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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is slated to go public this week at a market cap of $1.75 trillion, which would make it one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies in the world overnight.
But justifying that astronomical figure appears virtually impossible: in fact, as Fortune reports, it would require the company to grow and profit more spectacularly than any other venture in the history of capitalism.
For one, as detailed in its S1-filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX lost a staggering $4.9 billion last year, while only raking in $18.7 billion. According to Wall Street veteran and corporate financial expert David Trainer, SpaceX would need to hit a revenue target of $1.1 trillion — almost 60 times what it made in 2025 — to become a worthy buy with an actual return for investors.
That would be higher than the highest annual revenues posted by any company ever, a record that was set by Amazon, which raked in $742 billion across the last four quarters.
According to Fortune‘s estimates, SpaceX would have to increase sales by a whopping 50 percent every year for a decade, something no company has even come close to achieving. By 2035, the company would be the same size as an entire industry made up of dozens of Fortune 500 members, according to the publication, over 50 percent bigger than the utilities sector or entertainment industry.
In short, SpaceX would need to do a whole lot more than just enormously accelerate the growth of its number one revenue maker, Starlink. Worse yet, Musk’s AI startup xAI and struggling social media network X were both recently folded into the rocket company, weighing it down even further by saddling it with billions in additional debt, nevermind ongoing expenditures and drama.
Nobody knows how its NASDAQ debut will play out later this week. It’s still entirely possible investors may balk at Musk’s moonshot proposition, resulting in the company collapsing under its own weight, with many choosing to bet on its eventual demise instead by shorting the stock.
But if Musk’s existing relationship with retail investors is anything to go by, there could be plenty of goodwill left to prop up his enormous bet on orbital AI data centers — at least for now.
Besides, amidst the ongoing AI hype cycle and growing oil crisis, the stock market has long abandoned any pretense of being tied to business fundamentals, turning into a haven for those willing to speculate on a distant and far-fetched future.
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