Every year ends with its share of market-shaking whispers, but 2024’s rumor mill has been unusually loud. First came speculation about OpenAI eyeing a 2025 IPO. Now, SpaceX has stepped into the spotlight with talk of a listing that could instantly rewrite financial history books. And unlike the early noise around OpenAI, this one feels materially more advanced. Bankers have been contacted, documents are reportedly moving, and the latest valuation figures are… well, staggering.

Bloomberg broke the story, citing sources close to the process who say SpaceX is preparing to go public in 2026 with a valuation target of roughly $1.5 trillion. If that number feels oversized, it’s because it is. At that scale, the offering would likely become the largest IPO ever, eclipsing Saudi Aramco’s record-breaking debut in 2019.

And yes — that would make SpaceX the first space company to land in trillion-dollar territory before even touching the public markets.

The Record SpaceX Could Break

Let’s talk numbers, because they’re central to why this story matters. The plan, according to Bloomberg and earlier reporting from The Information, involves raising more than $30 billion through the IPO. That would surpass Aramco’s $29 billion haul and instantly position SpaceX among the most valuable companies on Earth.

The logic isn’t hard to follow. SpaceX today is far more than a rocket company. It’s a satellite operator, a commercial launch provider, a core NASA partner, and a future cornerstone of lunar and Martian missions. Starlink alone — the world’s largest satellite internet network — is often rumored to be IPO-ready on its own. For years, analysts believed SpaceX would spin it off. That was the expected path: take the cash-generating connectivity arm public, fuel the rest of the space ambitions privately.

But plans seem to have shifted. Instead of a Starlink-only listing, SpaceX now appears to be preparing to bring the entire business into the public markets. And strategically, that makes sense. Expanding a space empire is expensive. Lunar landing systems, deep-space logistics, interplanetary travel development — these are not Series C-friendly budget lines. A trillion-dollar public valuation unlocks capital at a scale private markets can’t match forever.

A Company Already Moving Toward the Capital Markets

Another puzzle piece is the Wall Street Journal report from earlier this year, detailing a new internal funding round involving employee stock sales. That round pushed SpaceX’s valuation to around $800 billion — effectively laying the groundwork for the trillion-dollar mark and giving investors a preview of how aggressively the company is climbing.

So, where does that put the IPO timeline? Sources suggest somewhere between mid-2026 and late-2026, but with the usual market conditions asterisk. Tech listings, especially megacaps, depend heavily on sentiment. If the markets are volatile, SpaceX may slow its entry. But the preparation phase is underway, meaning the intent is serious.

OpenAI vs. SpaceX: A Tale of Two Mega-IPOs

It’s impossible to talk about SpaceX’s plans without acknowledging the other giant expected to test public markets soon: OpenAI. Just weeks ago, the company behind ChatGPT reportedly hit a $500 billion valuation, overtaking SpaceX for the first time in the “most valuable private company” conversation. OpenAI also faces the demand for enormous capital — training frontier models, building global compute centers, and racing competitors like Anthropic and Google DeepMind.

Rumors suggest OpenAI is also eyeing a late-2025 or 2026 IPO window. If both companies move forward, the market could see two of the most consequential listings in modern tech history within months of each other.

But there’s a notable contrast:
OpenAI is selling a future of intelligence. SpaceX is selling a future of infrastructure.
AI businesses tend to be volatile, shaped by regulatory waves and compute costs. Space businesses, once commercially mature, behave more like utilities — recurring revenue, high barriers to entry, long-term government partnerships. Investors love that kind of predictability.

That’s one reason many analysts view SpaceX’s IPO as potentially more stable than OpenAI’s, even though both numbers are enormous.

Why Combining the Whole SpaceX Ecosystem Makes Sense

It may seem counterintuitive that SpaceX is choosing not to spin off Starlink. After all, Starlink is the closest thing the company has to a traditional cash machine. But combining the businesses into one IPO gives SpaceX:

• Higher valuation leverage
• A more diversified revenue story
• More predictable long-term funding for deep-space missions
• A unified structure for NASA and government partnerships

In other words, it’s a more compelling narrative for public markets — and a simpler one.

What This Means for the Tech and Finance Worlds

If SpaceX moves ahead, 2026 could become one of the most pivotal IPO years since the dot-com era. Not just because of size, but because of what it signals: the return of public-market appetite for ultra-high-growth tech at scale.

SpaceX also sits in a unique category. It’s not an AI company, a software platform, or a fintech — the areas that usually dominate modern IPO waves. Instead, it’s a capital-intensive, infrastructure-heavy, mission-driven enterprise operating at a level no competitor can currently match. Blue Origin isn’t close. China’s state-backed programs aren’t comparable. The European space ecosystem, while sophisticated, doesn’t have a Starlink-like commercial engine.

Reliable reporting from Bloomberg, The Information, The Wall Street Journal, and NASA procurement data all point to the same storyline: SpaceX is entering a maturity phase, and the public markets are the next logical step.

The real question isn’t whether the IPO will be big — it will be historic — but whether it opens the door for a new wave of “hard tech” listings that focus on infrastructure, not just algorithms. Between AI giants like OpenAI and deep-tech titans like SpaceX, 2026 is shaping up to be the year markets rediscover ambition.

For anyone tracking the future of technology, this is the moment to pay attention — and the next two years may redefine the hierarchy of global tech power.