SpaceX is moving into territory where no initial public offering has gone before.
The company, founded and led by Elon Musk, is targeting a sky-high valuation of $1.75 trillion on the Nasdaq stock market. SpaceX could move into widely held indexes like the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 at the speed of light.
The Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage will deploy a stack of Starlink “V2 Mini” satellites into orbit.
space x
As market watchers and investors prepare and strategize how best to lead up to an IPO, one way to participate is to buy the S&P sector and industry indexes where SpaceX ultimately resides.
When a company goes public, as SpaceX is likely to do in the coming weeks, two financial data firms, S&P Global and MSCI, will decide which sector and industry indexes are appropriate. SpaceX is involved in so many areas of the economy, from space rockets to satellite internet to data centers to the artificial intelligence agent Grok, that the arrangement in this case could be more complex.
Here’s how it works:
First, newly listed companies are placed in one of 163 “sub-industries.” From there, you’re narrowed down to one of 74 “industries,” which are further narrowed down to one of 25 “industry groups,” and then assigned to one of 11 S&P sectors. These sectors include information technology, communications, industrials, real estate, materials, healthcare, consumer staples, consumer goods, finance, utilities, energy, and more.
MSCI and S&P consider four tiers when determining sector placement.
The first thing MSCI and S&P consider is which part of a company generates the most revenue. “Our Space and Connectivity segment accounted for a significant portion of our consolidated revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and the year ended December 31, 2025, demonstrating the scale and operating leverage advantages of our vertically integrated business model,” SpaceX’s S1 filing released last week said.
The “space” part of this equation is rocket launches and space missions. “We primarily generate space revenues through Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon launch and mission services provided to commercial and government customers,” SpaceX’s filing states.
When SpaceX talks about connectivity, it means Starlink, which provides high-speed internet service to customers around the world. This part of the business generated more than $11 billion in revenue in 2025.
New construction rises above SpaceX’s production facility as preparations continue for the 12th test flight of the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster at Starbase, Texas, May 16, 2026.
Steve NessiusReuter
The space business generated about $4 billion in revenue last year. Another part of SpaceX’s business is xAI, which includes Musk’s artificial intelligence platform known as Grok. According to the S1 filing, the AI business brought in $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025. xAI also generates revenue from data centers in Memphis, Tennessee and Southaven, Mississippi.
Representatives from MSCI and S&P said that while revenue is an important factor in determining which sector a company ultimately falls into, “revenue and market recognition are also recognized as important and relevant information for classification purposes and are considered in the annual review process.”
Based on revenue from Starlink, SpaceX is likely to join the S&P Communications Services sector, which currently includes companies such as: alphabet, meta, Netflixand echo star —A company that owns 2% to 3% of SpaceX. AT&T, verizon, Netflix, charter communicationsand walt disney He is also a member of the Communications Services Department.
SpaceX could at some point become a candidate for an industrial sector that also includes space and defense companies. Howmett, boeing, ge aerospace, Northrop Grumman, L3and general dynamics.
File photo: Elon Musk guides U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and mission control members before the launch of the SpaceX Starship rocket’s sixth test flight in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | via Reuters
Although SpaceX includes some Earth-based data centers, Musk made it clear at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in November 2025 that the future of that part of the business lies in space.
“If you want to have something that produces a million times more energy than Earth can produce, you have to go to space, and that’s where having a space company comes in handy,” he said. “Even in a four- or five-year timeframe, the lowest-cost way to perform AI computing will be with solar-powered AI satellites.”
Most terrestrial data center companies are in the S&P real estate sector, but space-based competitors like the one envisioned by Musk could fall into a different category because they don’t occupy land.
In its S1 filing released last week, SpaceX asserted that it is also a data center company. “SpaceX believes that with its highly vertically integrated approach from launch, large-scale satellite manufacturing, network connectivity, and ground-based data center expertise, SpaceX is uniquely positioned to deploy and operate in-orbit data centers that can ultimately achieve lower costs than terrestrial data centers over the long term.”
Currently, the S&P Real Estate sector is home to three major companies specializing in data centers. Equinix, Digital Realty Trustand iron mountain. All three stocks have risen significantly by 2026.
