I’ve watched plenty of hyped IPOs march to market with a great story and a shaky balance sheet. Few have arrived with as much noise as SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s company filed for an IPO confidentially this spring, and Wall Street is already treating it like the listing of the decade.
CNN joked that the prospectus reads like a beach-read thriller, and in a way, it does. Over more than 270 pages, it lays out the ambitions of a company that builds rockets, beams internet from space, and now runs AI data centers.
The hype is real. So are the warning signs. Here are five reasons the SpaceX IPO could land with a thud instead of a bang.
Inside the biggest IPO Wall Street has ever seen
SpaceX is no longer just a rocket company. After Musk merged his AI startup xAI into SpaceX earlier this year, the combined business was valued at roughly $1.25 trillion, according to CNBC.
The company now spans rockets, the Starlink satellite-internet service, the social network X, and a fast-growing AI unit.
That matters to everyday investors because this will likely be the largest public listing ever, and many will be tempted to buy in.
Before you do, it helps to know what you are actually paying for. SpaceX brought in $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, per its filing.
That sounds massive, until you see how much it spends to keep the lights on.
Where the SpaceX IPO math starts to wobble
Reports suggest SpaceX is aiming for a valuation near $1.77 trillion.
However, research firm Morningstar pegs the company closer to $780 billion, which is a discount of 50% to its IPO price.
Most of the lofty number rides on what SpaceX might become and not on what it earns today.
The company claims a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion, most of which (about 90%) is tied to the AI segment.
Related: Dan Ives spills the beans on SpaceX future
Strip out the dream, and you are left with rockets and Starlink.
The second problem is cash burn. SpaceX lost almost $5 billion in 2025, and the losses grew by another $4.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, CNN reported.
The bleeding traces largely to the AI division, which lost $6.4 billion last year while bringing in just $3.2 billion. You can check the full math in the company’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The third problem is trust.
Days before the roadshow, Musk posted on X that the company’s big AI deal with rival Anthropic was really a short-term lease that either side could cancel on 90 days’ notice, a detail the 300-plus-page prospectus never spelled out, CNBC reported.
The filing instead described Anthropic paying $1.25 billion a month through 2029. One of those versions is incomplete.
