How I Made $5000 in the Stock Market

What a SpaceX IPO Would Mean for Tesla Stock

Dec 09, 2025 16:46:00 -0500 by Al Root | #IPOs

SpaceX’s Starship rocket lifts off for a test flight from Texas in August. (Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty Images)

Key Points

Tesla investors got an early Christmas present: a reason to dream about what might be coming in the new year.

Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Elon Musk’s space technology company SpaceX might be headed for a 2026 initial public offering, raising up to $30 billion in the process. SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

SpaceX is privately held, but it is already the most valuable aerospace and defense company in the world, worth some $400 billion. SpaceX was reported to be seeking an $800 billion valuation this past week, but Musk seemed to downplay the possibility, saying in part that SpaceX is already cash-flow positive. It doesn’t have a pressing need to raise cash by selling stock.

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That was a disappointment to many investors who would like to own a piece of the company. The appeal is clear: It accounts for more than half of all global orbital launches and has a space-based broadband business, Starlink, with more than 8 million subscribers.

Musk, however, appeared to endorse the IPO in a Wednesday evening tweet. Along with being the biggest event for capital markets in 2026, a SpaceX IPO will also fuel speculation that Musk could somehow combine his far-flung tech empire under one roof. Tesla shareholders recently voted in favor of a shareholder proposal that would authorize a Tesla investment in Musk’s AI company xAI.

The vote was nonbinding, and there were a lot of shareholders who abstained from the vote.

Tesla investing in either xAI or a SpaceX IPO could be one step on the path to a larger X Corp.

“We would be shocked if Tesla does not take a stake in SpaceX as part of its process,” says Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. He rates Tesla stock at Buy and has a $600 price target for shares. Ives believes that Tesla’s AI efforts, which include robotaxis and robots, will lead to significant earnings growth down the road.

It is too early to say how things will turn out, and Musk’s plans could change. But investors can still dream.

The valuation suggested would be an incredible $1.5 trillion. There aren’t many numbers on Wall Street floating around to help justify that number. ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood has taken a shot at valuation, calling SpaceX worth $2.5 trillion by 2030. By then, ARK projects SpaceX sales could approach $200 billion with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, north of $150 billion. Almost all the expected revenue comes from Starlink and Starshield, SpaceX’s space-based communications systems.

Wood is known for bold valuation predictions. Her call for Tesla stock by 2029 is $2,600 a share. It’s at $443 a share now.

With an IPO, “SpaceX could have funds for more investment. Starlink is a key focus, but we have also wondered what role the company will pursue in the Golden Dome [missile defense shield],” wrote Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan on Wednesday. “SpaceX will also have equity that might be used to make acquisitions, though that has not been part of its behavior in the past.”

Shares of EchoStar, which owns SpaceX stock valued at roughly $11 billion at a recent SpaceX valuation of roughly $400 billion, jumped $10 in late trading on Tuesday, closing at $93.54, up 6%. Shares, through Tuesday trading, were up 25% over the past week.

EchoStar stock was up another 11.2% to $103.98 on Wednesday, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7% and 1.1%, respectively.

Shares of publicly traded space technology providers Rocket Lab USA, Firefly Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines rose 7.7%, 9.5%, and 1.5%, respectively, on Wednesday.

A SpaceX IPO might not affect the three directly, but it can help the sector by improving capital flows to space start-ups that aren’t yet profitable, says Mark Boggett, CEO of space technology investment firm Seraphim. A “SpaceX IPO in 2026 would be a seismic event for the space economy,” he added. “SpaceX has been at the forefront of the transformation of the Space sector that has now spawned a thriving ecosystem of many thousands of other space start-ups and scale-ups around the world.”

SpaceX, of course, is also a competitor for start-ups. But SpaceX is already the leader by a long shot in the commercial space industry that it only recently created. There will be room for others.

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