Dreaming big: Elon Musk’s $2.5 trillion vision is about to become reality

May 21, 2026 — 12:11pm

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How do you value a vision? Elon Musk, who filed the public prospectus for the initial public offering of his SpaceX overnight, values his at $US1.75 trillion ($2.45 trillion).

It takes imagination, or blind faith in Musk, to assign that magnitude of value – the IPO could capitalise SpaceX at as much as $US2 trillion – to a business that lost $US4.3 billion on revenue of $US4.7 billion in the first three months of this year alone.

The float, however, is occurring amid the frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence and the companies racing to develop it.

With ChatGPT parent OpenAI about to file a prospectus of its own, and Anthropic not far behind it, about $US200 billion could be raised, at company valuations totalling close to $US4 trillion, by three of the leading AI players before the end of this year.

At those valuations given to companies whose expenditures and growth rates far outstrip their revenues – SpaceX’s prospectus shows capital investments of $US10.1 billion in the March quarter alone, compared to $US4.1 billion a year earlier – investors are being asked to capitalise possibility.

And as SpaceX depicts it, the possibilities are vast. It puts the addressable market for the businesses it envisages at $US28.5 trillion!

SpaceX files for IPO, which could make Elon Musk world’s first trillionaire

Musk’s vision involves lunar missions, the colonisation of Mars, solar-powered data centres in space, asteroid mining and manufacturing in outer space.

An IPO that, combined with his Tesla stake, may well make Musk the world’s first trillionaire, could multiply that several times over if he meets the........

© Brisbane Times