SpaceX’s decision to finally open its books pits an almost utopian vision of a trillion‑dollar space‑and‑AI future against stark losses, legal risks, and heavy reliance on Elon Musk’s wider empire.
In February, Musk merged his AI startup xAI — which had previously acquired social network X — into SpaceX in a $1.25 trillion all‑stock deal, creating a combined space, connectivity, and AI group ahead of a blockbuster listing.1 Soon after, SpaceX disclosed that xAI had burned $6.4 billion on just $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, with plans to scale its Grok model to “multiple trillions of parameters,” implying even higher compute costs.2
On May 20, SpaceX publicly filed its S‑1, revealing 2025 revenue of $18.67 billion but a $4.94 billion net loss, largely driven by AI investment.1 The company claimed a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, including $26.5 trillion from AI alone — “the largest TAM in human history.”1 Economists called that galaxy‑scale math “farcical,” noting it implies capturing roughly a quarter of global GDP.3
The filing doubles as a sci‑fi blueprint. Business plans span orbital AI data centers, “AI compute satellites” in sun‑synchronous orbit by 2028,4 and future industries on the Moon and Mars, from energy production and in‑orbit manufacturing to asteroid mining and tourism.5 One Business Insider analysis said parts of the prospectus “read like a sci‑fi novel,” with bets on “future markets” that “literally don't exist at the moment.”6
But the same document undercuts Musk’s clean‑energy narrative. xAI is being sued over dozens of unregulated natural‑gas turbines at a Tennessee data center and plans to buy $2.8 billion more, even as Tesla’s solar business is largely absent from the power strategy.78 Commentators describe this as a “clean energy contradiction,” with xAI embracing the “mine‑and‑burn economy” Tesla was founded to replace.8
Wall Street and the AI community are split. Axios notes SpaceX is “wildly unprofitable” and that its IPO “depends on expectations for future growth and investor servility to Musk,” despite Starlink being the only profitable unit today.9 A TechCrunch breakdown said “the math requires a little faith,” tying the valuation to Mars‑colony incentives and orbital compute.
10 AI pioneer Yann LeCun amplified a critic who, after reading all 277 pages, called the deal a “trainwreck” of soaring losses and a 107x price‑to‑sales multiple.
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Musk and his supporters, by contrast, frame SpaceX as an engine of “multi‑trillion‑dollar economic opportunities” in space,5 backed by a culture of “shocking competence” and relentless engineering.
12 As the IPO approaches, investors must decide whether SpaceX’s S‑1 is a realistic roadmap to a new extraterrestrial economy — or a sci‑fi manifesto priced as if it were already here.