SpaceX’s $2 Trillion IPO: Rockets Are No Longer the Whole Story. How Does China Respond?
Forget the symbolic moon race — the more urgent US-China competition is over the commercialization of space infrastructure.
This piece was published in Chinese on April 3, 2026.
SpaceX has filed a confidential IPO application. Meanwhile, China is convening a national conference on space-based computing power. Forget the symbolic moon race — the more urgent US-China competition is over the commercialization of space infrastructure.
If all goes well, SpaceX will go public in June. This would be the first mega-IPO of 2026 — ahead of both OpenAI and Anthropic. For the first time, space infrastructure will be systematically priced in public markets. On the critical technology of reusable launch vehicles, China’s commercial space sector still trails by at least a decade. But Chinese companies are racing to capital markets at full speed.
Compared to SpaceX’s vertically integrated model, China’s commercial space industry today looks more like a disaggregated supply chain — one that has yet to produce a dominant “chain leader” capable of anchoring pricing and radiating influence across the entire sector.
The $2 Trillion Protagonist
Bloomberg has reported that SpaceX is targeting a $2 trillion valuation — which would immediately make it the world’s sixth most valuable company, surpassing both Meta and Tesla among the “Magnificent Seven.”
Just two months ago, SpaceX completed its merger with xAI, which had previously acquired X (formerly Twitter). At the time, this combined entity — spanning AI and large language models, social media and information distribution, and space data and energy infrastructure — was valued at roughly $1.25 trillion. In barely two months, that figure has surged 60%.
The market’s generous valuation clearly isn’t just about SpaceX’s near-monopoly in launch services and Starlink. Those two businesses are expected to generate about $18 billion in revenue this year. xAI, despite pivoting aggressively toward coding and enterprise services, is projected to bring in under $1 billion in revenue this year — with significant losses.
Because this is a confidential filing, the market doesn’t yet know what Musk has up his sleeve. But on Polymarket, most bettors have already chosen to believe.
Investors will have to wait to learn how Starship will consume SpaceX’s cash, how xAI fits into the corporate structure, and crucially — whether the IPO prospectus will signal deeper capital integration with Tesla. Tesla currently has a market cap exceeding $1.35 trillion, but appears to be retreating from its ambition to be the world’s leading EV company. Facing BYD’s global offensive, Tesla has been forced to defend the US market, with annual revenue declining for the first time. It still has robotics and energy storage — but perhaps the real play is going to space.
In March, Musk pitched the market on Terafab — a mega-scale chip fabrication facility targeting 1 terawatt of annual capacity, integrating logic chips, memory chips, and advanced packaging under one roof. Eighty percent of its output would serve space missions. It would be jointly operated by Tesla and SpaceX, giving xAI “a future among the stars.”
SpaceX has already applied to the FCC for an orbital data center plan involving one million satellites, and has outlined a vision for future petawatt-scale (1,000 TW) lunar data centers. This may be the real secret behind the $2 trillion price tag.
That secret may not stay hidden for long. Under US securities practice, companies typically must make their prospectus public roughly 15 days before the roadshow. Bloomberg reports that SpaceX will release “testing-the-waters” briefings this month, potentially revealing more details supporting its sky-high valuation.
SpaceX reportedly aims to raise $75 billion in the IPO — not only shattering all records but potentially creating a massive “siphon effect” on capital markets, pulling vast sums from the terrestrial economy into the space economy.
Innovation capital driven by scarcity tends to flow toward wherever the next constraint is about to be broken. In this sense, a $2 trillion opening bid may encode the very economic logic Musk sketched in his FCC filings: breaking free of Earth’s scarcity constraints.
The Logic of Scarcity
Energy efficiency and carbon constraints form the key departure point for the space economy narrative. In Musk’s framework, humanity’s fundamental problem isn’t how to allocate scarce resources — it’s how to eliminate scarcity itself. And at the end of scarcity lies energy.
By SpaceX’s estimates, global data center electricity consumption will more than double by 2035 due to AI growth, reaching approximately 1,200–1,700 terawatt-hours — about 4% of global electricity use. Building the power plants and energy infrastructure on Earth to meet this new demand will be extraordinarily difficult, especially in the United States.
Musk understands energy, and he understands American manufacturing. He’s right on this. Since the start of the year, multiple reports from the energy and infrastructure sectors have flagged — from different statistical angles — that America’s unprecedented data center construction boom is slowing. In 2026, roughly 12 gigawatts of data center capacity is scheduled to come online in the US, but only about one-third is actually under construction, and an estimated 30–50% will face delays.
It is precisely under these constraints that space is becoming a realistic option. In Musk’s view, orbital data centers are the most efficient way to meet accelerating AI compute demand. Space offers nearly unlimited solar energy — humanity’s energy harvest from the sun could leap from the terawatt scale to the petawatt scale. It’s a paradise for compute-energy co-location.
The hard part is escaping Earth’s physical constraints to get there. But this, Musk argues, is entirely solvable through engineering. That’s what reusable rocket technology is for.
The Falcon 9’s reuse record now stands at 34 flights — effectively multiplying capacity by more than 30x. This has made Wright’s Law (costs declining with cumulative production) applicable to spaceflight, pressing the accelerator on an industry that had seen little innovation for decades.
Current pricing: Falcon 9 commercial launches are quoted at roughly $74 million per flight, translating to about $3,000/kg to low Earth orbit. Starship commercial launches are quoted at roughly $90 million per flight, or about $600/kg.
These costs remain high. Modeling by space manufacturing company Varda shows that at ~$500/kg launch costs, building gigawatt-scale orbital data centers would still cost roughly four times as much as terrestrial equivalents. But the market is betting the cost curve will keep falling.
Not everyone is convinced. Musk’s rival Sam Altman has dismissed orbital computing as “completely impractical at this stage.” OpenAI is instead betting big on nuclear fusion innovation, having signed power agreements with Altman-backed startup Helion for 5 GW by 2030 and 50 GW by 2035. In its own way, this too is exploring new paths through scarcity.
SpaceX’s Near-Monopoly — Born of Scarcity
SpaceX’s dominance in the space economy is itself a product of scarcity. Starlink fills a structural gap: reliable, high-speed connectivity in remote areas and in maritime and aviation contexts.
Rather than saying China “lags behind” in commercial space, it might be more accurate to say that China’s terrestrial communications and energy infrastructure has been too successful — so much so that, for a long time, space simply wasn’t an urgent industrial problem.
Closing the Launch Gap — Then What?
Once the space economy becomes real, the scarcity China faces starts to truly show. Closing the launch capability gap is only the first step.
China is accelerating. In its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), commercial space has been designated a new strategic industry. Satellite internet is classified as “new-type infrastructure,” and deep space exploration is listed as a frontier technology priority. Earlier this year, China submitted orbital filings to the International Telecommunication Union for over 200,000 satellites. Today, the “Space Computing Power Special Committee” was formally established, identifying ten major R&D priorities. 2026 will be a critical inflection point for Chinese commercial space.
Reusable launch technology is entering an intensive validation phase, and capital is converging accordingly. CAS Space (中科宇航), which has already had its IPO application accepted, plans to raise ¥4.2 billion ($610 million),¹ with more than half earmarked for reusable rockets. LandSpace (蓝箭航天) plans to raise ¥7.5 billion ($1.09 billion),¹ with nearly all of it going toward reusable technology R&D and capacity expansion.
The countdown to ending SpaceX’s decade-plus monopoly on reusable launch technology has begun. But the core challenge isn’t launch capability — it’s industrial structure.
What Chinese commercial space truly lacks is a “chain leader” — a company capable of anchoring the entire industry, setting prices, and driving technology integration, the way BYD does for EVs or DJI does for drones.
This structural gap is starkly visible today. China’s commercial space sector remains primarily focused on filling the launch capacity deficit. In terms of revenue, both LandSpace and CAS Space derive virtually all of their income from launch services. Under this structure, they will inevitably face commercialization constraints: single revenue streams, sensitivity to demand fluctuations, difficulty accumulating durable value — and little ability to evolve into true industry integrators.
By contrast, SpaceX has already made the critical leap. Through vertical integration, it is not merely a launch provider but the “chain leader” of America’s path to the space economy. Dozens of startups have built their business models around SpaceX’s launch services and Starlink — and eventually, perhaps, its orbital data centers. Over the past decade, US investors have placed at least $8 billion in bets on nearly 50 such startups. SpaceX has also been acquiring to fill gaps in its core capabilities.
In the US, publicly listed companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace have already moved beyond the “Phase 1” launch-centric model. Like SpaceX, they are deliberately reducing their dependence on launch revenue. Rocket Lab generated roughly $600 million in revenue last year, with launch services accounting for less than 30% — the majority now comes from space systems, a capability built through multiple acquisitions. Firefly generated roughly $160 million in revenue, and through its acquisition of SciTec, has moved into AI-driven defense software.
The Big Question
China’s commercial space capital and supply side are expanding in parallel. Amid this wave, will a company emerge that defines the industry’s value center?
¹ Currency conversions use an approximate exchange rate of ¥6.88 = $1 USD, as of April 3, 2026.