Elon Musk’s SpaceX has emerged as the dominant force in commercial space launch services, satellite internet, and reusable rocket technology. As a privately held company, financial gains from that dominance have been limited to a small circle of institutional investors, but that’s finally about to change.
In 2026, SpaceX plans to make an initial public offering that would reportedly seek to raise more than $30 billion—potentially the largest IPO in history. The company has not yet filed publicly or disclosed when the offering could take place, but the anticipation has everyone asking the same question: Should I invest?
For this Giz Asks, we asked experts to weigh in on the potential risks and rewards of investing in SpaceX. While each of them acknowledged SpaceX’s technological lead, they also warned that valuation, timing, and execution risk could undermine returns for public investors.
Daniel Maguire
Associate Chartered Accountant (ACA) and research analyst primarily supporting autonomous technology and robotics strategy at ARK Invest.
A lot of companies talk about going public, we’ve seen the IPO craze. But what makes SpaceX different is the lack of competition.
What I mean by that is SpaceX landed a booster 10 years ago and has executed almost perfectly on reusability since. The closest competitor—Blue Origin—just landed a booster a couple of months ago. So while other companies are starting to figure out partial reusability, SpaceX is full steam ahead with full reusability in its Starship program.
We think SpaceX is probably one of the most compelling private companies globally, not just in terms of launch capabilities, but also in terms of Starlink internet connectivity. They offer direct-to-cell, which provides mobile coverage in dead zones around the globe. More recently, SpaceX has shown interest in orbital data centers, which could meaningfully change the AI race.
Every investor has a different financial situation and risk tolerance. What I would strongly recommend everyone to do is educate themselves about SpaceX. Last year, ARK Invest collaborated with a company called Mach33 to put out an open-source SpaceX valuation model for that very purpose. However, our model does not include anything on orbital data centers, and that’s a potential additional upside to what’s out there.
SpaceX’s core strengths are its 10-year advantage on the launch side and its multi-dimensional innovation platform. We think SpaceX is really a generational company that could produce foundational infrastructure for both global connectivity and AI compute over the next decade.
Jay Ritter
Director of the IPO Initiative and professor emeritus of the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. Ritter is known as “Mr. IPO” for his work on initial public offerings, which he studies in addition to asset pricing, valuation, investment banking, and capital structure.
The vast majority of shares in IPOs are typically sold to institutional investors, with the exception of small offerings known as “penny stock” IPOs that have an offer price of less than $5 per share. SpaceX will not be a small offering. Indeed, it may be the largest in history, possibly raising $30 billion with a valuation on the company as a whole of $800 billion. A small fraction of the shares will likely be made available for individuals to purchase.
In June 2025, Elon Musk estimated that the company would have revenue of about $15.5 billion in 2025, according to Reuters. If the company does go public at a valuation of $800 billion with $15.5 billion in trailing annual revenue, it would have a price-to-sales ratio of 51.6. Historically, companies with at least $100 million in sales and a price-to-sales ratio greater than 40 have been disappointments for investors.
From 1980 to 2021, there have been only 13 companies going public in the U.S. with a price-to-sales ratio—valued at the offer price—of more than 40 with at least $100 million in inflation-adjusted annual sales. For these companies, the average stock price declined over the next three years, even while the market went up.
These IPOs have underperformed the market during their first three years by an average of 38% for investors who bought at the offer price, and by 62% for those who bought at the first closing market price.
The problem is that, to prevent the stock price from falling, the company has had to rapidly grow revenue and profits for a prolonged period of time, something that is hard to do. SpaceX might prove to be an exception, but the odds are against it.
It is likely that the stock will jump above the offer price on the first day of trading. Thus, buying shares at the offer price and then selling them quickly might generate some profits. But buying in the market is likely to lead to losing money. SpaceX might be a great company, but being a great company does not necessarily mean that the stock will be a good investment.
Kimberly Siversen Burke
Director of government affairs at Quilty Space, a financial research, investment banking, and strategic advisory firm focused on the space sector.
The SpaceX IPO question boils down to timing. An IPO before Starship is operational would dump technical risk and schedule uncertainty onto public investors. An IPO after Starship is flying would let SpaceX sell execution instead of aspiration. That distinction is key because Starlink’s next big growth spurt—V3 satellites and expanded direct-to-cell services—doesn’t math out until Starship is launching regularly.
Then there’s the long game. Elon’s plans for space-based data centers extend the growth horizon further, but they are commercially unproven, capital-intensive, and unlikely to generate revenue anytime soon. It’s also worth asking how much of that is about building a real business case versus reinforcing broader AI growth narratives that function as AI valuation scaffolding rather than predictable cash flow?
What I mean by that is that today’s AI valuations assume compute can scale indefinitely, but the limitations here on Earth (power availability, grid hookups, water, cooling, land, permitting, etc.) are already breaking that assumption. Space-based data centers sidestep the chokepoints by moving all that infrastructure off the planet, which is why the idea of it (for someone like Elon) functions as much as a valuation backstop for an AI-driven market as a potential business line.
Either way, they are layering in another massive engineering, technical, and economic challenge on top of Starship, HLS [Human Landing System, i.e. the upcoming lunar lander], etc. This could get lost in the investor’s blind spot, but it is important to consider because private capital tolerates long arcs and narrative elasticity far better than public markets, which price delivery. Musk understands that.
Any IPO would likely be timed up with SpaceX’s belief that it has crossed the Rubicon—from ambition to utility-scale infrastructure—and no longer needs a story to bridge the gap. The question is whether the markets agree.
Matthew Weinzierl
Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research at Harvard Business School. Weinzierl is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. The commercialization of the space sector and its economic implications are a focus of his research.
The reality is that each of us is already substantially invested in SpaceX. Space may seem like a niche industry, but it reaches into our lives in countless ways every day, from GPS to telecommunications, from crop and climate monitoring to weather forecasting, and from scientific research to national security.
SpaceX is the dominant company in space today. In just 20 years, it went from a fledgling startup to being by far the world’s leading rocket launch provider, operating more than half of all satellites in orbit, and serving as a linchpin of American national security.
Whether we own its stock directly or just benefit from the innovation and efficiency it has created, we should all hope that SpaceX (along with its competition) succeeds.
