SpaceX stock debut is the big market event of 2026. Why Musk’s venture could be biggest IPO ever
As billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk readies to take SpaceX to the public market, investors are awaiting the chance to get in on what is expected to be the biggest IPO on record. Musk said late last month that reports of the space technology company’s plans to go public this year were “accurate.” Multiple outlets reported that the IPO was in the works following a share sale valuing the firm at around $800 billion. SpaceX is reportedly looking at a value of around $1.5 trillion when it hits the public market. That would surpass the prior record set by the Saudi Aramco IPO in 2019. Wall Street heavy hitters have already begun throwing their weight behind SpaceX as private investors. Baron Capital’s Ron Baron said around a quarter of his personal investments are in the company. On top of that, SpaceX is one of the largest positions in the Baron Partners Fund. It’s also the biggest holding in the ARK’s Venture Fund run by Cathie Wood. SpaceX has shown leadership in the low-earth orbit, or LEO, market, according to Jefferies. SpaceX saw a quarterly record for LEO launches at 971 in the final three months of the year, an increase of more than 30% from the prior quarter and about 70% from a year ago, the bank found. The company launched more than 3,200 satellites in 2025, a new yearly record and increase of more than 60% from the prior year. Analyst Kevin Lin told clients that SpaceX’s launch volume is “accelerating,” while competitor Amazon Leo is “lagging” despite entering a stable launch phase. Amazon said in November that businesses could test out its rebranded Leo product as it aimed to make up ground against Musk’s Starlink. Lin said he expects the total number of launches from across companies to hit all-time highs in the near future. SpaceX’s outlook is bright for another reason: data centers . Technology moguls looking for ways to build out infrastructure to support the artificial intelligence boom are increasingly looking to firms like SpaceX that could put data centers in space, Lin said. Space data centers are expected to “drive” the total addressable market for the LEO sector, the analyst added. “In response to the surge in demand for AI computing power and the Earth’s energy bottleneck, the topic of space data centers has gained momentum,” Lin told clients. To be sure, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu said there are key problems that need to be worked out in order to effectively put data centers in space. However, Yu said he’s “encouraged” by seeing companies such as Google and OpenAI also looking at how to do this. “There are clearly technical challenges to making this a viable endeavor but these seem to be engineering constraints as opposed to physics,” Yu wrote to clients in a note last month. A bumper SpaceX IPO could further drive up the wealth for Musk. His controversial $1 trillion pay package from his electric vehicle company Tesla was approved by shareholders late last year. TSLA 1Y mountain Tesla, 1-year But the billionaire CEO has run into some roadblocks. Tesla on Friday reported weaker-than-expected deliveries for the fourth quarter and fell behind BYD as the top global EV seller for the first time. While Tesla shares finished 2025 up more than 11%, they underperformed the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite and broad S & P 500 for the year. It’s relatively muted growth compared with the surges of more than 60% and 100% seen by Tesla’s stock in the prior two years.
