Forget Valuation. This Is the Big Question Ahead of a SpaceX IPO.

SpaceX’s GPS III Mission. Elon Musk’s rocket company is on track for a 2026 IPO. It will very likely be the biggest IPO of all time, raising an estimated $30 billion. (Courtesy SpaceX)

Key Points

• SpaceX is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering, with Bloomberg reporting a quiet period for employees.
• The potential IPO could seek to raise $30 billion, valuing SpaceX at $1.5 trillion, to fund AI data centers, Starship, and Starlink.
• Possible stock ticker symbols include MARS and X, with X potentially signaling a merger of Elon Musk’s tech companies.

SpaceX appears to be on track for one of the largest initial public offerings of stock in history.

Investors will be arguing about space, valuations, growth rates, competitive moats, Elon Musk, and just about everything else. All those topics are important, but what about the stock symbol?

Strangely, investors can bet on the stock “ticker” on Polymarket, a prediction market where people can bet on the outcome of real-world events.

Currently, there are a few leading contenders: SPAX, MARS, SEX, SX, X, and SPACE.

Five-letter tickers are unusual, so SPACE is probably out. Musk likes innuendo. The names of Tesla models spell out S3XY, or sexy. Still, MARS and X seem to be the best bets, according to Barron’s.

X is our favorite. The selection of X would be more than just a ticker symbol, though. It would fuel speculation that Musk, who likes the letter, could start to merge his far-flung tech empire into a mega-corporation.

That idea isn’t new. Tesla shareholders recently voted in favor of a non-binding proposal to have Tesla invest in Musk’s artificial-intelligence company xAI, which now owns the social media platform X. What’s more, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Barron’s he expects cross-investments from Musk’s companies into one another someday.

U.S. Steel had the X ticker before it was bought by Nippon Steel earlier this year. That freed up the letter.

It’s up to the exchanges to manage ticker symbols. And even with X available, Musk might still prefer to keep the letter for another idea. MARS would be the next best bet. SpaceX exists in part to make human life multiplanetary, and getting to Mars has always been a priority for Musk.

As for SX or SPAX, they just aren’t that catchy. And, for Barron’s, SPAX is too close to SPAC, short for special purpose acquisition company.

To be clear, we don’t recommend betting on the ticker symbol. Still, it’s fun to muse about.

As for the IPO, Musk all but confirmed the idea in a recent tweet. And Bloomberg reported Wednesday that SpaceX had informed employees of a quiet period ahead of an IPO. That’s to ensure people don’t discuss valuations and the business piecemeal, which could potentially disadvantage some investors. SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the report.

SpaceX might seek to raise $30 billion and value the company at $1.5 trillion. The money would be used partly to accelerate AI data centers in space. It could also accelerate the development of Starship, the largest rocket-launch system ever built by humanity, and Starlink, SpaceX’s space-based broadband service.

“If SpaceX does go public….this could become an instant new entrance into what you could call the Magnificent Eight,” says Andrew Chanin, CEO of ProcureAM, which offers the Procure Space exchange-traded fund (ticker: UFO). “This would potentially be the biggest IPO since [Saudi oil company] Aramco, if not the biggest ever.”

Given the available options, Chanin prefers the MARS ticker.

It’s going to be an exciting few months for the space industry, which SpaceX essentially invented by pioneering reusable rockets. (RR isn’t available as a stock symbol, by the way. That’s being used by Richtech Robotics .)

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com