SpaceX wants to be valued like an AI company. Its S-1 says so directly. The prospectus frames the business around orbital AI infrastructure, positioning Starlink’s 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries as the distribution backbone for a broader compute strategy, one that now includes the merged xAI division, referred to in coverage as SpaceXAI.
The numbers tell a more complicated story.
According to the S-1 filing, SpaceX reported approximately $18.7 billion in total 2025 revenue, with Starlink’s $11.4 billion satellite internet segment accounting for the majority, a figure independently corroborated by financial analysis from TradingKey. That’s a strong top line. But the company also posted a net loss in the range of $4.3 billion to $5 billion, and the xAI merger appears to be the primary driver. At least one financial analysis suggests the SpaceX core business may be operationally profitable on its own, with the xAI division accounting for the bulk of reported losses, though the S-1’s breakdown of the $2.6 billion operating loss figure conflicts with that reading and requires verification against the full prospectus text.
The real story is the subsidy chain. Starlink doesn’t just generate revenue. It generates the cash flow that funds Grok’s compute budget.
Reuters confirmed that SpaceX’s board is deeply embedded in Elon Musk’s broader corporate network, and the S-1 makes the financial ties explicit. Per the filing, SpaceX reported approximately $506 million in transactions with Tesla in 2025, including a reported $131 million in Cybertruck purchases, disclosures that drew immediate scrutiny for governance implications. Institutional investors evaluating IPO participation will spend significant time on this section.
There’s a valuation argument embedded in the prospectus that investors should stress-test before accepting. SpaceX’s prospectus presents a total addressable market estimate of $28.5 trillion for its AI infrastructure strategy, a figure produced by the company itself and not independently verified by third-party analysts. TAM projections in S-1 filings are issuer-provided; they describe the market the company wants to address, not the market it’s demonstrably capturing. Starlink’s average revenue per user has declined significantly, from approximately $99 in 2023 to $66 in Q1 2026, per the filing, a trajectory that runs directly against the premium-infrastructure pricing argument the $28.5T TAM implies.
The $75 billion raise target adds another layer. SpaceX reportedly targets raising approximately $75 billion through the offering, which would surpass Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO as the largest in history, though final allocation and pricing remain confidential. That number isn’t just ambitious. It’s a statement about the kind of capital SpaceX believes will follow an orbital AI infrastructure story.
What to Watch
The catch is that this S-1 was filed three days after an existing brief in this hub covered the deal-specific disclosures within the same document, including a reported $45 billion Anthropic compute arrangement and a $60 billion Cursor option. This brief covers the financial and governance picture. Both angles come from the same prospectus. Read together, they describe a company using an IPO to fund a vertical integration of orbital infrastructure, consumer AI, and enterprise compute, with a governance structure that gives Elon Musk effective control across the entire stack.
Watch the June listing timeline. If SpaceX prices near its $1.75T target, it will set a public market benchmark for orbital AI infrastructure that every hyperscaler will have to respond to. If institutional buyers push back on the governance disclosures or the ARPU decline, the pricing round could reset the valuation argument for the entire sector. Either outcome produces signal.