SpaceX's Valuation Post-IPO: 3 Takes on the $2.5 Trillion Behemoth

When Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), more commonly known as SpaceX, set the price for its initial public offering (IPO) at $135 per share -- giving it an implied market capitalization of $1.75 trillion -- a lot of people had a lot of questions. And when the stock ended its first day of trading on Friday with a market value of over $2 trillion, people had even more questions.

Then on Monday, after taking the weekend to stop and think, the market apparently decided even that wasn't enough, bidding SpaceX shares up even further. Elon Musk's newly public company is now valued at nearly $2.5 trillion. Is this a bubble that's about to pop? Or is it a sign of lasting market dominance?

Here are three takes on the valuation of SpaceX's stock.

Image source: Getty Images.

The "overvalued" take: Just compare the numbers

I'm laying out the bearish take first because it's the simplest one to explain. And you can probably already guess what it's going to say.

SpaceX made just $18.7 billion in revenue last year while losing money. It estimates the total market for its only profitable business (Starlink broadband and mobile service) at $1.6 trillion, and the market for its rocket launch business at a mere $370 billion.

Just take a look at SpaceX compared to similarly valued companies. One of these things is not like the others:

Data source: YCharts. Chart by author.

Put simply, SpaceX's fundamentals are completely out of line with other companies with similar market capitalizations. When you factor in SpaceX's anemic Q1 2026 revenue growth of just 12.1%, the company looks even more overvalued compared to its $2 trillion-ish peers.

The "fairly valued" take: Extremely high growth

Very few analysts have been willing to assign a $2.5 trillion valuation to SpaceX. Morningstar's "Moonshot" scenario only puts its valuation at $154/share, or about $2 trillion, but it assigned that scenario only about a 7% probability. One of the few companies to do so is Oppenheimer, the first global brokerage to initiate coverage of SpaceX, which assigned a price target of $190/share, very close to SpaceX's current price.

Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan explained, "We see it as the ⁠only vertically integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, ​manufacturing and engineering talent." The brokerage expects Starlink to be the main generator of cash initially, with AI operations eventually outstripping it to drive annual revenue of more than $200 billion by 2030.

The "valuation doesn't matter" take

You might have been expecting this to be the "undervalued" take, but I can't find any analyst who has assigned a significantly higher valuation to SpaceX than its current one, despite CEO Elon Musk stating in an X post on Sunday that he "would be surprised if revenue is not greater than $1 [trillion] in 2031."

Nobody else has put forth an estimate anywhere close to that number. That's unsurprising, because it would require the company to maintain an average compound annual revenue growth rate of 121.6% for the next five years.

Instead, the most common justification for continued SpaceX share price growth is that Musk's other company, Tesla, has always traded at a valuation far above its revenue and earnings would seem to justify. Assigning a value to SpaceX's stock using such metrics, the argument goes, will be similarly fruitless.

Whichever take you agree with, one thing is clear. If you're thinking of buying SpaceX shares, it's important to be aware of the risks of buying a company as richly valued as SpaceX so soon after its IPO.

John Bromels has positions in Amazon, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.