So many AI balloons being floated in Elon Musk’s SpaceX/xAI confidential IPO S-1 filing. Especially driven by xAI/Grok’s AI priorities over SpaceX/Starlink. Let’s unpack.
Well, now that the confidential IPO filing has dropped, the plans can actually be seen laid out in all their ambition, in the dry language of federal financial disclosures. It’d be useful to take a closer look since it’ll impact all manner of things in this AI Tech Wave ahead.
“SpaceX sees total addressable market of $28.5 trillion for all its businesses, according to filing.”
“IPO document highlights Elon Musk’s goal to play central role in AI industry.”
“SpaceX sees $22.7 trillion AI market for enterprise, per filing reviewed by Reuters.”
“Over the last quarter century, Elon Musk revived space travel, turning cosmic exploration into thriving businesses. For its next act, Musk’s SpaceX is eyeing an even bigger opportunity in something more prosaic: building artificial intelligence for the enterprise.”
There it is…not about Mars, not about far less expensive reusable rockets, not about satellite broadband connectivity to rural and airplane based users. Not even about a ‘universal truth seeking’ Grok AI vs quasi-woke AIs like ChatGPT and others. But about providing AI services to the enterprise.
Just like near-term mega-AI IPO competitors like Anthropic and OpenAI. Especially the former with its immensely popular Claude Code and Cowork for tens of millions of developers paying billions in ARR compounding revenues.
Thus the just announced call option to buy super hot AI Coding startup Cursor for a $60 billion valuation in one year (after the SpaceX/xAI IPO), or a walkaway fee of $10 billion. A number Cursor wasn’t even valued at a year ago.
“SpaceX estimates that its total addressable market – a closely watched metric – could be as much as $28.5 trillion, according to a S-1 filing reviewed by Reuters. TAM is the maximum revenue a company could generate if it captured every customer in a particular market.”
“The S-1 regulatory filing, in which companies disclose their financials and key risks before going public, shows that SpaceX expects more than 90% of that market – or $26.5 trillion – could stem from the AI sector. The vast majority of that, $22.7 trillion, could come from AI for businesses.”
“The company is moving ahead with an IPO expected this summer targeting a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion and seeking to raise about $75 billion, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history.”
“We believe we have identified the largest actionable total addressable market in human history,” according to the filing.”
“The new information about where SpaceX sees its biggest market opportunity stands in stark contrast to how the company currently makes its money.”
There it is in black and white. Which is why these filings are so useful to read for financial analyst types.
“Although a company’s TAM is neither a forecast or a valuation, it is an important indicator for investors evaluating a high-growth company’s potential.”
It’s the way these things are done in open-ended growth opportunities in the earliest of days:
“These figures are often vast and rarely questioned. When Uber went public in 2019, it claimed a $5.7 trillion market opportunity for its ride-sharing business alone.”
“The eye-popping opportunity identified by SpaceX, tucked into more than 300 pages detailing its finances, underscores Musk’s long-held desire to occupy a central role in the advancement of AI technology.”
“The AI for enterprise market is currently dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, AI industry leaders locked in intense competition, and both of which have indicated intentions to go public as early as this year.”
“In February, SpaceX acquired xAI, an AI research company founded by Musk in early 2023. The filing seen by Reuters shows that xAI remains a nascent and deeply loss-making operation.”
“The AI unit posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion in 2025, sharply wider than the $1.6 billion loss a year earlier.”
“Those losses eclipsed the $4.4 billion in operating profit generated by Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet business and its largest revenue engine, which brought in $11.4 billion of its $18.7 billion total revenue last year. Overall, SpaceX lost $4.9 billion.”
But xAI is a voracious AI Capex beast in its own right:
“SpaceX’s AI unit is also resource hungry. In 2025, SpaceX’s total capex surged to $20.7 billion, with AI accounting for $12.7 billion – more than it spent on its space and connectivity businesses combined.”
“The company said it could capitalize on some of xAI’s preexisting tools, such as Grok Enterprise and an agentic or autonomous platform it is developing with Tesla called Macrohard.”
“In the filing, the company warned prospective investors of its big spending plans to develop AI and other technologies, including manufacturing the keys to powering artificial intelligence called graphics processing units, or GPUs.”
“SpaceX also said it would assemble a specialized salesforce and send employees known as forward deployed engineers to embed directly with customers to help their workforces embrace AI.”
“We believe that our enterprise strategy, which is focused on serving the digital needs of the world’s largest industries with Al solutions, positions us competitively to pursue this rapidly growing opportunity,” SpaceX said in the filing.”
“One source familiar with the financials of the company was not convinced.”
“If you decide I’m going to be really sober about this and only value the businesses that I can actually see, you’re not going to be in the ballpark of what the market will almost certainly set the valuation to be,” the source said.”
But there’s a few more weeks to the June IPO. So we’ll see where it all settles out.
For now, consider that the current filing is targeting a record public market valuation. With fundamentals that may secure the current business and their realities at a valuation a third of that at best. That’s just this one analyst’s take (Again, note, none of this is financial advice).
But the $1.75+ trillion asked for valuation does confound even ‘optimistic about the tech future’ type of financial analysis. And stretches valuation methodologies of most active investors.
Even card-carrying former Internet Analysts, like yours truly.
Passive investors via index funds are another matter, which is why Elon is leaning hard on the index companies to include this IPO into them in days. Rather than the normal seasoning of most IPOs in the public domain for at least a year. It’s a topic I’ve written and discussed under the title “We are the Geese”. Being force-fed SpaceX/Xai into our passive long term investment plans despite the fundamentals not matching the realities in the near-term.
All of this is useful to consider as we look at the other mega-AI IPOs ahead this year. This AI Tech Wave in 2026 is going to make us all read a few prospectus filings in the months before the year is out. Stay tuned.
(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)
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