SpaceX reportedly targets IPO and tests $800B valuation

SpaceX might finally be ready to take off. Not another Starlink batch or Starship test – a real debut on the public markets, with a timetable and a sticker price attached.

Elon Musk’s company has, according to The Information, asked investors to circle the second half of 2026 for a possible IPO – while Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said the company was preparing a secondary stock sale that would value the company at around $800 billion, roughly double the price buyers agreed to in a tender earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg, however, says some of these insider sales could actually reach around $300 per share, which is closer to $560 billion, making it as much a matter of negotiating posture as the deal being struck.

The scenario was discussed at a Starbase board meeting in Texas, but it is still term sheet territory, not prospectus territory, and final plans will depend on how many sellers and buyers are actually there.

SpaceX has made a habit of issuing semi-regular tenders so that employees and early backers can turn paper wealth into real money without waiting for a quote. The company holds a version of these insider sales about every six months, a sort of pressure valve for a cap table that keeps inflating privately.

An $800 billion target takes SpaceX out of the $250 billion to $400 billion range in which it brokers private deals and puts it in mega-cap territory, alongside companies that are legally required to release audited financial statements every quarter. The move would also push SpaceX beyond OpenAI’s recent valuation of $500 billion and allow it to reclaim the (unofficial) crown of the world’s most valuable startup – taking the title away from Musk’s rival, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The IPO plan around this alleged $800 billion figure is ambitious. For years, the working assumption in bankers’ presentations — thanks largely to hints from Musk himself — was that Starlink would come out first, providing a great story about satellite internet, while the rocket business would remain private. The latest plan presented to investors goes in the opposite direction: a combined listing that lumps rockets, Starlink, government contracts and everything else into a single “space infrastructure” pitch and asks public markets to price the whole thing at SpaceX-scale multiples.

Musk said the space sector would list when its growth was “smooth and predictable.” Starlink is about as close as the company gets to that description; analysts now put its annual cost at around $12 billion thanks to millions of subscribers paying for broadband in war zones, agricultural fields, cruise ships and places where terrestrial telecommunications never bothered to reach. Internally and on his social media site,

At Tesla’s annual meeting last month, Musk told shareholders that “at some point SpaceX should become a public company” and said he was looking for a way for Tesla holders to own SpaceX stock. Between that line, the $800 billion dress rehearsal, and the end-2026 target, investors now have more than rumors to hang their models on — even if there’s still no S-1, no exchange chosen, and plenty of regulatory and policy challenges ahead for a rocket-telecommunications hybrid that also happens to be a key U.S. defense contractor. A lot can happen in the markets between now and the end of 2026. Given SpaceX’s continued secondary sales, it could be as much about liquidity as planting a flag on the $800 billion hill.

Now, SpaceX is effectively asking development-stage investors to swallow another double in less than six months — pricing it in a future where Starship operates, Starlink makes money at the telecommunications level, and governments continue to write very big checks for launch and space infrastructure. The company might finally be ready to take off as a stock; the real question is whether public investors are ready to embark at this altitude.