How to Invest in SpaceX and Whether or Not You Should

After its blockbuster IPO in June 2026, SpaceX trades on the Nasdaq exchange under ticker symbol SPCX. As a public company, investors can now buy shares in SpaceX via brokers which offer access to the US market. 

In this article, we’ll cover how to invest in SpaceX, examine each of its different businesses and analyse the cases for and against investing in SpaceX.

The information in this article is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions.

What Is SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, SpaceX, was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 to decrease the cost of space launches and with the mission of ultimately “making humanity multiplanetary”. 

Amongst the company's subsequent achievements in the space industry is the successful development of the Falcon 9, the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket. Since its first launch in 2010, SpaceX has launched more than 650 missions with Falcon 9 rockets and has successfully landed its boosters more than 600 times. 

In 2019, SpaceX began diversifying its business, launching satellites for its Starlink satellite internet constellation. Starlink now provides internet services in around 160 countries and territories andalso generates the bulk of SpaceX’s income. 

Diversifying its business even further, in February 2026, the SpaceX xAI merger was completed. Now a subsidiary of SpaceX, xAI houses two notable products: Grok, a generative AI chatbot, and the social media network X.

How Does SpaceX Make Money?

SpaceX generates revenue across three segments: 

• Space: Launch and rocket services 
• Connectivity: Starlink satellite internet and mobile 
• AI: AI Compute Infrastructure, Grok and X 

Its second quarter earnings marked its first earnings announcement as a public company. The table below highlights some of the headline figures from the Q2 earnings report. 

Source: SpaceX – Second Quarter Earnings 2026. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

The results beat analyst expectations on the top and bottom lines. Revenue came in at $7.81 billion versus $6.93 billion expected, whilst its loss per share of 9 cents was considerably shallower than the 26 cents which had been forecast. 

However, capital expenditures soared more than sixfold to $18.37 billion, up from just $2.83 billion a year before, with AI accounting for the vast majority of spending. Analysts had expected total capex of $13.22 billion. 

In the following sections, we’ll take a closer look at SpaceX’s Q2 earnings for each of its reporting segments. 

Space

Space is the company’s original business, building rockets and providing launch services, most notably to the US government, for which it is the primary launch provider. 

The Space segment also provides launch capabilities for SpaceX’s Starlink business. However, it does not book any revenue for these launches, the cost of which are instead capitalised and sit under “Property, plant, and equipment, net” on SpaceX's balance sheet.  

This accounting makes the Space segment appear worse relative to its activity. It provides the launch services which make Starlink possible but doesn’t realise any revenue for it. If it did, this segment would probably look a lot more impressive than it does.

Source: SpaceX – Second Quarter Earnings 2026. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

Connectivity 

Connectivity is SpaceX’s largest segment in terms of revenue; it’s also the only segment which is currently profitable and it appears to be growing quickly.  

At the end of the second quarter of 2026, Starlink had 12 million subscribers, double the six million it had a year before.

Source: SpaceX – Second Quarter Earnings 2026. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

AI

AI houses Grok, the social media platform X and AI infrastructure, including the Colossus supercomputer. 

It’s the smallest of the three segments in terms of revenue and is also where the deepest losses and highest capital expenditures lie. However, it also appears to be the segment where SpaceX envisages the greatest growth opportunities. 

Indeed, in its S-1 filing, SpaceX estimated that it has a Total Addressable Market (TAM) of $28.5 trillion. The vast majority of that figure, $26.5 trillion, is attributed to AI. By contrast, SpaceX estimated a TAM of just $370 billion for “space-enabled solutions”. 

Source: SpaceX – Second Quarter Earnings 2026. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

How to Invest in SpaceX

The steps involved in investing in SpaceX are largely the same regardless of which broker you choose: 

1. Choose a broker, register for an account and complete the onboarding process. 
2. Open your broker’s investment platform.
3. Search for SpaceX stock and open the instrument page. 
4. Create a new order, enter the number of shares you wish to buy and send the order to market. 
5. Monitor your position over time.

Is SpaceX Stock a Good Investment?

Whether or not SpaceX is a good investment boils down to how you think the company will perform over the coming years. 

In the following sections, we will take a look at the potential bull and bear cases for SpaceX. However, please note that this is provided for information purposes only and should not be considered as advice.

The Bull Case

Looking at the business today, Connectivity is the only segment which is currently profitable, and this is where much of the bull case lies at this moment in time. 

Starlink subscribers doubled over the year ended 30 June 2026 and Connectivity recorded an operating margin of almost 40% in Q2. If the business maintains this level of growth and disrupts more traditional telecom services, it could end up generating a lot of income for SpaceX in the future. 

AI is the segment which SpaceX itself points to as its biggest opportunity. Whilst Grok currently lags behind its rivals in terms of capability and adoption, SpaceX is increasingly positioning itself as an infrastructure provider, renting out capacity to other companies. 

It signed $14.1 billion in Cloud Services Agreements in Q2, which helped AI segmental revenue jump almost 250% to $2.56 billion during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA turned positive for the first time, at $1.15 billion.  

Management subsequently set itself a target of reaching $100 billion in annualised recurring revenue by the end of the year across the company, which it expects to be partly driven by its all-stock acquisition of AI coding company Cursor. 

The Bear Case

Possibly the biggest immediate concern for investors is the pace of spending. Capital expenditures soared more than expected in Q2, with the vast majority of spending, $15.83 billion, going towards AI infrastructure. 

The concern for investors is whether this high level of spending will generate a return which justifies it, a concern which is echoed across the industry in general. If returns take a long time to materialise, or don’t materialise in a meaningful way, it is likely to weigh on share price. 

This brings us onto valuation. At the time of writing, SpaceX trades at approximately 80 times trailing 12-month sales. That’s a lofty valuation for any company, particularly one that’s not yet profitable.

It’s not a like-for-like comparison but, for context, the world's three largest companies currently trade at far lower multiples: Nvidia at around 21x and Apple and Alphabet both at around 10x trailing 12-month sales. 

Whether or not this means SpaceX is overvalued is somewhat subjective. Remember, stocks are priced based on expectations of future earnings. So, whether SpaceX’s high price tag is justified depends on investors’ views of how much the business will grow in the coming years. 

Consequently, the question investors need to ask isn’t necessarily whether SpaceX will be successful, but whether it will be successful enough to justify its high price tag. 

SpaceX Lock-Up Period Explained

After a company goes public, there is typically a “lock-up period”, during which insiders cannot sell their shares. It usually lasts 90-180 days and is used to prevent too many shares entering the market at once, giving prices time to stabilise. 

Unlike the more traditional single date approach, SpaceX has a more complex, staggered lock-up period. Instead of insiders being able to sell their stakes after a 180-day period, there is a schedule by which different tranches of shares will become available for sale in the public market on different dates.  

This full schedule lasts for over a year, with different schedules for three different groups of shareholders: 

• The 180-Day Lock-Up Period: Up to 10 staggered releases over 180 days under which up to around 4.7 billion shares will become available. The first release took place on 6 August 2026, when 911.5 million shares of Class A common stock were released from their restrictions. The last tranche of shares should be released on 8 December 2026. For reference, SpaceX initially offered 555.6 million shares in its IPO. 
• The Extended Lock-Up Period: A smaller group of shareholders are subject to an extended arrangement. The extended period will see six staggered releases under which up to around 1.8 billion shares will become eligible for sale on the public market. The first release is scheduled for the second trading day following the release of its Q4 2026 results. The last release is scheduled for the second trading day following the announcement of Q2 2027 results. 
• Elon Musk: SpaceX founder and CEO Musk is subject to a different lock-up period to other shareholders. His shares, up to 6.4 billion of them, are not eligible for sale on the public market until 12 June 2027, 366 days after the IPO.  

Source: SpaceX - S-1 Registration Statement.