WED · JUNE 10, 2026 · ISSUE #032

📌 TODAY'S TOPIC

$135 per share. $75 billion raised. $1.77 trillion valuation. The largest IPO in history prices tomorrow and lists Friday. But behind the headline number are three very different businesses — one highly profitable, one a cash furnace, one a $15 billion moonshot. Here's the full picture.

🔍 WHAT IS IT?

An initial public offering — an IPO — is the moment a private company sells shares to the public for the first time. From that day, anyone with a brokerage account can own a piece of the company. The price is set the night before by investment banks based on investor demand. Tomorrow night, June 11, SpaceX sets its price. Friday June 12, SPCX opens on Nasdaq.

At $135 per share, SpaceX would be valued at $1.77 trillion — making it the seventh-biggest company in the US, above Tesla which has a market cap of about $1.6 trillion. The company is set to be the biggest IPO ever — more than triple the size of Alibaba, which is the largest US IPO to date.

But here is the number every investor needs to understand before Friday: SpaceX is not one company. It is three — with completely different financial profiles sold under one ticker.

SpaceX reported $18.7 billion in total revenue in 2025, a $4.9 billion net loss, and $6.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Those numbers sound contradictory because they are the sum of three fundamentally different businesses.

The Starlink connectivity business is SpaceX's primary financial engine, accounting for more than two-thirds of revenue and earning $1.2 billion in operating profit in Q1 2026 alone. Starlink had 10.3 million subscribers at end of March 2026 across 164 countries, with 9,600 satellites in orbit.

The launch business — the rockets — generated $619 million in revenue in Q1 2026 but lost $662 million from operations, as SpaceX has spent over $15 billion developing Starship — more than originally budgeted.

The AI segment — xAI, merged with SpaceX in February 2026 — posted $6 billion in losses in 2025 and burned $2.5 billion in Q1 2026 alone. Starlink is profitable. Starlink is subsidising everything else. That is the financial reality behind the $1.77 trillion price tag.

📖 INTERESTING HISTORY

SpaceX's journey from near-bankruptcy to the world's largest IPO is one of the most extraordinary business stories ever told.

Three Failures, One Miracle
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with $100 million of his PayPal fortune. The first three Falcon 1 launches failed. By 2008, the company had burned through almost all its cash. A fourth failure would have ended it. The fourth launch succeeded. NASA awarded a $1.6 billion resupply contract. SpaceX survived.

The Reusability Revolution
The insight that changed everything was reusability. Traditional rockets were thrown away after each launch — a $60–100 million vehicle used once. SpaceX spent a decade solving the engineering problem of landing a booster vertically after returning from space. In December 2015, Falcon 9's first stage landed itself for the first time. Launch costs fell 90%. SpaceX made every competitor obsolete.

Starlink — The Business That Built the IPO
Musk always said rockets were a means to an end — Mars colonisation. But Mars requires infinite capital. Starlink is the answer. Launched commercially in 2020, it grew from zero to 10.3 million subscribers and $11.4 billion in connectivity revenue in 2025 — about 61% of total company revenue. Starlink recorded an 86% increase in adjusted EBITDA between 2024 and 2025 while total subscribers doubled.

The xAI Complication
SpaceX merged with xAI in February 2026 — xAI had already absorbed X (formerly Twitter) in March 2025. Because these deals happened between entities under common control, accountants recast every historical period to fold all three together. Standalone SpaceX did closer to $15–16 billion in 2025. The merged entity reports $18.7 billion. The gap is xAI and X — and that gap arrives carrying enormous losses.

In March 2026, SpaceX's Colossus 1 data centre secured a deal with Anthropic worth $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 — housing 220,000 Nvidia GPUs across 300MW of power, built in 120 days. That single contract is worth $40 billion over its life — but either party can terminate with 90 days' notice.

The Biggest IPOs in History
Saudi Aramco raised $29.4 billion in 2019. Alibaba raised $25 billion in 2014. Agricultural Bank of China raised $22.1 billion in 2010. SpaceX's $75 billion raise is more than double the previous record. No company in history has come close.

💡 WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU

The SpaceX IPO is not just a technology story. It reshapes the stock market, the satellite internet industry, AI infrastructure, and the entire space economy.

The three businesses you are actually buying
Investors buying SPCX at $135 are buying three fundamentally different assets at one blended price:

Starlink connectivity — the profitable engine. The connectivity segment generated an operating profit of $4.42 billion in 2025. At 10.3 million subscribers paying an average of $66 per month, with manufacturing costs of terminals falling 59% in 2025, Starlink is a highly profitable, rapidly scaling global telecoms business. This is the part worth paying for.

The launch business — the strategic asset. Falcon 9 dominates global commercial launch with over 90% market share. It is profitable at the EBITDA level but reinvests everything into Starship development. SpaceX has spent over $15 billion developing Starship — more than originally budgeted. Starship, if it works at scale, changes the economics of space access forever. If it doesn't, the losses are real.

xAI and the AI bet — the wildcard. The AI segment recorded an operating loss of $6.36 billion in 2025. The Anthropic compute deal is extraordinary but revocable. xAI's Grok AI model competes with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The AI infrastructure buildout — orbital compute satellites by 2028 — is visionary but unproven. You are buying a large, currently loss-making AI bet alongside the rockets and satellites.

Should you buy SPCX at the open on Friday?
The honest assessment: the bull case is genuine and the bear case is real.

The bull case — Starlink is a structural monopoly in satellite internet with enormous government and military demand that no competitor can match for years. At 10.3 million subscribers and growing, it is barely penetrated in its addressable market. The index fund effect alone — Nasdaq-100 inclusion is virtually certain within 15 trading days — creates billions in mechanical buying pressure regardless of fundamental valuation.

The bear case — secondary platforms were trading SpaceX both below and above the $135 deal price in the final week before listing, suggesting the market has not settled on whether the IPO is priced rich or cheap. You are pricing a cash-generative satellite business stapled to a money-losing AI business and a launch business that reinvests everything. The governance risk is real — Musk retains controlling voting power. The xAI losses are accelerating.

The historical lesson: Amazon, Google, and Tesla all saw violent post-IPO volatility before their long-term gains. The best returns from transformative technology companies rarely come from buying on day one. Patience — and understanding what you actually own — matters more than FOMO.

The AI IPO pipeline
Anthropic confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC on Monday. OpenAI is preparing to file in coming weeks. SpaceX's debut opens the door. If SPCX trades strongly in its first weeks, it signals institutional appetite for transformative technology and accelerates timelines for every major AI IPO. 2026 may be remembered as the year the technology IPO market came back — bigger and bolder than 2021.

📊 THE NUMBER TO KNOW

$1.77 trillion

SpaceX's target valuation at IPO — the seventh-largest US company at listing. But buried inside that number: Starlink earned $4.4 billion in operating profit in 2025. The AI segment lost $6.4 billion. The launch business lost $657 million. Starlink is the company worth owning. xAI is the bet you didn't ask for. At $135 per share, you are buying all three — at the same price.

⏭ NEXT ISSUE — FRIDAY, JUNE 12

"The AI Investment Boom — The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bet Reshaping the Global Economy"

SpaceX's xAI is losing $6 billion a year building it. Microsoft has committed $80 billion to it. Every major government is racing to fund it. On Friday we explain the AI infrastructure arms race — the data centers, the power grids, the chips, and what it means for investors.

Thanks for reading MWF Macro.

Thirty-two issues in — and today we covered the most audacious company in the world going public. Three businesses. One price. The largest IPO in history. Forward this to someone deciding whether to buy SPCX on Friday.