June 11 (Reuters) - SpaceX's market debut on Friday is expected to be the largest-ever IPO, capping the meteoric rise of a company that has reshaped the space business with reusable rockets and internet beamed from orbit and which now targets space-based AI.
Aiming for a $1.75 trillion valuation that would instantly rank it among the world's most valuable companies, SpaceX is pitching itself as humanity's ticket to Mars.
Its financials, though, show a company whose aggressive spending on computing power for AI and developing a new rocket has overwhelmed the profits from its Starlink satellite internet service.
Here are six charts that illustrate its business:
AI LOSSES OUTWEIGH BOOST FROM STARLINK
Last year, SpaceX's sales rose 33% to $18.67 billion, with Starlink accounting for about 60% of the total thanks to its about 10.3 million users across 9,600 satellites.
But merging with the money-losing xAI pushed the company to a net loss of $4.94 billion last year, from a profit of $791 million in 2024, when the explosive growth of Starlink and its reusable rocket launch business powered earnings.
SPACEX'S LAUNCH CADENCE SETS IT APART FROM RIVALS
SpaceX has gone from a single launch in 2006 to more than two every week, far outpacing rivals and making it the go-to launch partner for NASA and the Pentagon.
Its reusable Falcon 9 has powered that surge, while the larger, still-in-development Starship is intended to carry crew and cargo on an unprecedented scale.
Falcon Heavy essentially combines three Falcon 9 boosters to form one of the world's most powerful rockets. It is capable of lifting 64 metric tons to low-Earth orbit and currently launches heavy military satellites and interplanetary probes.
XAI TRAILS AI RIVALS ANTHROPIC, OPENAI
SpaceX's biggest addressable market, it says, is AI. In February, SpaceX acquired xAI and united two key parts of Musk's business empire. But by many measures, xAI is behind rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
A recent report from finance startup Ramp showed that more than 30% of its business customers were paying for Anthropic's and OpenAI's AI services in April, with the Claude Code creator overtaking OpenAI for the first time, while xAI's adoption remained around 5%.
The data — based on Ramp's analysis of spending by about 50,000 customers — only captures a small slice of spending by big enterprises on AI, an area where Anthropic is believed to be the market leader.
SPACEX IS RAISING FUNDS AT A PRICEY MULTIPLE
Investors in the SpaceX IPO are being asked to pay a premium that dwarfs the multiples at which some of the most valuable tech companies trade. At $135 per share, SpaceX would trade at a trailing price-to-sales multiple of roughly 94 — above companies such as Nvidia, Amazon and Meta and closer to pure-play space peers such as Planet Labs and Rocket Lab, which trade at 50.4 and 115.4, respectively, despite being younger companies.
Since SpaceX generated a loss last year, it cannot be compared on a price-to-earnings ratio.
STARSHIP WILL LIFT SPACEX'S LAUNCH CAPACITY
The case for that premium rests partly on Starship, which is designed to be reusable and carry over 100 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, more than any other rocket flying today. This would be crucial not just to SpaceX's launch business but also to its ambitions to put AI data centers in orbit.
Current SpaceX rockets, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, can carry about 22.8 metric tons and 63.8 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, respectively.
The Starship's test flight in May marked a major milestone ahead of the IPO, successfully deploying mock satellites and completing a controlled Indian Ocean splashdown despite minor engine issues.
(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
