A record-breaking listing meets record-breaking losses — and the tension between them is the real story of the SpaceX IPO.
The SpaceX IPO moved from speculation to fact on 3 June 2026, when the company filed to sell 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each. At that price, SpaceX would debut on Nasdaq on 12 June under the ticker SPCX with a valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion — making it the seventh-largest company in the United States on arrival, ahead of Tesla, and raising approximately $75 billion in the largest initial public offering ever recorded. The previous record, Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing, raised $29 billion. Goldman Sachs is leading a syndicate of 21 banks.
Those figures alone are staggering. But investors who stop at the headline are reading only half the balance sheet. SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026 — nearly matching the $4.94 billion it lost across the entire preceding year. The culprit is not the rocket business or Starlink. It is xAI, the artificial intelligence division Musk folded into SpaceX in early 2026. AI-segment capital expenditure consumed $7.72 billion in Q1 alone, after the company spent $12.7 billion on the same segment across all of 2025. Annualised, that run rate approaches $30 billion — almost double SpaceX’s total 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion.
The profitable core is real, but narrow. Starlink, the satellite internet service, generated $11.4 billion in 2025 revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income, making it the only segment running in the black. Subscribers climbed from 2.3 million in 2023 to 10.3 million by March 2026, and Q1 revenue grew 31% year-over-year to $3.3 billion. Yet even Starlink carries flags: average revenue per user fell 18% between 2023 and 2025 as the company traded pricing for volume, and analysts at Eurospace have noted that subscriber growth is starting to slow in mature markets. SpaceX raised Starlink prices by up to $10 per month in May 2026 — a signal the land-grab phase may be ending.
For European retail investors, access is straightforward only after listing day. German brokers such as Trade Republic, Scalable Capital, and comdirect will carry the stock once it trades on Nasdaq. However, direct IPO allocation for German Privatanleger remains uncertain. SpaceX has pledged an unusually high 30% retail allocation, but Deutsche Bank, ING, and Société Générale — reported European consortium partners — have not confirmed participation terms. No UCITS-compliant ETF currently holds a direct SpaceX position, limiting fund-based exposure for regulated European portfolios. Indirect vehicles such as the Tema Space Innovators ETF (ticker: NASA) hold SpaceX through special-purpose vehicles, but BaFin-regulated fund rules mean these are not equivalent to owning the stock outright.
Then there is governance. Musk will retain over 82% of voting power through a dual-class share structure granting certain shares ten votes instead of one. He will simultaneously serve as CEO, chief technology officer, and board chairman — meaning, as the prospectus itself notes, only Musk can remove Musk. Denmark’s AkademikerPension, a $25 billion pension fund, has already blacklisted SpaceX over what it called a “catastrophic governance structure.” The filing also contains language warning of potential “significant equity” issuance for future transactions, fuelling persistent speculation about an eventual Tesla merger.
The numbers frame a clear tension. At $1.77 trillion, SpaceX trades at roughly 93.5 times its trailing twelve-month revenue — compared to an S&P 500 average near 3 times. That premium only works if Starlink’s margin engine keeps expanding and if xAI’s multi-billion-dollar cash burn eventually converts into revenue. Two items worth tracking in the first post-IPO quarterly filing: whether xAI capex holds at its current pace, and whether Starlink’s ARPU stabilises after the May price increase. Those data points will tell investors whether the $1.77 trillion figure was a starting line or a ceiling. Read more of our IPO coverage here.
This article is journalism and educational commentary, not investment advice. The author is not a BaFin-registered investment adviser (Anlageberater). Figures should be independently verified against official filings before any financial decision.
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