SpaceX ( SPCX -4.11% ) is one of the most intriguing companies to ever go public, and its upside potential could be big. Led by Elon Musk, the company is looking to disrupt industries and create entirely new ones. While Musk is a polarizing figure, one thing is undeniable: He is a visionary.
And he has huge ambitions for SpaceX, saying the company will eventually be worth more than Earth itself. Chasing a $28.5 trillion opportunity In its IPO prospectus, SpaceX said it is chasing a current $28.5 trillion opportunity, which it called the largest in human history. While its opportunities in the space ($370 billion), the broadband ($870 billion), and mobile ($740 billion) connectivity markets with Starlink are sizable, most of its total addressable market (TAM) is centered around artificial intelligence (AI) .
Within AI, it sees digital advertising as a $600 billion market, with subscriptions adding another $760 billion to its TAM. Meanwhile, it views AI infrastructure as a $2.4 trillion market opportunity. The bulk of its TAM, though, is in the $22.7 trillion enterprise applications market.
This figure comes from the Digital Cooperation Organization's estimate of the total digital economy in 2026 and covers areas such as AI automation, AI agents, cloud computing , cybersecurity , and enterprise applications. Image source: Getty Images. Within its TAM, SpaceX's biggest near-term growth drivers appear to be satellite internet service through Starlink, AI infrastructure, and AI coding following its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor.
Starlink is a recurring revenue subscription business that is growing quickly. Its number of subscribers doubled year over year last quarter to 12 million, while its connectivity revenue surged 66%. The company is seeing strength both in the enterprise & government space (108% revenue growth) and consumer segment (44% revenue growth).
Its AI segment has been its fastest-growing, led by AI infrastructure, while Cursor will add a fast-growing AI coding platform. In Q2, its AI solutions & infrastructure skyrocketed to $2.19 billion, up from $475 million in Q1 and $311 million a year ago. The company is adding compute capacity quickly and recently announced that it signed a $1.1 billion a month AI hosting deal.
Acting largely as a short-term rental option for compute capacity, SpaceX is seeing exceptionally strong economics in a compute capacity-constrained environment. It said it is seeing a payback within a year on its AI infrastructure investments, which is considerably shorter than the two- to three-year payback period cloud leader Amazon has discussed. Longer term, SpaceX has big ambitions that include putting data centers in space, point-to-point terrestrial travel, asteroid mining, energy production and manufacturing on the moon and Mars, and even space tourism.
However, they are unlikely to contribute any significant revenue in the next five years. Based on the current consensus, analysts see SpaceX's revenue surging to close to $852 billion by 2031. That is below Musk's claim that the company could hit $1 trillion in revenue by 2030.
It is also worth noting that this comes from only four analyst forecasts and that the range is quite wide, going from a $493 billion estimate to slightly over $1 trillion. Musk's other company, Tesla , meanwhile, settled into a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of approximately 5 times about five years after its market debut. Using the low and high ends of analyst revenue projections would value SpaceX at a market cap between $2.47 trillion and $5 trillion, with the stock valued at $4.26 trillion at consensus.
Given SpaceX's future heavy capex spending, you'll have to assume share dilution, and Morgan Stanley initially modeled its diluted share count rising to nearly 13 billion. That would value its stock price between $190 and $384, with the consensus at $328. That's more than double its current price, turning a $1,000 investment into more than $2,000.
However, given the nature of the company, there is a wide range of outcomes going forward.
Source: The Motley Fool
