The Largest IPO in History: What SpaceX's USD 1.75 Trillion Price Tag Is Actually Betting On
SpaceX lists on Nasdaq today under SPCX at USD 135 a share, raising about USD 75 billion at a valuation near USD 1.75 trillion. That makes it the largest IPO ever, roughly three times the size of Alibaba's 2014 debut, and on day one it is already bigger than most of the companies retail investors have held for years. The demand backs up the hype: total orders topped USD 250 billion, retail alone came in above USD 100 billion, and the book was oversubscribed around 3.5 times. So the scarcity is real. The question is whether the price already pays for everything that could go right.
The numbers behind the narrative
The S-1 gives the first real look under the hood, and it is a story of two engines. SpaceX did USD 18.67 billion in revenue in 2025, up about 33 percent from USD 14.1 billion the year before. But it also posted a USD 4.94 billion net loss. Dig into the segments and the picture sharpens. Starlink, the connectivity business, did roughly USD 11.4 billion in revenue with about USD 4.4 billion of operating profit. That is the cash engine. The launch business did around USD 4 billion while pouring nearly USD 3 billion into Starship development. And the newly folded-in xAI unit ran an operating loss of more than USD 6 billion as it built out data centres and GPUs.
What the valuation is really pricing
At USD 1.75 trillion, you are not paying for 2025's numbers. You are paying for three narratives stacked on top of each other: Starlink as a global connectivity near-monopoly, Starship as the platform that collapses the cost of getting to orbit, and xAI as a credible frontier AI bet. Each is plausible. None is proven at the scale the price implies. It is worth noting that Morningstar pegged fair value at less than half the IPO target, which tells you how wide the range of reasonable opinions is.
How I would think about the open
With only about a 4 percent float and 3.5 times oversubscription, the setup is built for a volatile first print. Thin supply plus enormous demand can produce a sharp pop, and the same thinness can produce an equally sharp reversal once the initial allocation frenzy clears and price discovery does its work. MSCI is also planning early index inclusion, which adds a layer of forced passive buying in the days after listing.
My own approach to a debut like this is simple. I do not chase the first green candle, because a thin float can gap to a price that has nothing to do with fundamentals. I would rather watch how it behaves after the opening cross settles, see where real two-way trading establishes a range, and decide from there. Owning a slice of Starlink and rockets is genuinely new and genuinely exciting. Paying any price for that excitement on day one is how exciting stories turn into expensive lessons. Does it pop, or does it retrace to its IPO price? Today we find out.
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