As billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk prepares to take SpaceX public, investors are waiting for their chance to take part in what is expected to be the largest IPO in history. Musk said late last month that reports about space technology companies planning to go public this year were “accurate.” Multiple news outlets have reported that preparations are underway for an IPO following a stock sale that values the company at about $800 billion. SpaceX reportedly expects it to be worth about $1.5 trillion when it hits the public market. This would surpass the previous record set by Saudi Aramco’s IPO in 2019. Wall Street heavyweights have already begun investing in SpaceX as individual investors. Ron Baron of Baron Capital said about a quarter of his personal investments go into the company. In addition, SpaceX is one of the largest positions in Baron Partners Fund. It is also the largest holding in Ark’s venture fund run by Cathie Wood. Jeffries said SpaceX has leadership in the low Earth orbit (LEO) market. SpaceX set a quarterly record for LEO launches with 971 in the last three months of the year, an increase of more than 30% from the previous quarter and about 70% from a year ago, the bank found. The company launched more than 3,200 satellites in 2025, a new annual record and an increase of more than 60% from the previous year. Analyst Kevin Lin told clients that SpaceX’s launch volume is “accelerating” while competitor Amazon Leo is “laggard” despite entering a stable launch phase. Amazon said in November that companies could test rebranded Leo products in a bid to compete with Mr. Musk’s Starlink. Lin said he expects company-wide launch numbers to reach a record high in the near future. SpaceX’s outlook is bright for another reason: its data centers. Technology industry heavyweights looking for ways to build the infrastructure to support the artificial intelligence boom are increasingly looking to companies like SpaceX that can set up data centers in space, Lin said. Space data centers are expected to “drive” the overall addressable market in the LEO space, the analyst added. “The space data center conversation is gaining momentum in response to the surge in demand for AI computing power and Earth’s energy bottlenecks,” Lin told clients. Indeed, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu said there are important issues that need to be resolved before data centers can be effectively installed in space. But Yu said he was “encouraged” to see companies like Google and OpenAI also looking at ways to make this happen. “There are clearly technical challenges to making this a viable endeavor, but these appear to be engineering constraints rather than physics,” Yu wrote in a note to clients last month. If SpaceX’s IPO is a huge success, Musk’s wealth could increase even further. His controversial $1 trillion pay package from electric car company Tesla was approved by shareholders late last year. TSLA 1Y Mountain Tesla, 1 Year But the billionaire CEO encountered some obstacles. Tesla announced on Friday that its fourth-quarter deliveries were lower than expected, leaving it behind BYD as the world’s top EV seller for the first time. Tesla stock finished 2025 up more than 11%, but underperformed the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index and the broader S&P 500 index for the year. This is a relatively slow increase compared to the 60% and more than 100% jumps in Tesla stock over the past two years.
