Key facts
- SpaceX raised a record $75 billion in its IPO.
- The company's shares opened trading on Nasdaq at $150, above the IPO price of $135.
- SpaceX reported $18.67 billion in sales last year, with Starlink contributing 60%.
- The company posted a net loss of $4.94 billion last year due to AI and rocket development costs.
- SpaceX's launch cadence has increased significantly, outpacing rivals.
- xAI, a SpaceX subsidiary, has lower adoption rates compared to AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
SpaceX made its Nasdaq debut on Friday, capping the meteoric rise of a company that has reshaped the space business with reusable rockets and internet beamed from orbit. The Elon Musk-led company raised $75 billion on Thursday in the largest-ever IPO, with shares opening trading on Friday at $150, compared with the IPO price of $135 per share. SpaceX's $1.77 trillion valuation based on its IPO price instantly ranks it among the world's most valuable companies.
SpaceX's financials show a company whose aggressive spending on computing power for AI and developing a new rocket has overwhelmed the profits from its Starlink satellite internet service. Last year, SpaceX's sales rose 33% to $18.67 billion, with Starlink accounting for about 60% of the total thanks to its about 10.3 million users across 9,600 satellites. Merging with the money-losing xAI pushed the company to a net loss of $4.94 billion last year, from a profit of $791 million in 2024, when the explosive growth of Starlink and its reusable rocket launch business powered earnings.
SpaceX has gone from a single launch in 2006 to more than two every week, far outpacing rivals and making it the go-to launch partner for NASA and the Pentagon. Its reusable Falcon 9 has powered that surge, while the larger, still-in-development Starship is intended to carry crew and cargo on an unprecedented scale. SpaceX's biggest addressable market, it says, is AI. In February, SpaceX acquired xAI and united two key parts of Musk's business empire. But by many measures, xAI is behind rivals Anthropic and OpenAI. A recent report showed that more than 30% of its business customers were paying for Anthropic's and OpenAI's AI services in April, while xAI's adoption remained around 5%.
Investors in the SpaceX IPO are being asked to pay a premium that dwarfs the multiples at which some of the most valuable tech companies trade. At $135 per share, SpaceX would trade at a trailing price-to-sales multiple of roughly 94, above companies such as Nvidia, Amazon and Meta. The case for that premium rests partly on Starship, which is designed to be reusable and carry over 100 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, more than any other rocket flying today. This would be crucial not just to SpaceX's launch business but also to its ambitions to put AI data centers in orbit. The Starship's test flight in May marked a major milestone ahead of the IPO, successfully deploying mock satellites and completing a controlled Indian Ocean splashdown.