--- title: "SpaceX Stock May Actually Be a Horrendous Investment" description: "The numbers on the wildly anticipated SpaceX public offering are unbelievable, even by Elon Musk's standards." date: "2026-05-22" modified: "2026-05-22" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/spacex-stock-horrendous-investment-ipo" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Finance" - "Future Society" - "Space" - "SpaceX" - "The Industrialists" --- # SpaceX Stock May Actually Be a Horrendous Investment ![Elon Musk walking on a red carpet outdoors, accompanied by several men in black suits. The background includes stone steps and greenery, with a white vehicle visible in the distance.]() *Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty; Futurism* Elon Musk has just pulled back the curtain on the biggest public stock offering in history, and the numbers are ghastly. SpaceX, which is expected to [go public on Nasdaq]() in June, just released the [first round]() of financial summaries all companies are required to share when they're about to sell stock to the public for the first time. The documents reveal Musk is targeting a raise of at least $80 billion — for a proposed valuation of $1.75 trillion — which would immediately make the rocket company one of the top 10 most valuable conglomerates in the US, [*Axios* calculated](). With that kind of valuation in mind, one might expect SpaceX to be massively profitable going into its debut — but that'd be dead wrong. According to the financial statement, the company lost $4.9 billion in 2025, even though it brought in around $18.7 billion in revenue. It's not like that situation is about to turn around in time for the IPO, either: over the first three months of 2026, SpaceX posted further net losses of $4.3 billion. As analyst [Scott Melker pointed out](), SpaceX wants investors to believe the company will someday make 93 times what it currently makes in a year. To understand why that's absolutely nuts, just peep the numbers from the previous IPO record holder, Saudi Aramco, the state oil company of Saudi Arabia. Commonly understood to be the [most profitable corporation]() on Earth, Aramco went public in 2019. When it did, investors accepted a valuation about 6 times more than what Aramco made in yearly sales, raising $26 billion for a valuation of $1.7 trillion, as [one analyst noted](). SpaceX is asking for about 15 times more than that. "Bro, have you seen inflation lately? Ketamine is expensive!" one [stock analyst razzed]() on X-formerly-Twitter (that platform, by the way, has all but imploded under Musk's leadership, with revenue down around [59 percent]() compared to 2021, the year before he took over). To justify its wild revenue ambitions, SpaceX estimates its total addressable market — the maximum money it could make if everything goes perfectly — at [$28.5 trillion](). Of that, nearly 80 percent is attributed to the imaginary landscape of "enterprise applications," which the document describes as a buffet of various Earth-shattering AI tools that have yet to be built, including one agentic AI platform called "Macrohard." Put it all together, and the numbers only work if you put your faith in unprecedented earnings from technology that doesn't even exist, in a market as infinite and uncharted as outer space itself. More on investments: *[It Seems a Lot Like Trump Accidentally Invested $1 Million in a Conveyor Belt Sushi Restaurant Thinking It Was an AI Hardware Company]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()