The public company
SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026 in the largest IPO ever. Here is what it has told investors since — the numbers, the targets, and the promises about the future.
For 24 years SpaceX reported to no one but its investors and the FAA. Since June 2026 it files with the SEC and holds earnings calls livestreamed on X. The disclosures are the clearest view of the company anyone has ever had.
The IPO
SpaceX filed its S-1 on May 20, 2026 and priced at a fixed $135 — a “take-it-or-leave-it” price set before the roadshow — valuing the company at about $1.77 trillion. On June 12 SPCX opened at $150 and closed at $161. The company raised roughly $75–86 billion depending on whether the over-allotment is counted (the Q3 cash-flow statement shows $85.7B of net proceeds). IPO overview Nasdaq
Musk rang the opening bell remotely from Starbase, saying SpaceX aims to “take the fiction out of science fiction.” The stock peaked around $211 the following week, fell below the IPO price within a month and was roughly half off its peak by late July, then rallied 58% from its August low into October.
Float sold at IPO; 70% institutional, 30% retail
Underwriting fees (~$500M) — Goldman, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citi, JPMorgan
Lock-up for Musk and insiders — to ~June 2027
Musk's voting control via 10-vote Class B shares; his economic stake is reported between 39% and 49%
Index inclusion: Nasdaq-100 after 15 trading days (a rule Nasdaq changed in March 2026), Russell 1000 and CRSP — but not the S&P 500, which requires 12 months of trading and profitability.
Q3 2026: the first earnings call that mattered
On October 20, 2026 SpaceX reported revenue of $14.575 billion (+161%), operating income of $2.79B, net income of $4.4 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $8.8B. For the first time the “Super Intelligence” segment ($7.56B) out-earned Connectivity ($5.25B); Space contributed $1.77B. Capex was $19.6B in the quarter, $16.4B of it on AI compute. Cash and securities: ~$90B; debt $38.8B. Q3 2026 results PDF
What management said about the future
- Revenue — CFO Bret Johnsen reiterated $100B of annual recurring revenue by December 2026. Musk projected $500B to $1T of ARR by the end of 2027 — explicitly aspirational.
- Compute — 1.7 GW now, 2.5–3 GW by year-end, roughly 13 GW by end-2027 (20 GW stretch), a 440,000-GPU Vera Rubin training cluster by mid-2027; about half the compute rented out at spot rates with sub-one-year paybacks.
- Starship — the double catch on Flight 15; weekly flights in H1 2027, twice weekly by end-2027; ship reflight and orbital refueling in early 2027.
- Starlink — 13.6M subscribers; Starlink Mobile 22M users; Mobile V2 service in early 2028; the 800 MHz deal.
- Terafab — a functional test chip around May–June 2027; volume production aspirationally Q3 2028.
- Tesla — both boards have formed special committees to study a merger; no terms; Musk recused.
I think we're going to face a shortage of super intelligence compute.Elon Musk, Q3 2026 earnings call
Q2 2026: the first call
August 4, 2026: revenue $7.8B (+92%, beating a ~$6.9B consensus), net loss $541M, adjusted EBITDA $3.5B, capex $18.4B. The AI segment grew 247% on $14.1B of new cloud agreements. Shares fell 5–7% after hours on the capex. Management pulled its $1 trillion revenue target in from 2031 to 2030 (“non-zero chance” of 2029). Musk said he'd consider the heat shield solved and floated one Starship flight a day within a year; Shotwell said SpaceX was “on the precipice of operationalizing Starship.” Q2 call transcript
Where the money comes from
| Segment | Q3 2026 revenue | What's in it |
|---|---|---|
| Super Intelligence | $7.56B | Grok, X, Cursor ($608M in the quarter), and compute rented to Anthropic (~$1.25B/month) and Google ($920M/month) |
| Connectivity | $5.25B | Starlink consumer ($3.12B) and enterprise/government ($2.13B) |
| Space | $1.77B | Launch services, Dragon, NASA and national-security contracts |
History for context: 2024 revenue $14.1B; 2025 revenue $18.7B with a $4.9B net loss; Q1 2026 net loss $4.27B and an accumulated deficit of $41.3B. The AI acquisitions turned a rocket company with a satellite business into something closer to a cloud company that also launches rockets.
Government contracts
- National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2: $5.92B for 28 missions (Apr 2025), ~60% of the lot.
- Golden Dome: $2.29B for comms/targeting satellites and $4.16B for a moving-target radar constellation (May 2026); all 18 SBST tracking launches, $1.6B (July 2026) — the only launch provider so far.
- NASA: HLS $2.89B + $1.15B; Commercial Crew rotations through at least 2028; CRS cargo.
What analysts think
Goldman's private 2030 revenue projection was $474B and Morgan Stanley's $330B. Morningstar called the IPO “significantly overvalued” with a fair value of $780B; Aswath Damodaran estimated about $1.3T of enterprise value. The median underwriter 12–18 month target was $225; the analyst consensus in late October was “Buy” with an average target of $257. StockAnalysis None of this is investment advice — it is a record of what was said.
The controversies, plainly
- Debris and airlines — Flights 7 and 8 scattered debris over the Caribbean; ProPublica reported ≥11 aircraft inside the closure zone and a fuel emergency; the pilots' union called the FAA's dual role a conflict of interest.
- The Dragon threat — on June 5, 2025, amid the Trump feud, Musk posted that SpaceX would “begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” then retracted it within hours.
- Starlink pricing in wartime — Reuters reported SpaceX sought a ~400% fee increase for Starlink on drones used in US strikes on Iran (May 2026).
- Colossus emissions — the NAACP's Clean Air Act suit over unpermitted gas turbines survived a motion to dismiss on Oct 31, 2026.
- Grok — antisemitic outputs (July 2025) and sexualised image edits (from Dec 2025) brought lawsuits and regulatory threats.