By Isaac Jonas | Economist, Streetwise Economics | April 2026
When a company files to list on the public markets at a valuation of $1.75 trillion, the natural first reaction is scepticism. That number is extraordinary. It is larger than the entire GDP of Australia. It is more than the market capitalisation of most of the world’s biggest banks combined. And it is being asked for a company that, until recently, most ordinary investors could not buy a single share of.
That company is SpaceX. And after running it through my full economist’s framework — revenue analysis, valuation multiples, scenario modelling, and historical precedent — my personal conclusion is that if the conditions are right, I would consider a small allocation. Here is my reasoning.
What SpaceX Actually Is
The first mistake most people make when discussing SpaceX is treating it as a rocket company. It is not. Or rather, it is no longer primarily that.
SpaceX today operates five distinct business lines. The launch services division — Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy — commands an 82% share of global commercial launches and charges approximately $62 million per mission, having reduced the industry standard from $400 million through reusable rocket technology. That business alone would be remarkable. But it is now the second-largest revenue contributor.
The dominant engine of SpaceX’s finances is Starlink, the satellite internet constellation that has grown from zero users in 2020 to more than nine million active subscribers across 125 countries by the end of 2025. Starlink generated approximately $10 billion in revenue in 2025 — representing roughly 64% of SpaceX’s total revenue of $15.5 billion for the year. That trajectory — from a capital-intensive project to a cash-generating platform in under five years — is one of the most remarkable financial transformations in corporate history.
The remaining revenue streams include Starshield, a military-grade encrypted version of Starlink serving the US Department of Defense, which already generates over $2 billion annually and is growing rapidly. Starship, the fully reusable next-generation rocket, remains in development but represents the company’s most transformative long-term asset. And in February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI — Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture — in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $250 billion, adding a large language model platform and substantial compute infrastructure to its portfolio. Total projected revenue for 2026 sits in the range of $22 to $24 billion.
The Valuation Question
Now comes the hard part.
At a targeted valuation of $1.75 trillion on 2025 revenues of $15.5 billion, SpaceX is asking investors to pay a price-to-revenue multiple of approximately 113 times. Even on 2026’s projected revenues of $24 billion, the multiple remains above 70 times. For context, Nvidia — the defining company of the artificial intelligence era — trades at approximately 30 times revenue. Amazon’s cloud division, AWS, trades at roughly 15 times. These are not modest benchmarks.
The bear case is real and I will not pretend otherwise. The xAI acquisition brings approximately $1 billion in monthly costs from compute infrastructure. Starship has not yet demonstrated operational scale. And Elon Musk, who owns 42% of the company, divides his attention across Tesla, X, DOGE, Neuralink, and various other ventures. Concentration of talent and leadership in a single individual is a genuine risk that no financial model fully captures.
What History Teaches Us
Here is where I want to introduce some intellectual honesty about what expensive has historically meant for the greatest technology companies of our era.
Amazon went public in May 1997 at a valuation of $438 million. The company was an online bookstore losing money, asking investors to bet on an entirely unproven model for commerce. An investment of $1,000 at that IPO is worth more than $2 million today — a return of over 180,000%. Google listed in August 2004 at a valuation of $23 billion. A $1,000 investment at that IPO has grown to over $65,000.
In both cases, the market was being asked to price companies based not on what they were, but on what they could become. And in both cases, the market significantly underestimated the answer.
SpaceX’s bull case follows the same logic. Starlink’s 9 million subscribers represent a fraction of its total addressable market. Direct-to-cell connectivity — enabling internet access directly to standard smartphones without any additional hardware — is launching through partnerships with carriers including T-Mobile and Rogers, opening a potential subscriber universe counted in billions rather than millions. Industry analysts have modelled Starlink’s standalone value at $500 billion or more.
My Three-Scenario Framework
Running a simplified scenario model to 2030, three paths emerge. In a bear scenario — where Starship is delayed, xAI costs continue to mount, and the market de-rates the revenue multiple to 25 times — the implied 2030 value is approximately $1.3 trillion, representing a loss of 26% from the IPO price.
In a base scenario — where Starlink reaches 30 million subscribers, Starship becomes operational, and the multiple holds at 40 times — the implied value is approximately $3.3 trillion, a gain of 89%. In a bull scenario — where direct-to-cell connectivity unlocks mass-market revenue, xAI becomes a genuine AI infrastructure platform, and Starship transforms launch economics — the implied value reaches $9 trillion.
The asymmetry in that range tells a story. The bear case is painful but survivable for a long-term investor. The bull case is generational. That is the nature of a bet on SpaceX: you are not buying a predictable business with stable cashflows. You are buying a thesis about whether one company can simultaneously dominate three massive markets.
My Personal Conditions
Based on this analysis, I would consider a small allocation at IPO — no more than 5 to 10% of what I would normally deploy in a single position — subject to specific conditions. The final IPO price must not exceed $2 trillion. Starship should show credible development progress before listing closes. And xAI’s monthly burn rate should remain below $1.5 billion.
I would treat this as a minimum 10-year hold. I would not use leverage or borrowed money. And if the first-day price surges significantly above the IPO price, I would wait. Some of the greatest returns in market history have come not from buying at IPO, but from buying during the post-lock-up selloff that typically follows 90 to 180 days later, when early investors and employees are first permitted to sell.
The Closing Argument
SpaceX is one of the most consequential companies ever created. It has reduced the cost of accessing space by 90%. It has built the largest satellite network in human history. It has created a cash-generating internet business from scratch in under five years. And it is attempting, simultaneously, to develop a fully reusable heavy-lift rocket, an artificial intelligence platform, and a direct-to-cell global telecommunications network.
That is not a company you dismiss because the valuation is high. But it is also not a company you buy without understanding exactly what you are paying, and exactly what has to go right to justify that payment.
My argument is not that SpaceX is cheap. It is that it may be one of the rare companies in history where the scale of the ambition eventually justifies even an expensive entry price — provided you have the patience, the financial resilience, and the clear eyes to hold through the inevitable volatility ahead.
Isaac Jonas is an economist and founder of Streetwise Economics. He holds dual Master’s degrees from the University of British Columbia. His weekly market analysis is published in The Standard Zimbabwe and available at www.streetwiseeconomics.com and on the Streetwise Economics YouTube channel. This article does not constitute financial advice.
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