SpaceX IPO: Nice Try Though
TL;DR
SpaceX's IPO prospectus reveals a company valued at $1.75 trillion claiming to be an AI giant despite Starlink being its only profitable division, while obscuring massive losses, unsustainable competitor contracts, and conflicted related-party transactions beneath philosophical rhetoric about human consciousness.
📄 The Unconventional Prospectus 2 insights
Consciousness to the stars as business strategy
The filing opens with 14 pages of rocket photographs and repeats the phrase "extend the light of consciousness to the stars" 10 times, alongside warnings that "we do not want humans to have the same fate of dinosaurs."
$28.5 trillion total addressable market
SpaceX claims a market size exceeding the entire US GDP based almost entirely on non-existent businesses including asteroid mining, lunar manufacturing, and point-to-point rocket travel.
📉 Financial Reality vs. Valuation 2 insights
Starlink profits consumed by AI losses
While Starlink generated $4.4 billion in operating profit in 2025, the space and AI divisions lost over $9 billion, resulting in a $4.94 billion net loss and bringing total accumulated losses to $37 billion—a record for a company going public.
100x revenue valuation with heavy debt
At $1.75 trillion (100x revenue), SpaceX would rank 7th in the S&P 500 by market cap but below 200th by sales, while carrying $29 billion in debt including a $20 billion bridge loan taken just 8 weeks before the IPO.
🤖 The AI Pivot and Grok's Failures 3 insights
93% of TAM rides on struggling Grok
Despite attributing 93% of addressable market to AI, SpaceX's Grok holds only 3.4% market share and is reportedly avoided by the company's own engineers for technical work.
Revenue concentrated in cancellable competitor contract
Approximately 40% of near-term AI revenue depends on a $15 billion annual deal to rent compute to competitor Anthropic, terminable with just 90 days notice.
$60 billion Cursor acquisition attempt
After admitting Grok needs rebuilding from scratch, Musk attempted to buy Cursor—the tool his engineers actually use—for $60 billion with a $10 billion break fee.
⚠️ Governance Red Flags 3 insights
Tesla support via Cybertruck purchases
SpaceX purchased $131 million worth of Cybertrucks at full retail price (roughly 1,500 units), accounting for 18% of Q4 2025 US registrations, while Tesla filings show a $77 million discrepancy in reported intercompany sales.
$20 billion obligations to board member's firm
SpaceX carries over $20 billion in AI infrastructure lease obligations tied to entities connected to director Antonio Gracias's Valor Equity Partners, structured as failed sale-leasebacks kept on the balance sheet as debt.
Texas incorporation shields conflicts
Following the SolarCity precedent, the company incorporated in Texas where shareholders must own $52 billion in stock to sue and are explicitly barred from accessing emails or text messages in derivative actions.
Bottom Line
SpaceX is asking public investors to value it at $1.75 trillion based on an AI business its own engineers won't use and speculative science-fiction revenue streams, while using its only profitable division to subsidize unsustainable losses and related-party transactions.
More from Patrick Boyle
View all
Brexit, 10 Years On: What It Actually Cost Britain
Ten years after the Brexit referendum, Britain suffers from chronic economic stagnation that fulfilled neither Leave's promises of prosperity nor Remain's warnings of immediate collapse; instead, prolonged policy uncertainty has permanently reduced GDP and living standards, with the costs falling disproportionately on the industrial regions that voted to leave.
The US Government Gave Anthropic 90 Minutes to Shut Down Its AI
The US Commerce Department gave AI startup Anthropic 90 minutes to shut down its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals—forcing a global shutdown—just days after CEO Dario Amodei published an essay advocating for government power to block unsafe AI deployments.
How SpaceX Humiliated Wall Street
SpaceX's record-breaking $75 billion IPO at a $1.78 trillion valuation marks a historic shift from two decades of stock market contraction to massive equity expansion, while simultaneously stripping Wall Street banks of their traditional price-setting authority and reducing them to low-margin service providers.
This Is Probably Fine!
Global long-term bond yields are surging to multi-decade highs as markets adjust to persistent inflation and the end of cheap money, but today's massive government debt levels (100%+ of GDP) prevent central banks from aggressively hiking rates to fight inflation—a constraint known as 'fiscal dominance' that fundamentally alters the monetary policy playbook from the Volcker era.