SpaceX Set for Record IPO as US Tech Stocks Slide Ahead of Listing

SpaceX's operating profit reached $7.2 billion in 2025 on revenue of $18 billion, but the company also posted a net loss of $4.9 billion, largely tied to the high cost of developing the Starship rocket. The Starlink satellite internet business accounts for around 60 percent of revenue and is the only segment currently profitable, providing a stable financial backbone while the company pursues more ambitious projects.

Starlink Carries the Earnings

Those ambitions now stretch well beyond rockets. The company has already folded its artificial-intelligence unit xAI — which includes the Grok chatbot and the online network X, formerly known as Twitter — into the SpaceX corporate structure. Proceeds from the listing are earmarked for a sprawling agenda: orbital data centers for inexpensive AI computing, the colonization of the Moon and Mars, and a global mobile network built on Starlink satellites, with first robotic landings planned for the beginning of next year.

A Bruising Day for Tech

Thursday's market backdrop was anything but celebratory. Major US technology stocks fell sharply, and analysts at Jefferies, speaking through Jane Gibbons, identified the so-called Magnificent Seven — Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla — as a likely source of liquidity that institutional investors could tap to fund SpaceX positions. Nvidia currently heads the trillion-dollar club with a market capitalization of roughly $5 trillion, providing a deep pool of perceived safe-haven assets within the sector.

Index Funds and the 'Lex SpaceX'

The mechanics of the listing have also drawn attention. Index providers such as MSCI plan to include SpaceX in their benchmarks only a few days after trading begins, and some providers have already eased minimum free-float requirements and shortened waiting periods in a process analysts are calling a 'Lex SpaceX.' The acceleration matters because, as Audun Wickstrand Iversen of DNB Asset Management warned, 'Dann kaufen Indexfonds automatisch - ohne Rücksicht auf Bewertungsmodelle oder Wachstumsstory.'

That mechanical buying raises valuation concerns. Morningstar currently considers an appropriate valuation for SpaceX to be around $780 billion, a fraction of the IPO price, and has called the shares 'significantly overvalued.' The pricing therefore implies that index-driven flows could sustain a valuation roughly twice what fundamental analysis suggests, with pension funds and passive vehicles becoming major players whose portfolio reallocations could ripple through other sectors and markets.

Retail Access in Europe

Retail access is unusual in scale for a deal of this size. Media reports indicate Musk wants to reserve a much larger share of the offering for private investors than is typical, and German retail investors can apply for shares through online brokers including Flatex and Trade Republic before the listing begins. The structure reflects a deliberate effort to broaden ownership beyond the usual roster of Wall Street institutions.

Musk's Trillion-Dollar Threshold

If the IPO proceeds as planned, the listing would push Musk into uncharted personal territory. Holding 85.1 percent of voting rights through two share classes but only 42 percent of the equity, he intends to serve simultaneously as CEO, Chief Technology Officer, and Chairman of the Board. A successful debut would make him, by most estimates, the world's first trillionaire while preserving full operational control of the company he founded in 2002.

Skeptics argue the valuation is as much about mythology as metrics. Tristan Abet, a thematic investment specialist at Kepler Cheuvreux, framed the question in almost spiritual terms: 'Wir haben es hier nicht mit einem gewöhnlichen Vorstandsvorsitzenden zu tun, sondern mit einem Guru, einer Art Krishna des Sternenkultes.' He added that the price tag reflects 'Leidenschaft, Faszination und den Traum, den alle Kinder gehabt hätten, als sie zum ersten Mal in die Sterne blickten,' a sentiment analysts say is difficult to model in a discounted-cash-flow spreadsheet.

Valuation Debate: Dream vs. Discipline

Bulls counter that the same emotional premium has, in part, already been earned. Alicia Daurignac, a fund manager at French asset manager La Financière de l'Echiquier, argued that 'The SpaceX IPO marks a turning point for the space economy.' The broader thesis, echoed across several research notes, is that the listing could redefine the space sector as a legitimate infrastructure category alongside energy and telecommunications rather than a speculative theme.

SpaceX's strategic position underlines that argument. The company was responsible for more than half of all global rocket launches over the past year and plays a key role in the US space program. Its Starlink network, with more than 10,000 satellites already in orbit, supports broadband internet, mobile telephony, and military communications, and the company has begun acquiring mobile frequencies in the United States to integrate satellite and terrestrial networks. Those assets give the listing a rare combination of consumer brand, government contractor, and infrastructure operator.

Even so, the path from Thursday's sell-off to Friday's debut is unusually narrow. The Nasdaq session will be the first true test of whether the appetite that drove demand during the subscription period can hold once passive flows, retail trading, and headline risk all converge. With allocations still dependent on subscription volume and index inclusion just days away, the trading debut is likely to set the tone for technology stocks well beyond the space sector itself.