The $10 Trillion Bet: Why Insiders Think SpaceX Could Rival Apple by Decade’s End
Bloomberg Businessweek aired a segment on June 2, 2026 in which a guest sketched the outer edge of what SpaceX could be worth by the end of the decade. The figure was $10 trillion. That sits at the top of…
Bloomberg Businessweek aired a segment on June 2, 2026 in which a guest sketched the outer edge of what SpaceX could be worth by the end of the decade. The figure was $10 trillion. That sits at the top of a bull-case range starting at $3 trillion and stepping through $5 trillion.
SpaceX is currently pursuing an IPO that would raise $75 billion at a valuation near $1.8 trillion, already trimmed from earlier marks above $2 trillion. The segment was about what happens after SpaceX goes public. If insiders are right, Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite, and AI conglomerate would pass the current market cap of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction), which sits at $4.590 trillion, and keep going. For retirement-focused holders of QQQ or S&P 500 index funds, the relevant question becomes whether they will own a piece of that bet whether they want to or not.
What the bull case requires
The bull case rests on three businesses operating under one roof. SpaceX generated $4.7 billion in consolidated revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2026, and $18.7 billion in 2025. The Connectivity segment, mostly Starlink, did $11.4 billion of 2025 revenue with year-over-year growth of 49.8%, segment income from operations of $4,423 million, and Segment Adjusted EBITDA of $7,168 million. The Space segment ran a $657 million operating loss while funding $3,004 million in Starship R&D. The newly acquired AI segment did $3.2 billion in 2025 revenue against a $6.35 billion operating loss.
Read those numbers together. Starlink is throwing off cash. Starship is consuming it. The AI segment, which has to do most of the work between $3 trillion and $10 trillion, is still pre-profit and deep in capex. The bet is that vertical integration across launch, connectivity, and compute pays off the way nothing in public markets currently does.
Bull case
Three things have to hold. First, Starlink keeps compounding. The 2025 Connectivity profile, 49.8% revenue growth, 120.4% growth in operating income, and 86.2% Adjusted EBITDA growth, describes a network-effect business still expanding rather than maturing. Over 9,600 Starlink broadband and mobile satellites already serve customers in 164 countries, territories, and other markets.
Second, Starship has to work at the cadence and cost SpaceX is targeting. The $3 billion in 2025 R&D and another $930 million in Q1 2026 are the bet. Reusability lands, and the unit economics of every adjacent business change.
Third, the AI segment justifies the burn. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called the AI buildout “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history.” If he is right, owning the compute, the satellites, the launch capacity, and the model inside one company is a structural edge no public competitor can match. The Bloomberg guest made the index point directly, arguing that “any move in, even modest, in that name will have an impact at the index level,” which echoes what NVIDIA already does to the NASDAQ.
The conviction signal sits inside the IPO math itself. A $1.8 trillion IPO valuation is already below earlier private marks. If insiders genuinely see $10 trillion, they are inviting public investors in at a steep discount to their own ceiling.
What index investors will own
For long-term holders of QQQ, VOO, or any cap-weighted US index fund, SpaceX is no longer a theoretical question. Tech already represents 30.55% of the iShares MSCI World ETF. Adding a name that could rival or exceed Apple by decade’s end reshapes the index from the inside. The forward catalyst is the IPO itself, a $75 billion raise priced around $1.8 trillion.
Whether the bull range of $3 trillion to $10 trillion plays out will be decided by Starship cadence, Starlink monetization, and whether the AI segment stops losing billions a year and starts contributing. Retirement portfolios built on broad US equity indexes will own a slice of that outcome regardless of what they think of it.
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Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth and cyclical stocks that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as cryptocurrencies and penny stocks.
