According to Fortune, internal SpaceX communications confirm the company is preparing for a potential initial public offering in 2026. The per-share price in its latest secondary offering is $421, nearly double the price from July, which pegs the company’s current valuation at a staggering $800 billion. This valuation vaults past OpenAI to make SpaceX the world’s most valuable private company again. The IPO, which could seek to raise over $30 billion, is aimed at funding an “insane flight rate” for its Starship rocket, building AI data centers in space, and establishing a base on the moon. CFO Bret Johnsen noted the timing and valuation are uncertain and the company may still decide not to proceed.
Valuation on a Rocket Trajectory
Let’s just sit with that number for a second: $800 billion. That’s for a company that, while dominant, is still privately held and whose most ambitious and valuable projects are still on the drawing board. The jump from $400 billion to $800 billion in less than a year is, frankly, insane. It tells you that the investor appetite for Musk’s vision isn’t just strong—it’s feverish. They’re not just buying into the Falcon 9 and Starlink of today, which are phenomenal businesses. They’re buying a ticket for Starship, lunar landings, and the wild idea of AI data centers floating in orbit. The bet is that SpaceX can execute on all of it, and that the total addressable market isn’t just telecom or launch—it’s the entire space economy.
The IPO Hinges on Starship
Here’s the thing: this whole plan lives or dies with Starship. The memo said it directly—they need the IPO cash to fund an “insane flight rate” for it. Why? Because Starship isn’t just a bigger rocket. It’s the fundamental platform for everything else. You can’t build a cost-effective moon base without the massive payload capacity of Starship. You certainly can’t economically launch the thousands of satellites needed for space-based AI data centers without it. So the 2026 timeline isn’t arbitrary. It likely assumes that by then, Starship will have transitioned from a fiery, experimental prototype to a reliable, frequently-flying workhorse. That’s a huge technical and operational leap to make in two years. Basically, the IPO is a bet on Starship’s success, and that success is far from guaranteed.
A Trillion-Dollar Question Mark
And then there’s the target for the IPO itself: a $1.5 trillion valuation. That would put it in the realm of Saudi Aramco and the world’s absolute corporate giants. To justify that, SpaceX would need to show a path to revenue that matches that astronomical figure. Starlink is a cash cow, but is it a *trillion-dollar* cash cow? Probably not on its own. The lunar base and orbital data centers are pure speculation as revenue generators. So what fills the gap? The real value might be in something harder to quantify: total vertical integration and cost reduction. If SpaceX owns the cheapest, most reliable heavy-lift system in history (Starship), it doesn’t just sell launches—it enables entire new industries, from space manufacturing to orbital tourism, and takes a piece of all of it. It’s a meta-play on the industrialization of space itself.
The Industrial Scale of Ambition
Look, what’s often overlooked is the sheer manufacturing and industrial challenge here. Building a moon base or orbital platforms isn’t a software problem. It’s a brutal hardware and systems integration problem, requiring incredibly rugged and reliable computing and control systems that can operate in the vacuum and radiation of space. This is the kind of extreme industrial computing where companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, operate—just on a planetary scale. SpaceX’s success hinges on mastering not just rocket science, but large-scale, precision hardware production. Can they pull it off? The market, at $800 billion, is saying “maybe.” But 2026 will be the moment they have to prove it, and the difference between a $1.5 trillion debut and a spectacular flameout will come down to nuts, bolts, and flawless execution.
