How Much Could $1,000 Invested in SpaceX Be Worth by 2030?

The day is upon us. SpaceX is finally set to go public tomorrow, June 12. Wall Street is prepping it as the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, raising a reported $75 billion in funds at an estimated valuation of $1.75 trillion before it begins to trade.

The question remains: Should you buy at the IPO? Using a market cap of $1.75 trillion as a starting point, here's what $1,000 invested in SpaceX today may be worth in 2030.

Huge addressable market

When looking at SpaceX, there is, of course, the rocket-launching business that made it famous. However, with revenue of just $4 billion and slim margins, the segment is not necessarily a huge opportunity in itself, but an enabler of Elon Musk's ambitions for the rest of SpaceX.

These other ambitions include Starlink, which generated $11.4 billion in revenue last year, a 50% year-over-year gain. The satellite internet business has only a tad more than 10 million paying subscribers today, and a gigantic global addressable market. It also has fantastic profit margins, posting $4.4 billion in income from operations last year alone. Five years from now, it wouldn't be shocking if Starlink revenue kept growing at this insatiable rate, hitting $50 billion in revenue with fantastic profitability.

The second large endeavor would be the artificial intelligence (AI) data center business, which recently won contracts from Anthropic and Alphabet for $26 billion in annualized spending on its AI computing services. In the future, SpaceX wants to enable this data center business to be built in orbit, which it believes will come with tremendous cost savings. Right now, the business is set to see soaring revenue, but this is likely to come with thin margins because of the huge amounts of upfront spending it has made to invest in these data centers.

Overall, when you combine these two businesses -- Starlink and AI data centers -- it is possible that SpaceX will generate more than $100 billion in revenue by 2030, up from $18.7 billion in 2025.

Image source: Getty Images.

Bottleneck in payload capacity

A bottleneck to this rapid growth may be the company's ability to launch these computing and satellite payloads into orbit. The company is still working through the kinks with its huge Starship rocket, which will carry a 100-metric-ton payload into orbit, compared to its current workhorse, the Falcon 9, with a 23-metric-ton payload capacity.

This is a significant difference, and if Starship's commercial debut keeps getting delayed, it is possible that SpaceX will not be able to match demand for its AI orbital data centers and Starlink internet simply because it cannot launch enough mass into orbit quickly enough. This could limit the company's ability to hit $100 billion in revenue by 2030, though that doesn't mean it is a bad business. There are just a lot of moving parts here.

What could $1,000 of SpaceX stock be worth in 2030?

Investors will soon be able to buy SpaceX shares at a market cap of $1.75 trillion at the time it goes public. Assuming no shareholder dilution, we can estimate its market cap by 2030 and see what $1,000 invested at the IPO could be worth in five years.

If SpaceX hits the $100 billion in annual revenue as I estimated above, that would bring the stock to a price-to-sales ratio (P/S) of 17.5. This is still expensive compared to the stock market average. A P/S ratio of 10 generally indicates a stock is overvalued.

What this should tell investors is that $1,000 invested in SpaceX at a market cap of $1.75 trillion is likely to be worth less in 2030, unless the company can miraculously reach hundreds of billions in revenue, up from $18.7 billion in 2025. When you run the numbers, it is clear that the best course of action is to simply avoid buying SpaceX stock at the IPO.

Brett Schafer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.