You Know It’s Overpriced. You’re Buying Anyway: What SpaceX IPO Says About Us More Than SpaceX

It was a strange day in financial history. SpaceX - Elon Musk's rocket company - just listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX at $135 a share, implying a valuation of $1.77 trillion. That makes it the largest stock market debut in human history. Bigger than Saudi Aramco. Bigger than Alibaba. Bigger than anything that came before.

And yet, if you spent the last few weeks paying attention, you'd have every reason not to touch it.

The company lost nearly $5 billion last year. It recently absorbed xAI - Musk's artificial intelligence venture - which is itself burning cash at pace. Morningstar, one of the most respected investment research firms in the world, valued SpaceX at $780 billion and warned retail investors that this is not a good entry point. A Danish pension fund blacklisted the stock entirely, calling its governance structure 'catastrophic' and the valuation 'grossly overvalued.'

And then there's the man at the top. As SpaceX was preparing to list this morning in New York, Musk was on X encouraging violent anti-immigrant rioters in Northern Ireland to keep burning cars and houses. Through a dual-class share structure, he controls roughly 85% of the voting power of the entire company. Public shareholders get the financial exposure. Musk keeps all the control.

Why Are People Still Buying?

The short answer: because SpaceX is genuinely unlike anything else you can buy on a stock exchange. Starlink - the satellite internet business - is profitable, growing fast, and has no real competitor at scale. It already connects ships, planes, remote villages, and war zones. It is, quietly, one of the most important infrastructure businesses built this century. During SpaceX's roadshow, a deal with Google was announced that more than doubled the company's revenue projections for 2026. One portfolio manager estimates SpaceX could reach $200 billion in revenue by 2030 - a figure he himself calls 'conservative.'

Beyond Starlink, there's the Starship rocket - the most powerful launch vehicle ever built - which could fundamentally reshape how humans move things into space, how satellites are deployed, and eventually how humans reach Mars. SpaceX's valuation also factors in Musk's ambition to launch and operate data centres in orbit to power AI workloads. From any other company, that would sound like science fiction. From SpaceX, investors are less sure it's impossible.

The 'You Can't Get This Anywhere Else' Premium

There's a specific kind of premium that markets award to things that are truly one-of-a-kind. Apple has it. Nvidia has it right now. SpaceX is claiming it too.

On crypto derivative markets - where traders can bet on the stock price before it officially opens - SPCX was trading at a 36% premium above the IPO price as of this morning, implying a valuation close to $2.4 trillion. That's speculative, yes. But it reflects something real: a huge, global investor base that has been locked out of SpaceX for years and is finally getting a chance in.

One retail investor, when asked why he was buying despite the risks, called it 'the Super Bowl of IPOs.' He wasn't buying because he thought it was cheap. He was buying because he didn't want to miss it. That fear of missing out is real. And, in a strange way, rational - if SpaceX executes even a fraction of what it's promising, the current valuation could look modest in a decade.

The Honest Risk Nobody Wants to Say Loudly

Here's what gets buried under all the excitement: The price very little to do with what the business is actually worth right now. Segment-level Starlink margins and AI unit economics won't get a real read until the first quarterly earnings report. The first move in SPCX will be dominated by supply and demand mechanics - not fundamentals.

There's also a wall of insider and employee shares that begins unlocking in late 2026 - exactly when retail sentiment is likely to be at its hottest. A great company can still be a terrible investment if you buy into a wave of incoming sell pressure. Morningstar's point deserves to be said plainly: at $1.75 trillion, you are paying nearly double what a rigorous cash flow analysis says the company is worth.

And SpaceX is not just an aerospace company anymore. With xAI folded in, investors are now also underwriting a loss-making AI business whose competitive position against OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic remains unproven. Musk's governance - total control, no checks, a dual-class structure that makes shareholder activism impossible - means that if something goes wrong, there's no mechanism to course-correct.

So What Does All of This Tell Us?

It tells us that SpaceX has pulled off something extraordinary - not just technologically, but financially. It has made itself so indispensable, so genuinely unique, and so emotionally compelling that investors are willing to set aside governance red flags, ignore a loss-making balance sheet, dismiss independent valuation warnings, and queue up anyway.

That's not irrational exactly. It's a bet that the future SpaceX is building is real - and that getting in early, even at a steep price, beats watching from the sidelines. But it's also worth remembering that every great company that ever disappointed investors had a story this compelling. The premium you pay going in is the first thing that has to be earned back.

SpaceX may well earn it. The rockets are real. The satellites work. The ambition is genuine. The question isn't whether the company is extraordinary.

The question is whether $1.77 trillion - on the day of the IPO, before a single quarterly report has been filed - is the right price for extraordinary. That, history suggests, is a question best answered slowly.

(Kartikay Bhardwaj writes on markets, technology, and capital.)