The Most Powerful Space Business in the World, But At What Price?

There are very few companies in the world where one business is simultaneously building rockets, launching satellites, running a global internet network, and now moving into AI infrastructure.

SpaceX is one of them.

And that is what makes the company so interesting.

But it also makes the valuation difficult to ignore.

It started with rockets:

SpaceX was founded in 2002. The early years were anything but smooth. Falcon 1 failed multiple times, and the company came close to running out of money.

Then came the breakthrough in 2008.

A successful launch was followed by a roughly $1 billion NASA contract, giving the company the capital and credibility it needed to survive.

Falcon 9 followed in 2010.

But the real game changer came in 2015, when SpaceX successfully landed and reused a Falcon 9 booster.

That sounds simple today.

It wasn’t.

Rocket launches had traditionally been a one-time-use business. SpaceX turned part of the rocket into something that could fly again.

That fundamentally changed launch economics.

Falcon 9 has now completed more than 620 flights with an extremely high success rate. Falcon Heavy has also established itself as a reliable heavy-lift rocket.

And then there is Starship.

If SpaceX manages to make Starship fully reusable at scale, the economics could change again.

A Falcon 9 can carry roughly 22,800 kg to orbit at around $67 million per launch. Starship is eventually expected to carry 100,000–150,000 kg, potentially bringing the cost of putting

something into orbit down dramatically.

That is where SpaceX’s competitive advantage starts becoming difficult to replicate.

But rockets are no longer the biggest story: Starlink.

SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. Today, it has become the world’s largest satellite internet network, with more than 9,600 satellites in orbit and a presence across more than 160 countries.

The subscriber base has gone from roughly 1 million to 10 million in just four years.

And the economics are becoming increasingly attractive.

Starlink’s revenue has grown from roughly $1 billion → $2 billion → $4 billion → $6 billion+.

This is important because SpaceX isn’t just launching satellites for other companies.

It is launching its own satellites, using its own rockets, for its own internet business.

That vertical integration is the moat.

SpaceX can launch Starlink satellites at a fraction of the cost of competitors such as Amazon’s Kuiper. And once those satellites are in orbit, they generate recurring subscription revenue.

This is why Starlink is increasingly looking like the cash machine inside SpaceX.

In fact, roughly 80% of SpaceX’s revenue today comes from Starlink.

And now comes AI:

This is where the story gets even more interesting.

SpaceX has merged with xAI, bringing Musk’s satellite infrastructure, AI ambitions and X ecosystem closer together.

The broader idea is simple:

AI needs enormous amounts of computing power.

And Musk wants to control the infrastructure required to provide it.

That means GPUs, data centres, energy and eventually potentially computing infrastructure in space.

The idea of orbital data centres sounds futuristic, but the logic is surprisingly straightforward.

Space has unlimited sunlight, no shortage of land and potentially very different economics around energy and cooling.

Of course, getting there is a completely different challenge.

Satellites would need to be redesigned around AI chips, larger solar arrays, and thermal systems capable of handling the heat generated by computing.

So this is still an ambition, not an established business.

But it tells us where SpaceX wants to go.

But at some point, a great business can become a bad investment simply because we paid too much for it.

Even if revenue doubles from $18 billion to $36 billion, a $2 trillion valuation would still imply an extremely high price-to-sales multiple.

And that is before accounting for the execution risk around Starship, AI infrastructure, and orbital data centres.

Our takeaway:

The business is incredible. The valuation is even more incredible.

SpaceX has built something that very few companies have ever managed to build: a genuine technological moat combined with a rapidly scaling recurring-revenue business.

The numbers already tell us how powerful the business can become. The question is whether today’s price already assumes most of that future.