Five Implications of a SpaceX IPO
- Caleb Henry
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
December 18, 2025 - Written by Caleb Henry
For the first half of the 2020s, SpaceX remained the most interesting IPO candidate in the world, and one that looked like it might not ever happen. Founder Elon Musk has not enjoyed running Tesla as a public company, and the short attention span of Wall Street posed a clear risk to Musk’s long-held, capital-intensive goal of colonizing Mars. Press reports now indicate SpaceX could raise $25 billion at a $1 trillion valuation by going public. To the surprise of many, Musk confirmed reporter Eric Berger’s thesis that SpaceX would IPO soon in order to finance orbital AI data center infrastructure of its own.
A successful IPO would trigger another major evolution for SpaceX, which morphed from a pure-play launch company to a vertically integrated satellite constellation operator over the past decade, and is now poised to reinvent itself as an orbital AI company. We won’t know a formal timeline until SpaceX files a Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but in the meantime, here are five expectations from a SpaceX IPO, should one occur in 2026 or 2027.
1. The world will finally get more than a peek at SpaceX’s finances. Launch providers and satellite operators not named SpaceX have long sought to rationalize SpaceX’s dominance. They frequently describe Musk’s company as an “irrational competitor” – one that does business in a way meant to crush competition more so than to make a profit. SpaceX’s launch costs have long been the lowest in the world. The same goes for Starlink’s LEO broadband services. Competitors have argued SpaceX’s pricing tactics are a) not sustainable, b) government subsidized, and/or c) enabled by SpaceX’s super high flight rate. While third-party financial models from Quilty Space and others have shown how SpaceX can make its business case close, an IPO will give concrete numbers showing how the business truly works.
2. Orbital data centers will become the next hot topic. Even pre-IPO, this is already happening. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt implied his purchase of launch startup Relativity Space was inspired by the need for off-world compute. Jeff Bezos has had a team at Blue Origin covertly working on orbital data centers for the past year. Planet Labs and Google are launching two satellites with AI chipsets in 2027 under “Project Suncatcher” to examine the potential for a constellation of AI data centers. Musk’s IPO motive confirmation on Dec. 10 poured gasoline on the fire.
3. Copycats will follow, or try to. SpaceX’s success with launch inspired well over 100 new rockets, only 10 of which have successfully reached orbit in the past five years. Starlink impressed the world, but the capital requirements of broadband megaconstellations ($5-20B) and a limited addressable market (in the tens of billions) dissuaded new entrants. Orbital data centers are a bit different. This is a larger market trend that is expanding into space. Per McKinsey, AI data center demand will grow on average by 33% from 2023-2030, and even at the end of the decade, there will still be a shortfall of 15 gigawatts in the U.S. AI spending dwarfs satellite broadband spending – an estimated $1.5 trillion in 2025, per Gartner, rising past $2 trillion in 2026. That market size, coupled with societal and environmental concerns about terrestrial data centers, has made a move to space look increasingly appealing. A SpaceX IPO with the same motivation will supercharge interest in orbital data centers, with private markets and sovereign governments cultivating new players.
4. SpaceX will rake in funding for other mega initiatives. AI data centers aren’t the first, nor are they the only expensive undertaking by SpaceX, so why do the IPO now? If press reports are right, SpaceX stands to raise, in a single event, more than twice what investors have plunged into the company over its 23-year history (approximately $12 billion, per Crunchbase). With SpaceX spending $17 billion on EchoStar spectrum for direct-to-device services, billions more on the hardware-rich (read: expensive) Starship launch vehicle, and adding orbital compute to Starlink, the company has a lot of bills to pay. Musk is positioning SpaceX at the nexus of two white-hot industries for investors: space and AI. By leveraging this market position, and heading the finance wisdom of raising money when you can versus when you need it, SpaceX can cultivate a pay day like no other.
5. The SpaceX IPO will impact the rest of the space industry. How exactly is unclear, but there will certainly be a reaction. Quilty Space expects companies that stand to benefit from SpaceX’s success (think K2 Space, space station startups, and others designing for a Starship-enabled world) to get buoyed. Stocks that compete with SpaceX, particularly satellite communications operators, may struggle. SpaceX is unique among the world’s space companies as the only satellite operator with vertically integrated launch, manufacturing, ground segment and operations. Its valuation won’t be a fair comparison to other space companies, but they will be compared regardless. How that plays out will only become clear with time.