SpaceX's $1.75 Trillion IPO Valuation Divides Wall Street as Mid-June Listing Approaches

Elon Musk wants to take SpaceX public at roughly $1.75 trillion -- about 100 times revenue. Apple trades at 11x, Nvidia at 25x. As the mid-June IPO approaches, Wall Street is split between believers and skeptics.

SpaceX is targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion for its IPO, expected in mid-June 2026, with Goldman Sachs (GS) as lead underwriter. The company generated $18.5 billion in revenue in 2025, making the proposed valuation roughly 100 times annual sales -- an extraordinary multiple by any traditional financial measure. Investors are sharply divided.

100x Revenue: 9x Apple, 4x Nvidia

The valuation multiple SpaceX is requesting has few precedents. Apple, one of the most valuable companies on Earth, trades at roughly 11 times annual revenue. Nvidia, the central stock of the AI revolution, trades at about 25 times. SpaceX is asking investors to accept 100 times -- well above either.

SpaceX's business spans rocket launches (Falcon 9, Starship), satellite internet service Starlink, and -- since February 2026 -- xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company and the owner of social network X. Starlink currently generates the bulk of SpaceX's revenue and profit.

Bull Case: Gatekeeper to Space

SpaceX controls the rails and controls access to orbit. We are only at the beginning of a decades-long space infrastructure boom worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Capital (existing SpaceX shareholder)

Supporters frame SpaceX not as a rocket company but as the infrastructure monopoly for space access, from replacing aging satellites to building data centers in orbit. Jay Ritter, an IPO expert at the University of Florida, highlights Starlink's potential: "If they can be the low-cost provider of internet access to lots of people around the world, that can be an enormous source of revenue and profits."

Musk has made his ambitions explicit. "I need to make sure SpaceX stays focused on making life multiplanetary and extending consciousness to the stars," he wrote on X in March. "If SpaceX succeeds in this absurdly difficult goal, it will be worth many orders of magnitude more than the economy of Earth."

Bear Case: The Laws of Financial Physics

Is this an amazing company or is it ridiculously overvalued? The answer is yes.

Scott Galloway, Marketing Professor, NYU Stern

Skeptics raise several foundational concerns: profit margins in rocket launches are thin, Starlink's prices may be too high for mass-market adoption, and orbital data centers remain an unproven concept. The xAI merger added AI startup valuation -- but also AI startup risk, including high valuations on minimal revenue.

Analyst Geoff Robinson criticized the deal bluntly: "If I read one more 'expert' take on the SpaceX IPO that ignores the laws of financial physics, I'm going to need an actual rocket to escape the nonsense." Ritter echoes the concern: "Lots of things have to go right in order for revenue and profits to grow to justify that valuation. And most of the time, something doesn't work out according to plan."

• SpaceX 2025 revenue: $18.5 billion
• Target IPO valuation: ~$1.75 trillion (~100x revenue)
• Comparison: Apple ~11x, Nvidia ~25x revenue
• IPO timing: mid-June 2026, Goldman Sachs lead underwriter
• xAI (+ X/Twitter) merged into SpaceX in February 2026

Buying the Dream

Kim Forrest, CIO of Bokeh Capital Partners, argues traditional financial math may not fully apply. "What people are really buying is the hope and dream of commercial space, which is more than a dream. It's a reality."

But Ritter's caution stands. "Something doesn't work out according to plan -- and that's where I've gotten concerned about SpaceX." This will likely be one of the largest IPOs in history. Investors will have to decide for themselves what the dream is worth.