SpaceX Now Has 10,000 Starlink Satellites In Space — And Polymarket Is Betting The IPO Is Coming Soon

Elon Musk’s SpaceX put more than 10,000 active Starlink satellites into orbit this week with back-to-back Falcon 9 launches. The milestone matters because Starlink is the revenue engine behind what may be the largest IPO in history, and prediction market traders are acting like it’s nearly a done deal. Polymarket gives SpaceX an 87% chance of being the biggest IPO by market cap in 2026, with $1.2 million in total volume. Anthropic, OpenAI and Discord are some of the other companies with rumoured 2026 IPO’s. A separate timing contract has June 30 at 60%, making a summer debut for SpaceX the base case. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) leads the underwriter race at 57%, a reversal from earlier this year when Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) was the frontrunner. Both have long Musk ties; they co-underwrote Tesla’s 2010 IPO, and Morgan Stanley led financing for the 2022 Twitter acquisition. Polymarket’s closing market cap contract prices a 92% chance SpaceX finishes its first trading day above $1 trillion. A separate higher-strike contract puts the odds of clearing $2 trillion at 45%. Reuters reported the company is seeking a valuation around $1.75 trillion and may raise $50 billion. For context, Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut at $1.7 trillion is the current record. Reuters also reported SpaceX booked roughly $8 billion in profit on $15 billion to $16 billion in revenue last year, mostly from Starlink. Analysts at Payload Space estimate revenue could reach $24 billion in 2026. Even if revenue hits the $24 billion that Payload Space analysts project for 2026, the forward multiple is still north of 70x. For comparison, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) trades around 16x trailing sales. Saudi Aramco’s record-setting 2019 debut priced at roughly 6x. The S&P 500 Index is considering a rule change to allow SpaceX to immediately join the fund, which could see billions of forced buying as funds tracking the index add shares. The February merger with xAI valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. Musk framed it as a bet on orbital data centers, but xAI is reportedly burning about $1 billion a month. Multiple co-founders have since left the AI company. Musk acknowledged on X that xAI “was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” but says that SpaceX will “far exceed everyone combined” in the AI race. Image: Shutterstock