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SpaceX just set a secondary share price of $421.00 per
share, valuing Elon Musk's rocket company at roughly $800
billion. On October, Sam Altman's Open AI
had reached a $500 billion valuation, making it the most
valuable private company in the world.
SpaceX held that title before Open AI took it.
Now Musk is taking it back, and the gap is not even close.
The $800 billion figure comes from an internal tender offer
where employees and early investors can share sell shares
to approved buyers. So what happens when two of the
biggest names in tech are racing each other to the top spot on a
list that did not exist even 10 years ago?
And the rivalry between Musk and Altman started when they Co
founded Open AI together in 2015 that was turned into a public
valuation war. We're going to cover the new
SpaceX numbers, the IPO plans for 2026, why Google is about
the book, a massive paper gain from all of this, and what the
secondary sale tells us about where private tech valuations
are headed. And we'll get right back into
this right after the short break.
Spacex's 800 dollar, $800 billion valuation was discussed
by the company's board at Star Base in Texas.
And the company is also preparing for a possible IPO in
late 2026. They could raise more than $30
billion. If that happens, it would be the
largest public offering ever, beating Saudi Aramco's $29
billion listing in 2019. Now, here's the key point.
This is not a fundraising round. SpaceX has been doing that for
years. SpaceX is not raising new
capital with this transaction. It is a secondary share sale,
which means existing shareholders like employees and
early investors can shell sell their stakes to approved buyers.
Now, SpaceX runs these tender offers twice a year to give
people liquidity. In July, the share price was
$212. Now it's 421.
They doubled it in six months, and the company told
shareholders it's preparing for a 2026 IPO that would fund what
the internal memo called an insane flight rate for the
Starship rocket, artificial intelligent data centers in
space, and a base on the moon. Now, Musk confirmed the IPO
plans on X this week, responding to Eric Berger with the words,
as usual, Eric is accurate. Now, the target valuation for
the IPO is $1.5 trillion. That would put SpaceX in the
same range as Meta or Amazon. All right, let's keep going
here. The October secondary sale at
Open AI valued the company at $500 billion after employees
sold about 6.6 billion in stock to investors, including Thrive
Capital, SoftBank and Abu Dhabi G or MGX.
Now, that deal pushed Open AI past SpaceX, which have been
valued at 400 billion, and Musk let Altman hold that lead for
about two months. Now.
SpaceX is $300 billion ahead now.
The Musk and Altman rivalry runs deeper than valuations, though
runs deeper than money. They Co founded Open AI together
in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, and Musk left in 2018 and
later started his own AI company, XAI.
He since sued Open AI multiple times, accusing it of abandoning
its original nonprofit mission. After taking billions from
Microsoft, Open AI is now restructuring into a for profit
company, which would allow it to pursue its own IPO down the
road. Alphabet, Google's parent
company, is about to book another sizable paper gain money
money because of Spacex's new valuation.
Alphabet has been an investor in SpaceX since at least 2015 and
when it joined Fidelity and a billion dollar funding round for
a combined stake of about 10% at the time.
In April 2025, Alphabet disclosed an $8 billion
unrealized gain tied to its SpaceX investment after a tender
offer valued the company at 350 billion.
Now, that gain helped push Alphabet's quarterly net income
46% higher than the prior year, with SpaceX now valued at more
than double that figure. Investors are expecting another
accounting boost when Alphabet reports earnings.
So what do we know right now? What's going on?
Spaces is expected to generate about $15 billion in revenue in
2025 and between 2020, 22 billion and 24 billion in 2026.
Most of that comes from Starlink, the satellite Internet
service that now has thousands of satellites in orbit and
serves millions of people. The company already launches
more than 80% of global payload weight through its Falcon 9,
which is reusable and reliable enough to handle government
contracts and commercial customers.
And the IPO timeline is not locked in, though SpaceX CFO
Brett Johnson said in an internal memo the timing could
change and the company may decide not to even move forward
with it. Market conditions, regulatory
factors and execution on Starship all play into that
decision. The company had previously
floated the idea of spinning off Starlink for a separate IPO, but
the current plan is to list everything the entire company
that would give public investors exposure to both the launch
business and the satellite Internet business in one
offering. And here's the bigger picture.
This valuation race isn't just about their egos.
Could be between Altman and Elon.
It's about how much money is flowing into frontier technology
companies. SpaceX wants to make life multi
planetary open. EA wants to build artificial
general intelligence. Both ideas sounded like science
fiction about 10 years ago. Now they're attracting hundreds
of billions of dollars in private capital to do those
things. AI, robotics, and defense tech
startups have hit all time highs of multibillion dollar
valuations in this past year, and the SpaceX and Open AI
valuations are the most visible examples.
But they're part of a broader surge now.
The valuation Musk is setting now is designed to level set the
company's fair market value before their IPO.
If the tender offer succeeds at 421 per share and the IPO
proceeds in late 2026, SpaceX would be positioned as one of
the largest public companies in the world.
Alphabet would see its stake jump even higher in value.
Employees who held shares through multiple tender rounds
would be sitting on a lot of money, and Musk would have
reclaimed the title of running the most valuable private
company, at least until the IPO paperwork is filed.
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