SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) has gone public with a reputation as a rocket company, but its own IPO filing is pointing investors elsewhere: to AI.
The preliminary prospectus begins with a huge market opportunity diagram that speaks volumes. SpaceX said it has identified “the largest viable total market size in human history,” and expects the opportunity to reach $28.5 trillion.
This number should be treated with caution. Total addressable market refers to the total revenue opportunity a company sees in the market, and does not predict how much profit it will actually earn. In IPO filings, it’s part math and part sales pitch.
SpaceX wants investors to know about AI teeth It’s a chance.
According to SpaceX, $26.5 trillion of that total is in AI, compared to $1.6 trillion in connectivity and $370 billion in space. The rocket company is telling Wall Street that the biggest prize may not be a rocket.
The rocket business remains the bedrock of SpaceX’s story.
SpaceX’s flagship rocket family, Falcon, was launched 96 times in 2023, 134 times in 2024, and 165 times in 2025. Add in Starship, a large rocket system SpaceX is developing for heavier payloads and deep space missions, and SpaceX completed a total of 170 missions last year.
The company also plans to launch more than 2,200 tons into orbit by 2025, which is more than 80% of the mass orbiting Earth. To put it simply, SpaceX says it carried most of the world’s orbital payloads by weight last year, which shows how dominant its launch systems have become.
This scale forms the basis for the rest of the filing. It supports Starlink, which is the most obvious commercial engine in the prospectus.
Starlink subscribers grew from 2.3 million in 2023 to 4.4 million in 2024, 8.9 million in 2025, and 10.3 million in the first quarter of 2026.
The same graph shows the trade-off. Average monthly revenue per user fell from $99 in 2023 to $66 in the latest quarter, a sign that Starlink is rapidly adding users as it moves into lower-cost markets and plans.
Next is the actual expenditure.
SpaceX’s capital expenditures, or funds spent on building and expanding its operations, were $4.4 billion in 2023, $11.2 billion in 2024, and $20.7 billion in 2025. Annualized for the first quarter of 2026, the pace would be nearly $40 billion, nearly double last year and consistent with the past two annual increases.
AI is driving that progress. SpaceX’s AI capital spending increased from $463 million in 2023 to $12.7 billion in 2025. At the pace of the first quarter, AI will account for the majority of the company’s investment spending this year.
This changes the way investors should read filings.
