When a Sequoia Capital partner compares a freshly public stock to NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) three years ago, investors pay attention. That is exactly what Sean MacGuire did on CNBC this week, arguing that “SpaceX right now is more like Nvidia three years ago than Tesla.” He went further on his personal positioning, adding, “Me as an individual, I’m going to hold my shares forever.”
NVIDIA traded at $42.69 on June 16, 2023 and closed at $204.40 on June 12, 2026. MacGuire is telling viewers that SpaceX is sitting at the same kind of inflection.
The Newly Public SpaceX Trade
SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) made its market debut on Friday, June 9, 2026, and the tape has been hot. Shares added more than $400 billion in market value yesterday. They’re up another 13% today as of 1:00 p.m. ET. At its IPO price of $135, SpaceX was valued at $1.77 trillion. Today, shares are worth $2.85 trillion. That’s worth more than Amazon and only slightly behind Microsoft.
That valuation is being supported by a real, if early, financial engine. According to the company’s S-1, full-year 2025 revenue grew 33.2%, with the Connectivity segment alone adding $3.788 billion as Starlink subscribers expanded from 4.4 million to 8.9 million over the year. By the first quarter of 2026, subscribers had reached 10.3 million and Connectivity segment adjusted EBITDA hit $2,087 million for the quarter.
MacGuire has some reasons to believe the company could hit very outsized targets in the future.
MacGuire’s Inflection Thesis
The current run rate is approximately $18.5 billion annually. MacGuire projects revenue could reach the hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030, a view that is his forecast rather than guidance from the company. He also said Q4 2026 should show nearly 200% year-over-year growth versus Q1 2026, driven by three converging catalysts:
- Starship. The S-1 confirms SpaceX expects Starship to commence payload delivery to orbit in the second half of 2026, with milestones already including booster catch-and-reuse and in-space cryogenic propellant transfer. MacGuire characterized the program as already far along and “guaranteed to work,” a confidence level that remains his opinion.
- Orbital data centers. SpaceX is openly pursuing orbital AI compute at scale and AI chip manufacturing, though the S-1 cautions these initiatives are in early stages and may never reach commercial viability.
- Starlink direct-to-cell. Starship enables deployment of next-generation V3 satellites and direct-to-cell constellations, expanding the addressable market beyond rooftop terminals.
Why The NVIDIA Comparison Has Teeth
NVIDIA’s last reported quarter showed why the analogy is provocative. Q1 FY2027 revenue hit $81.61 billion, up 85.2% year over year, with Data Center revenue of $75.25 billion growing 92%, per the company’s SEC filing. Non-GAAP gross margin expanded to 75.0%, and the company guided Q2 to $91.0 billion. NVIDIA now carries a market cap near $5.1 trillion at a forward P/E of 23x. In short, NVIDIA is not longer ‘priced for extreme growth,’ but has been growing faster than SpaceX in recent quarters and is significantly larger.
The bull case MacGuire is articulating: SpaceX owns the launch monopoly, the satellite broadband leader, and an emerging AI infrastructure layer in orbit, all wrapped into one platform business at a moment when the next leg of capex is finally beginning to inflect revenue. NVIDIA may have captured the majority of value in the first wave of AI, but McGuire’s thesis is that SpaceX will capture a brand new opportunity in the next.
The Risks Behind The Hold-Forever Conviction
Investors should treat the hold-forever line and the hundreds-of-billions revenue figure as one prominent VC’s conviction call, not company guidance. SpaceX itself flags substantial execution risk on Starship reusability, regulatory cadence, and unproven markets like lunar logistics and orbital compute. The S-1 also discloses a 2025 net loss of $4,937 million as R&D and depreciation ramped.
Reddit sentiment on SPCX is currently 44.80 (Neutral) weekly, with top posts already debating whether the IPO is “literally free money.” That is the kind of retail enthusiasm that often greets generational-comparison trades. Whether SPCX really becomes the next NVIDIA depends on Starship payload delivery hitting the back half of 2026 on schedule. That is the single milestone worth tracking next.
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