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I'm genuinely waiting to see at what the valuation lands at. The gap between what SpaceX charges per launch and what everyone else charges is so wide that the m

I'm genuinely waiting to see at what the valuation lands at. The gap between what SpaceX charges per launch and what everyone else charges is so wide that the moat basically is the rocket. Hard to compare against anything even now.

bmau5 6mo ago
Valuations are always more of an art than a science but in what world is SpaceX worth more than Meta today? Maybe the $1.75T is to find that world.
- convexly 6mo ago
  The valuation only makes sense if you price in Starlink becoming a top 3 telecom and Starship opening up entirely new markets. Possible, sure, but the launch business alone doesn't get you anywhere near 1.75T. They're betting the multiple on revenue lines that don't fully exist yet.
  - kranke155 6mo ago
    Yep the only way it makes sense is a combo of Starlink + AI data centers in space in 10 years.
    - pilgrim0 6mo ago
      Which is a synonym for impossible. As far as the latest serious analyses have shown, data centers in space are a pipe dream. Starlink’s total addressable market was also shown to be way smaller than expected. The IPO in this case just signals they’re desperate for liquidity and with no clear path to profitability, if you discount unlikely, major breakthroughs happening very soon. They’re changing the rules of stock indexes just to shove SpaceX in. It goes to show how far the establishment is willing to go to save face. Elon’s company going under would poke an unpatchable hole in the US entrepreneurial mythology. They can’t afford that right now and they rather crash the whole economy.
      - ericd 6mo ago
        Could you link to those serious analyses? The ones I've seen don't portray it as a total impossibility? Scott Manley did a runthrough that seemed reasonably positive on the possibility.
        pilgrim0 6mo ago
        Try this one. You need to parse the hard data from all the speculation. So draw your own conclusions. https://www.aravolta.com/blog/datacenters-in-space https://www.aravolta.com/blog/datacenters-in-space As it stands, most if not all institutional and journalistic research around this topic I would consider compromised because they’re in some way or another financially interested in this becoming the next big thing. Aravolta included. That’s why most articles will counter each hard constraint with a handful of hopeful speculations. As for pure scientific analysis, like the Scott Manley one, they tend to entertain themselves too much with the physics and mathematics and forget the economics behind it all. Take Google’s own paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468) that estimates that launch costs, just to roughly match data center energy costs on earth, would need to reach 200USD/kg, which requires a 10 fold cost reduction relative to the current launch costs of Falcon 9. And that is to launch a _disposable_ server into orbit, that will disintegrate after a few years and likely have hardware failures well before that. And these servers are not anything like a “data center”, and they won’t run the applications that we are already scrambling to find demand in earth. No, these would theoretically run some ultra-niche, highly experimental workloads maybe for NASA or the military. That alone can’t possibly justify the investment, at least not for the retail investor that actually expects a positive ROI. Nevertheless the tech elite and their pet journalists are more than happy to sell this fantasy to the average people. Hell, I’m still waiting for Project Natick to materialize, Microsoft’s data center on the ocean, which makes far, far more sense than data centers on frigging space. Still they didn’t manage to make that one work in any meaningful sense.
        ericd 6mo ago
        Thanks, I took a look, couple things - the inlet temp on the VR is 45 C, but that’s not the radiator operating temp, you can probably run those chips closer to 90-100 C. And they’re building custom silicon for this, presumably that’ll be one of their design targets. Also, most bit flips should be fine when you’re running inference, you’re presumably running with some randomness anyway. If a node fails/becomes too unreliable, it can be detected and shut off. Idk, building in the ocean seems a lot harder to me than space. Salt water is ridiculously corrosive, extreme pressure, etc. And one of the main justifications for this is massively increasing the output of solar and making it consistently output its nameplate capacity, which space is great for, and ocean is terrible for. The only benefit for that one I can see is some power savings on cooling, and a whole boatload of drawbacks, whereas we might not be able to keep up with demand with terrestrial power. So I can totally see why they never bothered to complete their subsea datacenter. They’re definitely not aiming to put niche applications up, they want to run models by the bucketful. I don’t see how the economics make it impossible? To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s something that’s going to end up happening, I have no idea if it will, but I don’t see how it’s structurally impossible, and I can see some things to commend it if token usage volumes grow like I think they will.
- bpodgursky 6mo ago
  I mean... in what world is it worth less? Meta has increasingly ephemeral digital mindshare and no AI play. SpaceX has a near monopoly on access to the rest of the galaxy.
  - convexly 6mo ago
    The question for me is just timeline. The "rest of the galaxy" revenue is decades out, while Starlink revenue is now. Most of the 1.75T has to be priced on Starlink working at telecom scale. If not, 1.75T seems like a steal for the first true "Universal" investment...
- paxys 6mo ago
  In the same world where Tesla is worth more than every other automaker in the world combined.
notahacker 6mo ago
That feels like a surprisingly weak moat though; costs have already fallen to the point where launch isn't the biggest cost of space hardware any more, the competition is hotting up, and whilst launch costs give Starlink an advantage over other LEO satcomms constellations, other countries have strategic incentives to underwrite the existence of that competition, and once those assets have been sent to space it's a straight fight for subscribers in a remote broadband connectivity market which is definitely real but also looks... actually not that huge, relative to a trillion dollar valuation, unless they're able to drop their prices to wired broadband levels without service degradation. Launch cadence is a bigger advantage for SpaceX than cost, but again something other entities plausibly will match, when the demand is there. The real question is what comes first: viable commercial large scale infrastructure in space that might create new demand for SpaceX launches, or the competition? SpaceX is pitching their own orbital data centres as a ready to go source of demand for lots and lots of Starship launches, but the unit economics of those vs boring old ground-based server racks and solar farms look dubious even before one considers just how convenient a justification it is rolling Elon's loss making businesses into the IPO.
- convexly 6mo ago
  The cadence point is understated. SpaceX launched 130+ times in 2025. The next closest was around 15. That's not a gap that closes in 2-3 years even with heavy subsidies, because it's not just the rocket, you need to account for the operational framework of doing it every 3 days.
  - notahacker 6mo ago
    the cadence is very important, but I don't think the operational framework is much of a moat (not having reusability and/or actual demand is a bigger obstacle to overcome). SpaceX went from 30 to >130 between 2021 and 2024, launching most of the satellites currently in orbit in the process. You don't do that without pre-planning or being very very good at what you do, but most of the competition (including those that will fail) is targeting that. They don't need to scale as big or as fast as SpaceX to deliver enough comms satellites to orbit to kill any hopes of Starlink becoming a permanent low-latency connectivity monopolist. Plus of course most competitors in the connectivity space are able to spend a fraction of their overall hardware budget launching on SpaceX...

bmau5 6mo ago

Valuations are always more of an art than a science but in what world is SpaceX worth more than Meta today? Maybe the $1.75T is to find that world.

convexly 6mo ago
The valuation only makes sense if you price in Starlink becoming a top 3 telecom and Starship opening up entirely new markets. Possible, sure, but the launch business alone doesn't get you anywhere near 1.75T. They're betting the multiple on revenue lines that don't fully exist yet.
- kranke155 6mo ago
  Yep the only way it makes sense is a combo of Starlink + AI data centers in space in 10 years.
  - pilgrim0 6mo ago
    Which is a synonym for impossible. As far as the latest serious analyses have shown, data centers in space are a pipe dream. Starlink’s total addressable market was also shown to be way smaller than expected. The IPO in this case just signals they’re desperate for liquidity and with no clear path to profitability, if you discount unlikely, major breakthroughs happening very soon. They’re changing the rules of stock indexes just to shove SpaceX in. It goes to show how far the establishment is willing to go to save face. Elon’s company going under would poke an unpatchable hole in the US entrepreneurial mythology. They can’t afford that right now and they rather crash the whole economy.
    - ericd 6mo ago
      Could you link to those serious analyses? The ones I've seen don't portray it as a total impossibility? Scott Manley did a runthrough that seemed reasonably positive on the possibility.
      - pilgrim0 6mo ago
        Try this one. You need to parse the hard data from all the speculation. So draw your own conclusions. https://www.aravolta.com/blog/datacenters-in-space https://www.aravolta.com/blog/datacenters-in-space As it stands, most if not all institutional and journalistic research around this topic I would consider compromised because they’re in some way or another financially interested in this becoming the next big thing. Aravolta included. That’s why most articles will counter each hard constraint with a handful of hopeful speculations. As for pure scientific analysis, like the Scott Manley one, they tend to entertain themselves too much with the physics and mathematics and forget the economics behind it all. Take Google’s own paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468) that estimates that launch costs, just to roughly match data center energy costs on earth, would need to reach 200USD/kg, which requires a 10 fold cost reduction relative to the current launch costs of Falcon 9. And that is to launch a _disposable_ server into orbit, that will disintegrate after a few years and likely have hardware failures well before that. And these servers are not anything like a “data center”, and they won’t run the applications that we are already scrambling to find demand in earth. No, these would theoretically run some ultra-niche, highly experimental workloads maybe for NASA or the military. That alone can’t possibly justify the investment, at least not for the retail investor that actually expects a positive ROI. Nevertheless the tech elite and their pet journalists are more than happy to sell this fantasy to the average people. Hell, I’m still waiting for Project Natick to materialize, Microsoft’s data center on the ocean, which makes far, far more sense than data centers on frigging space. Still they didn’t manage to make that one work in any meaningful sense.
        ericd 6mo ago
        Thanks, I took a look, couple things - the inlet temp on the VR is 45 C, but that’s not the radiator operating temp, you can probably run those chips closer to 90-100 C. And they’re building custom silicon for this, presumably that’ll be one of their design targets. Also, most bit flips should be fine when you’re running inference, you’re presumably running with some randomness anyway. If a node fails/becomes too unreliable, it can be detected and shut off. Idk, building in the ocean seems a lot harder to me than space. Salt water is ridiculously corrosive, extreme pressure, etc. And one of the main justifications for this is massively increasing the output of solar and making it consistently output its nameplate capacity, which space is great for, and ocean is terrible for. The only benefit for that one I can see is some power savings on cooling, and a whole boatload of drawbacks, whereas we might not be able to keep up with demand with terrestrial power. So I can totally see why they never bothered to complete their subsea datacenter. They’re definitely not aiming to put niche applications up, they want to run models by the bucketful. I don’t see how the economics make it impossible? To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s something that’s going to end up happening, I have no idea if it will, but I don’t see how it’s structurally impossible, and I can see some things to commend it if token usage volumes grow like I think they will.
bpodgursky 6mo ago
I mean... in what world is it worth less? Meta has increasingly ephemeral digital mindshare and no AI play. SpaceX has a near monopoly on access to the rest of the galaxy.
- convexly 6mo ago
  The question for me is just timeline. The "rest of the galaxy" revenue is decades out, while Starlink revenue is now. Most of the 1.75T has to be priced on Starlink working at telecom scale. If not, 1.75T seems like a steal for the first true "Universal" investment...
paxys 6mo ago
In the same world where Tesla is worth more than every other automaker in the world combined.

notahacker 6mo ago

That feels like a surprisingly weak moat though; costs have already fallen to the point where launch isn't the biggest cost of space hardware any more, the competition is hotting up, and whilst launch costs give Starlink an advantage over other LEO satcomms constellations, other countries have strategic incentives to underwrite the existence of that competition, and once those assets have been sent to space it's a straight fight for subscribers in a remote broadband connectivity market which is definitely real but also looks... actually not that huge, relative to a trillion dollar valuation, unless they're able to drop their prices to wired broadband levels without service degradation. Launch cadence is a bigger advantage for SpaceX than cost, but again something other entities plausibly will match, when the demand is there. The real question is what comes first: viable commercial large scale infrastructure in space that might create new demand for SpaceX launches, or the competition? SpaceX is pitching their own orbital data centres as a ready to go source of demand for lots and lots of Starship launches, but the unit economics of those vs boring old ground-based server racks and solar farms look dubious even before one considers just how convenient a justification it is rolling Elon's loss making businesses into the IPO.

convexly 6mo ago
The cadence point is understated. SpaceX launched 130+ times in 2025. The next closest was around 15. That's not a gap that closes in 2-3 years even with heavy subsidies, because it's not just the rocket, you need to account for the operational framework of doing it every 3 days.
- notahacker 6mo ago
  the cadence is very important, but I don't think the operational framework is much of a moat (not having reusability and/or actual demand is a bigger obstacle to overcome). SpaceX went from 30 to >130 between 2021 and 2024, launching most of the satellites currently in orbit in the process. You don't do that without pre-planning or being very very good at what you do, but most of the competition (including those that will fail) is targeting that. They don't need to scale as big or as fast as SpaceX to deliver enough comms satellites to orbit to kill any hopes of Starlink becoming a permanent low-latency connectivity monopolist. Plus of course most competitors in the connectivity space are able to spend a fraction of their overall hardware budget launching on SpaceX...