASTS—daily price fluctuations of 10% are common. If your risk tolerance is low, this stock is not suitable as a core holding. But if you're betting that "carriers don't want Starlink to dominate," then ASTS is the sharpest tool in this logic. Firefly Aerospace (FLY): A Dark Horse with Strength FLY is a severely undervalued stock in this round. While its +70.38% increase seems substantial, its fundamentals are likely even stronger than RKLB's. Its Alpha rockets have completed multiple commercial launches, and its Blue Ghost lunar lander is one of NASA's core contractors for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). FLY's core narrative is the "Earth-Moon ecosystem"—a full-stack capability from low Earth orbit to the lunar surface. When SpaceX's Starship brought the lunar economy from science fiction to reality, FLY was one of the most direct beneficiaries. It doesn't have the same brand recognition as RKLB, but its ability to secure NASA contracts is probably the strongest among the three. The common risk for all three is that after SpaceX's IPO, the "substitute funds" previously invested in them may be withdrawn and redirected to SpaceX itself. This is a typical "shoe dropping" risk, requiring pre-emptive reduction of holdings rather than chasing the price higher. Partner Ecosystem: SATS, PL, AMZN, TMUS, QCOM, FLYX SpaceX's IPO is a "shot in the arm" for its partners—proving that the ecosystem itself can create market capitalization, and all upstream and downstream will be repriced. EchoStar (SATS): A Major Spectrum Seller SATS is one of the biggest winners in this ecosystem game. By the end of 2025, it sold its S-band and part of the AWS-4 spectrum to SpaceX for $8.5 billion in cash plus $8.5 billion in SpaceX stock. This deal transformed SATS overnight from a struggling satellite TV company into a major shareholder of SpaceX. Since the end of March, SATS has risen 23.81%, seemingly modest, but this increase does not fully reflect the valuation release of the SpaceX stock portion after the IPO. If SpaceX's valuation holds at $1.75 trillion after its IPO, the actual value of the $8.5 billion stock held by SATS will be significantly higher than its book value. Planet Labs (PL): The Most Loyal Passenger PL is a frequent user of SpaceX's carpooling launches, with over 90% of its satellites launched using Falcon 9 rockets. +30.76% since the end of March. This company is a leader in Earth observation, scanning the entire Earth surface daily, and selling its data products to governments, agriculture, insurance, and hedge funds. PL and SpaceX have a truly symbiotic relationship. SpaceX's IPO will not change PL's fundamentals, but it will make the market re-evaluate the ceiling of the "Earth observation" sector. If you believe in the "data as an asset" logic, PL is the cleanest target in this line. Amazon (AMZN): A Dramatic Turnaround from Rival to Partner Amazon's Kuiper constellation was originally Starlink's biggest potential challenger. However, in the second half of 2025, AMZN unexpectedly awarded some of its Kuiper satellite launch contracts to SpaceX—the reason being that ULA and Blue Origin's capacity couldn't keep up. This is a classic case of business logic crushing political stance. For AMZN, SpaceX's IPO means a comparable valuation for the Kuiper project has emerged, and the synergistic value of Amazon Web Services (AWS) + Kuiper may be rediscovered by the market. However, AMZN is too large, and the SpaceX IPO is more of a "marginal benefit" than a core driver. T-Mobile (TMUS): Direct to Cell's Top Ally. TMUS is the exclusive carrier partner in the US for Starlink's direct-to-cell service. Starting in 2025, T-Mobile users can send and receive text messages via Starlink satellite in areas without signal coverage, expanding to voice and data in 2026. This is a revolutionary story that allows carriers to bypass traditional base station construction. TMUS's stock price reaction was relatively mild, but it has secured a 10-year cooperation framework. If Starlink Direct to Cell user penetration exceeds expectations, TMUS will be the most stable cash flow beneficiary along this line. Qualcomm (QCOM): The Underlying Enabler QCOM rose 56.59%, a surge that surprised many. The logic lies in the deep cooperation between Qualcomm and Starlink's satellite baseband chips, Direct to Cell's mobile modems, and some communication chips in SpaceX's data centers. QCOM is the most "bottom-level" shovel seller in the SpaceX ecosystem. It doesn't bet on any single application, but it gets a share of the profits whenever an application explodes. This logic is completely consistent with its position in the smartphone era. FlyExclusive (FLYX): Starlink Aviation Distributor. FLYX is a private jet charter service provider and one of Starlink Aviation's core distributors in the private aviation sector. This company is small and highly flexible, but its potential ceiling is clear—the private aviation market is only so big. If you want flexibility, FLYX provides it; if you want certainty, FLYX is not the answer. This is a typical "small-cap beta" stock. Premium Channel: GOOGL, BAC, DXYZ, XOVR, VCX. This group is characterized by "indirectly holding SpaceX equity." Before SpaceX's IPO, these were the only channels for retail investors to acquire exposure to SpaceX; after the IPO, the value of this channel will fundamentally change. Google and BAC: Giants Who Win Without Effort. Google holds approximately 7% of SpaceX's shares, a legacy of its 2015 investment. Based on a valuation of $1.75 trillion, this stake has a book value of approximately $120 billion. For Google, this is a "dormant asset" that won't change its fundamentals but will add a substantial revaluation to its financial statements. BAC is one of the lead underwriters for SpaceX's IPO, with its underwriting fee expected to be between $500 million and $800 million. For a bank of BAC's size, this money won't change the valuation, but it will become a "star deal" this quarter. Capital markets love star deals. DXYZ, XOVR, and VCX: The Last Window for Retail Investors to Buy SpaceX Stocks. These three are essentially "closed-end funds that package SpaceX equity." DXYZ is the Destiny Tech100, XOVR is the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF, and VCX is Vinia Capital. They all hold a significant proportion of SpaceX stock through the secondary market or private placements. Since the end of March, DXYZ has risen 79.56%, with its market price premium relative to NAV reaching over 200% at one point. This is a very dangerous signal. This premium exists only because "retail investors have no other way to buy SpaceX." Once SpaceX goes public and retail investors can directly buy the stock, this premium will have no reason to exist. Historically, there have been instances where this scenario has been completely repeated. GBTC maintained a positive premium of over 30% for a long period before the Bitcoin ETF was listed in 2021, but immediately switched to a negative discount of over 20% after the ETF's listing. DXYZ, XOVR, and VCX will likely replicate this process, and because their underlying premiums are even higher, the decline could be even greater. If you currently hold these funds, you need to seriously consider: are you profiting from the valuation increase of SpaceX, or from the scarcity premium of "retail investors having no access"? If it's the latter, June 12th will be the day this scarcity becomes zero. RDW Redwire: Another Approach to Selling Space ShovelsRedwire isn't on the media's list of concept stocks, but we think it deserves its own chapter—because its investment logic is different from all the companies mentioned above.Rocket companies earn transportation fees, satellite companies earn bandwidth fees, Redwire earns the **"parts fees for building satellites"**. Solar arrays, deployable structures, camera payloads, space 3D printing equipment—all the hardware components needed for spacecraft, Redwire is one of the hidden champions in this niche market.At the end of 2025, RDW acquired Edge Autonomy, a company specializing in military drones and military space payloads. This acquisition transformed Redwire from a purely commercial space company into a "dual-use" defense contractor.In the current US defense budget structure, dual-use (military and commercial) companies receive significantly higher valuations than purely commercial companies. Even more interesting is the microgravity pharmaceutical sector. Redwire's PIL-BOX microgravity culture device has already completed multiple protein crystal growth experiments on the International Space Station. Some drugs produced under microgravity conditions have a much higher purity than those on Earth, representing an early-stage sector with a potential market size of hundreds of billions of dollars. Specifically, PIL-BOX's current clients include leading pharmaceutical companies like Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, focusing on optimizing the crystal morphology of monoclonal antibody drugs. Ground-based cultivation can only reliably produce one crystal form, while microgravity allows for the screening of multiple crystal forms, corresponding to different drug solubilities, stability, and half-lives. The commercial value of this lies not in "making drugs in space," but in "using space data to guide ground-based processes"—a typical high-value-added data business, with a single experiment priced between $2 million and $5 million. A further application is stem cell culture and tissue engineering. 3D cell culture in a microgravity environment can avoid the sedimentation problem of ground-based culture, theoretically creating truly three-dimensional organ analogs. This approach is still in the preclinical stage, with the first batch of data entering the IND stage not expected until 2028 at the earliest. However, once successful, Redwire will no longer be holding a space-related stock, but a biotechnology stock—the valuation logic is completely different, and the corresponding PS multiple will jump from 3-5 times for space stocks to 15-25 times for biotechs. RDW's current valuation is low for three reasons: its SPAC history, continuous losses, and relatively insignificant revenue compared to rocket companies. **None of these three reasons affect the quality of its core assets, but they all affect retail investor attention.** At the catalyst level, the Trump administration's "Iron Dome" air defense system plan has a direct demand for Redwire's very low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and Edge Autonomy's payloads. This is a government order pool that could reach tens of billions of dollars. The specific technical roadmap for Iron Dome is still under evaluation, but the basically confirmed direction is a multi-layered architecture of "LEO multi-layered detection + high-orbit early warning + terminal interception," benchmarking an upgraded version of the original Israeli Iron Dome plus the American version of SDI's legacy. Redwire has LEO satellite bus, Edge Autonomy has tactical UAVs and high-altitude payloads, and PIL-BOX has space materials and sensor testing; all three of their business lines can secure different sub-contracts from Iron Dome. The scarcity of a single small-to-mid-cap company possessing these three types of assets simultaneously is the most easily overlooked point in Redwire's valuation story. On the timeline, the Pentagon plans to release its first batch of tenders in the second half of 2026, begin large-scale procurement in 2027, and complete the first phase of deployment by 2030. This means that RDW's current undervaluation window may only last 12-18 months—once orders begin to materialize, the market will quickly reclassify it from a "commercial space stock" to a "defense contracting stock," resulting in a structural increase in its valuation multiple, similar to the revaluation of Palantir in 2023 when it switched from a technology stock to a defense stock. We won't say that Redwire will definitely become the next RKLB, but its investment logic is a dual attribute of "infrastructure + shovel seller," which is more stable than simply betting on whether a particular rocket company will succeed. If your portfolio already has high-elasticity exposure to RKLB or ASTS, then RDW is a reasonably cost-effective hedging option. Risks and Outlook: The Story of Market Pricing in Advance After reviewing the 17 companies, we need to return to the most basic question—has everything already been priced in? More than 60 days have passed since the prospectus was submitted, and almost all related stocks have seen double-digit or even triple-digit gains. This means that the market has already digested most of the positive news surrounding the SpaceX IPO. On June 12th, the actual listing day, what is more likely to happen is not a new round of broad-based gains, but rather profit-taking after the "good news has been realized." Historical patterns also support this judgment. From Alibaba to Facebook, from Saudi Aramco to Saudi Aramco, all mega-IPOs with a market capitalization exceeding $500 billion have likely underperformed the market in their first year after listing. The liquidity drain effect is real, as is the valuation anchoring effect. SpaceX's own fundamental risks cannot be ignored. Starship is still in the testing phase, and its most recent test flight failed to complete a full mission profile; Starlink ARPU continues to decline, from $130/month in the early days to below $80/month currently; while the AI sector is burning through cash, its growth rate is far lower than that of xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic's self-operated businesses, which are also burning through cash. Our assessment is: SpaceX is a great company, but its $1.75 trillion valuation requires perfect execution over the next three years to sustain. Any problem in any area could lead to a 20-40% correction in valuation. At the concept stock level, the differentiation will be more dramatic than a general rise—true friends (TSLA, QCOM, SATS, RDW) and those who will be left holding the bag (DXYZ, XOVR, VCX) will be quickly separated by the market within three months after the IPO. The tail risk also deserves a separate mention. For a company the size of SpaceX, the normal valuation fluctuation is a 20-40% correction, but what will truly cause structural funds to withdraw are several low-probability but highly destructive events: a fatal accident on Starship before a manned mission, a black swan event involving Musk's health or legal issues, the US government interfering in SpaceX's equity structure in the name of national security, and the escalation of space militarization competition to the point of asset damage. Individually, these events may not seem very likely, but if any one of them occurs, it will affect not only SpaceX's own valuation, but also the liquidity discount of the entire 17 concept stock sector. Historically, the 2018 Tesla privatization controversy and the leverage contagion triggered by the 2022 Twitter acquisition both illustrate that assets strongly tied to Musk are not immune to tail risks. In terms of portfolio allocation, we prefer to keep the total position in the SpaceX ecosystem within 10-15% of the portfolio, rather than solely betting on the aerospace theme because of attractive short-term gains—tail risk is hedged through position management, not stock selection. Everyone looks up when the rocket launches, but the real money-making moment is often when the rocket returns to Earth and is recovered.