SpaceX

SpaceX is a private aerospace company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with the stated mission of colonizing Mars . After years of being dismissed as a "story stock," it went public on Nasdaq on June 12, 2026, in what was billed as the largest IPO in history—raising $750 billion at a valuation that briefly touched $2.1 trillion .

The company's business rests on three pillars: launch services, its Starlink satellite internet constellation, and government contracts. Starlink alone generated $11.4 billion in 2025, roughly 61% of total revenue, while also supplying SpaceX with a captive customer for three-quarters of its launches that competitors cannot steal . On the government side, SpaceX has become a core Pentagon supplier, with its Starshield unit winning two contracts worth $6.45 billion from the U.S. Space Force in late May 2026 for missile tracking and military communications networks .

Its breakthrough came in 2008 when, after three failed launches nearly bankrupted the company, a $20 million B round from Founders Fund—Peter Thiel's firm, the sole outside investor—kept it alive . That September, SpaceX became the first private company to orbit a rocket; by December, it had won a $1.6 billion NASA supply contract . The company has since expanded into AI infrastructure, with its Colossus 1 data center supplying over 300 megawatts of compute to Anthropic , and in August 2026 acquired Cursor-maker Anysphere as a wholly owned subsidiary in a $3.89 billion share deal .