SpaceX at $1.77 Trillion: What a Disciplined Valuation Says About the Biggest IPO in History
10 June 2026
Author: Omar Badr
Author: Omar Badr
A two-method valuation built on the Valutico platform, dated before the roadshow, puts SpaceX’s equity at roughly $790 billion. The market wants $1.77 trillion. Here is the gap – and what’s inside it. Download the valuation report in full.
On 12 June 2026, Space Exploration Technologies will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX at a fixed price of $135 per share. At roughly 13 billion shares, that prices the company at about $1.77 trillion and raises close to $75 billion (up to ~$86bn if underwriters exercise their option on a further 83 million shares). It is, by a wide margin, the largest IPO in history, and it would make SpaceX the seventh most valuable listed company in the United States, ahead of Tesla.
A day before the roadshow priced, Valutico ran SpaceX through its valuation engine: a 50/50 blend of a discounted cash flow (entity DCF) and a venture-capital exit method, valuation date 8 June 2026, all figures in USD billions. The blended, control-basis equity value came out at $785 billion, with a range of $768bn to $802bn across the two methods.
The market is therefore asking investors to pay roughly 2.3 times what a disciplined intrinsic valuation supports. The interesting part isn’t that a gap exists – fast-growing, scarce assets always trade rich. It’s what you have to believe to close it.
Access the full SpaceX valuation report
Step 1: Set up the company
We created a new SpaceX valuation project in Valutico, setting the valuation date, currency, and basis of value.
Step 2: Add market data
We used Valutico’s data section to select relevant aerospace, defence, satellite, and space-tech peers, then reviewed the market inputs used for beta, risk-free rate, market risk premium, and WACC.
Step 3: Build the forecast
In the forecast section, we entered the roadshow revenue and adjusted-EBITDA projections, then modelled the expected cash-flow profile through 2030.
Step 4: Run the valuation methods
We applied two valuation methods in Valutico: an entity DCF and a venture-capital exit method. Each method was tested across key sensitivities.
Step 5: Compare the outputs
Valutico produced a valuation range across both methods, which we blended equally to arrive at an equity value of roughly $785bn.
Step 6: Build the report
Finally, we used Valutico’s report builder to turn the valuation into a clear output, including assumptions, method summaries, sensitivity ranges, and the comparison to the $1.77tn IPO price.
Access the full SpaceX valuation report
SpaceX has never raised meaningful primary capital at these levels. Its valuation has been reset, twice a year, through insider tender offers – each one cashing out a sliver of stock (well under 0.5% of the company) while re-marking the rest higher.
| Date | Implied valuation | Mechanism |
| Jun 2024 | ~$210bn | Tender offer, ~$112/share |
| Dec 2024 | ~$350bn | Tender offer, $185/share |
| Jul 2025 | ~$400bn | Tender offer, ~$212/share |
| Dec 2025 | ~$800bn | Secondary sale, ~$420/share |
| Feb 2026 | ~$1.25tn | SpaceX–xAI merger (combined entity) |
| Jun 2026 | ~$1.77tn | IPO at $135/share |
Two things stand out. First, the December 2025 round roughly doubled the company’s value off the back of IPO speculation. Second – and this matters for any valuation comparison – the February 2026 merger with xAI folded Elon Musk’s AI venture (which itself absorbed X, formerly Twitter) into the listing entity. The $1.77tn price tag is therefore not a pure rocket-and-broadband business. It bundles a cash-burning AI unit that recorded AI segment capex of over $7bn in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
Strip back the headline and SpaceX’s fundamentals are genuinely strong, but a long way from $1.77tn on any conventional metric:
At $1.77tn, the company trades at roughly 95 times trailing sales. Bloomberg’s analysis pegs it at over 100x at a $2tn cap – extreme against the S&P 500 average, though not unheard of among pure-play satellite names.
The Valutico valuation weights two independent methods equally. Neither ascribes a separate, stand-alone value to the xAI business; both value the launch-plus-Starlink franchise on its own projected economics.
| Method (50% weight each) | Key assumptions | Central equity value | Range |
| Entity DCF (simplified WACC) | ~9.5% WACC (range 9.0–10.0%); 1–3% perpetual growth | ~$802bn | $682–982bn |
| Venture Capital (EV/EBITDA exit) | 5-yr exit at 14.0x EBITDA (range 13–15x); 30% target IRR (range 20–40%) | ~$768bn | $487–1,238bn |
| Blended (control basis) | – | ~$785bn | $768–802bn |
The model does not impose its own revenue forecast. Instead it draws on the underwriters’ own roadshow projections as top-line inputs: Goldman Sachs total company revenue projections for 2026 (~$36bn) and 2027 (~$60bn), derived from roadshow materials, then Morgan Stanley’s trajectory for 2028 through 2030, scaling to $330bn by the end of the decade. These are not sceptics’ numbers – Morgan Stanley is a co-underwriter selling the deal, and Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter, projects the more aggressive $474bn by 2030. Taking the more cautious of the two at face value and running it through honest discounting still only gets you to ~$802bn with the DCF and ~$768bn with the venture capital method.
Why the VC method stays modest. Take 2030 EBITDA of ~$230bn (Morgan Stanley’s projection), apply a 14x exit multiple, and the implied exit enterprise value reaches ~$3.2 trillion. That compounding-in-reverse is the mechanism: a $3.2tn exit enterprise value, less $362bn of assumed net debt at exit, yields an equity exit value of approximately $2.86tn — which, discounted at the 30% IRR a rational pre-IPO investor would demand (the average IRR for pre-IPO investments as documented by Damodaran, 2009), is worth just under $768bn today.
Why the DCF lands higher. The great majority of enterprise value – on the order of 80% – sits in the terminal value , which makes the number highly sensitive to the perpetual-growth and discount-rate assumptions. The discount rate is systematically derived: a levered beta of 0.98 (derived from the median unlevered beta across eight aerospace and satellite peers:Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Boeing, Iridium, Rocket Lab, AST SpaceMobile, and Intuitive Machines), a market risk premium of 4.58% and risk-free rate of 4.57%, plus a company-specific premium of 1.73% generated by Valutico’s qualitative risk-scoring framework. The resulting WACC is ~9.5%. Nothing in that stack flatters the number.
Here is the single most useful number the model produces. Within the venture method’s sensitivity grid, holding the 14x exit multiple fixed:
So to defend a $1.77tn entry price on these already-bullish 2030 projections, an investor has to accept an expected return around 10% – roughly a third of what a venture investor would demand, and not far above the cost of capital itself. The DCF does not come close: even at the more optimistic end of the WACC sensitivity (8.5–10.5%), with terminal growth pushed to 4%, the DCF reaches only $867bn–$1,281bn, with the lower end of that range still less than half the IPO price.
In other words, the public market isn’t pricing SpaceX like a venture bet with venture upside. It’s pricing it like a near-certainty.
What fills the difference between ~$785bn and ~$1.77tn:
The conservative read is not a fringe position. Morningstar has called the stock “significantly overvalued” at the offer price. Fortune’s analysis concluded SpaceX would need to grow at a rate no company has ever sustained to make $1.77tn a good deal. And the historical base rate is sobering: research by IPO scholar Jay Ritter found that 2012–21 listings averaged a ~24% first-day pop but only a ~10.6% average return over three years. First-day enthusiasm and long-run outcomes are rarely the same thing.
None of this says the IPO will fail – scarce, category-defining assets routinely trade above intrinsic value for years, and Starlink’s profit engine is real and compounding. But it reframes the decision. A disciplined, two-method valuation – using growth assumptions drawn directly from the underwriters’ own roadshow projections – values SpaceX’s equity at around $785bn, with the venture capital method’s most bullish single corner (10% IRR, 16x EBITDA) reaching ~$2.06tn – but only if an investor accepts a return expectation more consistent with a blue-chip bond than a venture bet.
The $1.77tn figure is achievable only if you discount SpaceX at something close to a blue-chip cost of capital and credit the AI franchise in full. That may prove right. But it is a bet on certainty and AI optionality, dressed as a bet on rockets – and the gap between price and intrinsic value is the premium investors are paying for both.
This analysis was prepared by Valutico as an illustrative exercise dated 8 June 2026. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Valuation figures are in USD billions unless stated. Revenue projections used in the model are sourced from Goldman Sachs roadshow materials (2026–2027) and Morgan Stanley roadshow materials (2028–2030). All other market and financial data are drawn from public reporting around the SpaceX IPO as of 9 June 2026.
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