SpaceX just pulled off the biggest IPO in history. The valuation looks stretched.

You have probably heard of SpaceX, the rocket company behind reusable launches, Starlink satellites, and Elon Musk's ambition to colonise Mars.

After years locked away in private markets, SpaceX has finally gone public. The headline number is huge. A US$75 billion IPO valuing the company at around US$1.77 trillion. Here is the real question investors should be asking. Is this valuation being driven by SpaceX's actual fundamentals, or by an aggressive AI story and a wave of engineered demand?

According to Reuters and AP, SpaceX priced its IPO at US$135 per share, sold more than 555 million shares, and raised US$75 billion. That makes it the largest IPO in history, more than double Saudi Aramco's previous record. At that valuation, SpaceX immediately becomes one of the most valuable listed companies in the world.

On the surface, the story is simple. SpaceX dominates rocket launches, Starlink is scaling, and the company sits across several attractive themes. Space, defence, satellite internet, AI infrastructure, and Elon Musk himself. But the more interesting part is not the rocket business. It is the valuation being placed on everything else.

SpaceX is no longer just a space company. After xAI was brought into the group, investors buying SpaceX are also buying exposure to Musk's AI ambitions. That sounds exciting, until you look at the numbers. According to TechCrunch, xAI lost US$6.4 billion from operations in 2025 on just US$3.2 billion of revenue. This is not a high-margin AI software business quietly scaling in the background. It is a deeply loss-making, capital-hungry segment that still needs huge spending on compute, data centres, and model development.

That does not mean xAI is worthless. If Musk pulls it off, the upside could be enormous. But at this IPO price, investors are not simply paying for what xAI is today. They are paying for what xAI might become if almost everything goes right.

This is where the valuation starts to feel aggressive. According to Reuters, citing the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs expects SpaceX's AI revenue to grow 100-fold by 2030. That implies the AI business growing from around US$3.2 billion of revenue in 2025 to more than US$300 billion within five years. That is not just optimistic. That is heroic.

To be fair, AI is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. Demand for compute, models, data centres, and enterprise AI tools is real. But using 100x revenue growth over five years to support a trillion-dollar-plus valuation leaves very little room for disappointment. If xAI scales slower than expected, if losses persist, or if AI infrastructure spending cools, the valuation case becomes much harder to defend.

There is also another factor supporting the IPO. Index demand. Nasdaq recently changed its Nasdaq-100 rules to allow very large newly listed companies to enter the index much faster. Reports suggest companies can now be included after as little as 15 trading days, compared with the previous seasoning period of several months. Nasdaq also removed the old 10 percent minimum free float requirement.

This matters because once a company enters the Nasdaq-100, funds and ETFs tracking the index may need to buy the stock. That creates mechanical demand, and mechanical demand is not the same as fundamental conviction. In plain English, part of the demand may be coming not because investors have decided SpaceX is cheap, but because the structure of the market may force them to own it.

SpaceX is a real business. It has real revenue, real technological advantages, and real strategic importance. Starlink is a serious connectivity platform. SpaceX has reshaped launch economics. Its government and defence exposure gives it importance beyond normal commercial markets. Betting against Musk has historically been a painful trade. But that does not automatically make the IPO attractive.

The question is whether investors are being asked to pay too much, too early, for a future that is still highly uncertain. At US$1.77 trillion, the market is pricing in a lot. Continued Starlink growth, successful Starship commercialisation, massive AI revenue expansion, sustained investor enthusiasm, and strong index-driven demand. That is a lot of assumptions stacked on top of one another.

SpaceX may be one of the most important companies of this generation. But this IPO feels less like a simple public listing and more like a carefully packaged growth story. The rocket business gives it credibility. Starlink gives it recurring revenue. xAI gives it the trillion-dollar narrative. Nasdaq-100 inclusion gives it potential forced demand. That combination is powerful, and also dangerous.

For investors, the better question is whether you want to buy a company at a valuation that already assumes the AI segment grows 100x, losses eventually normalise, and index demand helps support the stock. SpaceX may still become a great public company. At this IPO price, investors are not just buying the future of space. They are paying upfront for the most optimistic version of it.

This is exactly the kind of story StarryTrader is built for. Not to tell you whether to buy, but to help you separate the narrative from the numbers, so the decision stays yours and you understand what you are actually paying for.