FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava Rubin (00:00)
Okay, let's get started. My name's Slava Rubin. I'm one of the founders here at Vincent. We are your platform for all things alternative investments. we have our podcast, Smart Humans, our daily newsletter covering all things in the world of alternative investments, the alternative investment report. And of course, our pre-IPO series that we love to partner with Sacra and Jan-Erik the one and only. Jan-Erik say hi.
Jan-Erik Asplund (00:23)
Thanks for having me.
Slava Rubin (00:25)
Absolutely. So we are very excited for today's discussion. So happy SpaceX week for all of you that celebrate. you know, this day has been coming for I think like 22 years in the making. So ⁓ this is not a trivial event. in today's conversation, we're gonna be covering everything we know to date around the SpaceX IPO.
We're also going to try to give you perspective around what are the options in terms of playing this IPO on the short term, in the long run, et cetera, et cetera. I do think this is an opportunity for a very interactive conversation. So please feel free to use the QA and chat, and we will try to maintain ⁓ interesting dialogue. With that, let's just dive in.
Let's start with our audience snapshot. So many of you are accredited over three quarters, and obviously quite a bit of you have some experience with pre-IPO investing. And ⁓ two-thirds of you are thinking to invest in pre-IPO in the next 12 months. So we're gonna dive in in a second. Let's do a word from our compliance department, which is nothing in this presentation should be construed as an offer to sell securities.
Or a solicitation or an offer to buy securities. All investments involve risk and possibility of loss, including loss of principle, and either past performance nor forward-looking information is a guarantee of future results. With that said, a lot of you are joining because you're thinking about taking action. How many of you, we're gonna do a survey, how many of you are thinking to invest into SpaceX in the next 30 days? Obviously, the expectation is they will IPO in four days from today.
which means that you'd be IPO you'd be joining either into the IPO or an early investor once it actually opens up. So ⁓ let's give everybody twenty seconds.
Okay, survey says.
Interesting. So 50% are yes, a quarter are no, and a quarter are unsure. It'll be interesting to see what happens with that quarter unsure by the end this call. Let's jump forward. So let's start off a little slower, but we're gonna get into it very quickly. So let's start off with a little bit of background. So Jan-Erik, SpaceX, what are we talking about here? And for those who want a more thorough background.
This is not our first time talking about SpaceX here at Vincent and these pre-IPO conversations. We actually have ⁓ interesting conversation from October 2025, where we discuss what's possible about a potential future IPO. And we actually even go so far back as January 2025. so it'd be interesting maybe to compare those discussions to see how things have evolved. So again, we're gonna start slow here to keep everybody on the same page, but we're gonna accelerate.
quite quickly for all you pros. Go for it, Jan-Erik
Jan-Erik Asplund (03:17)
Great. ⁓ yeah, I mean, we've been talking about this for a while. SpaceX is is kind of made up of three bundled businesses, previously two. the core one, the one it became known for being SpaceX, the launch business. currently four point billion four point one billion revenue, up, you know, roughly twenty-five percent, depend depending on the metrics you're looking at, from last year. Starlink.
Is sort of the you know profitable shining star of the business, right? Did 11.4 billion revenue in 2025, up 50%, and has been, you know, sort of the ⁓ main driver of profitability, which SpaceX was profitable ⁓ in 2024, 2025, different stories you see there, you know, five billion loss, ⁓ primarily due to XAI and you know the incredibly expensive CapEx story of.
of AI build out that has been sort of the big topic in in private markets and public markets, especially after last week, roughly, with the ⁓ you know, Google tapping the public markets for money to fund their own AI build out. So that's kind of the, you know, the the basic setup ⁓ going into the S1. Things start to look a little different as you look out into the years ahead now. But yeah, we essentially have a very
very profitable ⁓ satellite business. in Starlink, we have sort of the infrastructure of that, you know, the launch business. And then we have a more speculative, you know, recently acquired XAI, ⁓ you know, LLM lab plus now sort of burgeoning data center business as well.
Slava Rubin (04:51)
Yeah, so I love this three-headed dragon, which I might argue that it's actually a four-headed dragon because they might have twins that have one body for the third dragon head. so it's like two heads sharing one body as the third dragon head. We'll talk about that in just a second. But just to walk through twenty-two years of history very rapidly, ⁓ most people thought of SpaceX only as line number two, space.
let's call it a rocket company for simplicity's sake, a logistics company. Then people start getting really excited about SpaceX that, man, they're s using their logistics to send satellites into space. ⁓ they could get into the telecom business. Next thing you know, they're doing Wi-Fi calls, et cetera, et cetera. People are maybe using it on their airlines. That's the Starlink business. For the longest time, everybody thought this was then going to be a two headed dragon, maybe the
Shares would spin off and Starlink would have its own IPO. Out of nowhere, 19 years in, you now get XAI, right? Which is a separate Elon company that starts separately as X, sorry, the XAI buys X, next thing you know, it all consolidates. And really the third dragon, AI, is it fair to say that really there's two separate businesses there, right? There's one, the foundational model business.
Which is competing with Anthropic or OpenAI. And then there's the brand new business out of nowhere, practically like yesterday, is this now data center business, which has shocking breaking news in the last couple of weeks about Anthropic and Google committing what is it, twenty five billion or thirty billion in the next couple of years of revenue into the data center business, not into the foundational model business. Is that correct?
Jan-Erik Asplund (06:43)
Yeah, exactly. And part of it is that the foundational model business hasn't taken off the way that they would have wanted, right? 3.2 billion in 2025 revenue is not nothing, but it's it's it's you know peanuts compared to where OpenAI and Anthropic are. So they had a ton of data center build out, you know, the largest data center in the US, which, you know, isn't being utilized by Grok to answer people's questions about what tweets mean. Right. So as a result, they have this huge capacity, which they're selling to Anthropic and Google.
Slava Rubin (07:11)
Yeah, so for simplicity's sake, there's one, there's two, there's three A and three B. Right. So there's almost like four lines of businesses. So people need to really be thinking about and just so it's not lost on them. Anthropic, there was mention of anthropic, I think committing what was it like fifteen billion dollars or something like that, per year.
Jan-Erik Asplund (07:31)
Yeah, I per year I think, yeah, exactly. And Google's
Slava Rubin (07:34)
So it's like one and a quarter billion per month, right? To the data center business. And then Google is committing almost a billion per month as well. So out of nowhere, you have another 25 billion round numbers here being committed, which isn't showing up on in these revenues for 2025, right? Because it's in 2026 and beyond.
Jan-Erik Asplund (07:57)
Exactly.
Slava Rubin (07:59)
Okay, amazing. let's go on to the next slide.
So this is we're diving deep here. We're going in quick, which is this is us analyzing the S one. So you didn't have to. Here are some of the key takeaways. So let's just go through them one at a time. I mean you don't have to read it, but let's talk about the takeaways. So Jan-Erik, talk to me here.
Jan-Erik Asplund (08:22)
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, if the all this data center stuff didn't happen, you know, Starlink would still kind of be part of the most interesting sort of upside ⁓ of SpaceX because it is, you know, it an incredibly strong business. You know, there seems to be they say in the S1 that, you know, there's been no cancellations in the last three years among enterprise customers paying over 750K. So really it's sort of the closest thing that SpaceX has to, you know, this kind of mature, highly profitable.
Cash generating business.
Slava Rubin (08:52)
Yeah, so Starlink looks awesome. we have some numbers here, but that's the takeaway. So bullish. So again, green, yellow, red, very bullish for all of us investors thinking about coming in. ⁓ and then talk to me about launch.
Jan-Erik Asplund (09:04)
Yeah, it's SpaceX is still, you 85% of the launch market, hugely hugely ⁓ successful beyond, you know, you know, at this point, well beyond what Blue Origin, et cetera, are doing. And I think the slow growth rate is sort of something that makes people, you know, not care as much about this business when they're looking at SpaceX. But if you look at Starship, which you know is now ⁓ being sort of test flown or components of it are being test flown,
Starship has the potential to really turn the launch business on in a big way, which I don't think is reflected in a lot of the commentary on SpaceX, is that you know, if if we get ⁓ Starship, which is far higher capacity for bringing stuff to space, that unlocks a lot of new markets that will you know drive more launch revenues for SpaceX, ⁓ as well as you know, launch revenues from within ⁓ XAI funded by Google and Anthropic
to send up data centers of the future, potentially. So yeah, the launch, you know, sort of business is very powerful. And I think there's a lot of future upside there potentially.
Slava Rubin (10:07)
So talk to us about EchoStar. So this was one of the proxies that we were suggesting in previous calls that you can invest into ⁓ to get some SpaceX exposure. ⁓ so talk to us. What's what's the opportunity there?
Jan-Erik Asplund (10:19)
Yeah, so until now Starlink has been kind of this, you know, effectively in the US at least more of a niche internet provider. In rural areas, it's big, but otherwise it's it's you know, it's sort of satellite internet for those ancillary ancillary times and places if you're on a boat or in an airplane. The sort of key thing about acquiring all this spectrum is that Starlink gets closer and closer to being to having the potential to be a direct to sell phone network.
⁓ and you know compete head on with ⁓ ATT Verizon and the and those kinds of companies, which would obviously be a massive sort of expansion of the of the addressable market. And you know, why would you want Starlink phone service? Well, you know, it's like why would you would you never want to have a dead zone again in theory, right? If if we can ⁓ if if again a lot of this is contingent on Elon's businesses figuring out certain technical hurdles, but you know, that would be a a huge unlock for them.
Slava Rubin (11:15)
Yeah, I was just on a United flight and they're marketing aggressively. Basically, Starlink meets Echo Star, you know, the capabilities that are gonna be out there. They don't actually say Echo Star because they bundle under under Starlink, but I think this is definitely part of the future vision. So here's Colossus. I feel like Colossus ⁓ is a word that like nobody used with SpaceX. And then all of a sudden it's gonna be the top generating revenue driver. So give us some more colour. What's what's kind of the breaking news happening here before the IPO?
Jan-Erik Asplund (11:42)
Yeah, so Colossus was built out, you know, with with the expectation that it would be sort of part of XAI's business to serve Grok. And it is the largest AI computing facility in the world currently. so it's a huge facility in Memphis. now Grok usage hasn't caught up to that, but Anthropic, Google, everyone else is still quite supply limited. so you know, it has sort of emerged perfectly ⁓ you know, for the S1, for the IPO that
Now Anthropic and Google are going to be paying XAI for access to compute through those data centers, through Colossus and other ones that they have. And yeah, we mentioned the numbers, 20, 26, 30 billion roughly in there every year. ⁓ so yeah, significant business puts them right up there with, you know, your core weaves in terms of being a a a data center business, which is why, you know, they fourth head of the snake.
Slava Rubin (12:36)
Yeah, and I think any data center business could be interesting just because the data center business has so much demand, right? If you want to be cynical, ⁓ as people have been analyzing contracts, they have a lot of outs. Like there's they're not very hard to get out of this revenue stream. So maybe there's a little bit kind of massaging the back of each other, kind of helping each other for the IPO, and the next thing you know, Anthropic and Google pull out. I don't know anything, but if you want to be cynical, the contracts
are not really like lock hard to be able to get you in there like, you know, for four years without ⁓ any retrition risk. again, if you want to be cynical, Google is a significant investor in SpaceX. I can't remember exactly how much they put in, but I think they got something like six or seven percent ownership of all of SpaceX. So think about it. If they own six percent at
⁓ 1.7 trive trillion, let's just make it 2 trillion for round numbers. We're talking about $120 billion of SpaceX equity that Google owns. If they're committing to them, what is this $920 million? So let's call that 10 10 billion a year. So if they're committing 10 billion a year, having 120 billion of equity, you know, it's kind of like a nice tip. It's kind of like saying thanks, bud. Thanks for making me a ton of money. here's some money for you to play with
I know it's crazy we're talking about this many zeros and that's a cynical way of looking at it, but just keep that mind. I do think this is huge information though. on the bullish side. We just want to take both sides. ⁓ talk to me about the ⁓ RPU compression where it's a bit concerning, but really something to watch.
Jan-Erik Asplund (14:12)
Yeah, I think before ⁓ you know, when we looked at SpaceX last time, this was kind of one of the major ⁓ major potential downsides or issues we were seeing with Starlink was this RPU, you know, dramatic kind of decline ⁓ that we were already seeing at that point and it's continued now. and this is without getting into, you know, sort of the mainstream ⁓ mainstream sale markets in Europe and the United States. And
⁓ I think, you know, it it's sort of by design, like you it it's worth paying attention to and and understanding that the RPU is going to continue to fall as they go into more kind of you know more global expansion, more mainstream use cases. But you know, I I I don't think it's necessarily a huge red flag. It's sort of it's sort of part of part of that expansion. right, if you're gonna pick up millions ⁓ of customers and
⁓ in India, then you're not gonna get the same ARPU you're gonna get from people, you know, camping or on private boats in the US. So it's just sort of a ⁓ subscriber growth, you know, optimization. and and obviously hinges on infrastructure costs coming down, which, you know, at Starlink it, you know, is part of a bet on SpaceX and on on launch getting cheaper, which has been the tendency so far.
Slava Rubin (15:29)
So we have a question which really lines up with number nine. So the question is, is SpaceX gonna get into the indexes and how will that affect things? Can you just jump right to number nine and talk to that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (15:40)
Yeah, I know this has been a really big topic of discussion and whether or not like for example they're gonna be in the S P five hundred. I know immediately there was discussion that they might get accelerated get get sort of a accelerated path into the S P five hundred. I haven't I haven't heard much on this except I have heard that it's likely some the the
Slava Rubin (16:04)
Yeah, so as of Friday, the Nasdaq is supposed to happen, but the SP is not going to happen. They're not going to you know give up their profitability requirement slash their timing requirement. So that passive investor is going to be kept outside. but I do believe that NASDAQ is supposed to happen. You also have in here the unlock, so it's two different things in one. So typically it's a let's call it a hundred eighty day
wall where no one really can sell ⁓ until the hundred eighty days, which is the typical lockup, but this lockup is significantly different. As a matter of fact, we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into the lockup after we finish these ten items. So you wanna hit number six for us, Jan-Erik?
Jan-Erik Asplund (16:48)
Yeah, perfect. ⁓ great. So like I was saying, Starship, this is kind of the big bet on the future of the launch business and and you know ha has a lot of implications for putting data centers in space and and expanding Starlink, all this kind of stuff. So it's really, you know, key to SpaceX that that Starship works. the thing, you know, the reason it's a watch is because, you know, we haven't yet had a sort of commercial payload.
⁓ get in space on Starship. They had a very, very recent test in which it was a you know sort of partial success. and so, you know, I I think if your if your ⁓ thesis hinges on on Starship and that's something you care about, then I would watch these upcoming tests. I I know there's a bunch ⁓ scheduled for this this summer. ⁓ so that's it's key that that works, that sort of a lot of the other stuff in the story has a chance to play out.
Slava Rubin (17:41)
We're gonna double click on this, but where does the ⁓ where does the twenty eight point five trillion dollar TAM? What what what does talk to us?
Jan-Erik Asplund (17:48)
Yeah, they they actually put this in their in their S one to sort of explain the business. and I think we talk about this on the next slide if we if we want to just jump there really quickly to to go through it. Right. So basically there's four components, right? One is Starlink, what they call connectivity in the S one. There's kind of the launch business, which, you know, with the with their TAM, they're sort of estimating the Starship succeeds.
And makes it a lot cheaper to bring things into space and do things like space manufacturing. We have AI Compute, which, you know, at this point, like you mentioned, it's both an LLM company, foundation lab, and a data center business. And so this is kind of mashing those two together. ⁓ and then we have these sort of other markets, right? The other space native markets, such as in-space manufacturing, which we've seen startups doing.
⁓ we have sort of logistics, we have sort of ⁓ you know, long range ⁓ shipment and travel that's going you know, just past the atmosphere around the earth. We have things like asteroid mining, right. There's a lot of potential tourism, things like that. So that is sort of the four key components that go into that yeah, startling number.
Slava Rubin (18:58)
Yeah, and we don't really have time to discuss the entire market for ⁓ SpaceX here, but in some of our other sessions, like we said in October 2025 or January 2024, we do discuss more all of their opportunities. let's go back to the ⁓ S110 findings. So they're burning a lot of money with XAI. I mean, they only MA'd there a little bit ago, and really the balance sheet looked awesome.
before that. And then they just swallow this money bundle business, which is a bit concerning, hence the risk. Talk to us.
Jan-Erik Asplund (19:32)
Absolutely. I think, you this goes to why the Colossus News is so big is because it finally it it gives you the potential, you know, sort of counter counter argument to this idea that they have a, you know, ⁓ twelve billion dollar a year losing business in XAI. in that it it gives them potentially a way out, you know, where ⁓ you know, they don't have to give up on X AI. It's more just re you know, reshaping the business more as a data center of a company.
that can potentially you know make up for these losses.
Slava Rubin (20:02)
And then you know, Elon has eighty-five percent of the voting power. That is just nuts. I mean, absolutely crazy. If you're an Elon fanboy, that is probably music to your ears. If you're into having a properly governed company that's publicly traded, this is just bananas, absolutely bananas. And ⁓ by the way.
Not sure if you heard, but Elon has this other company. It's called Tesla. it's pretty big also. what do you think is the impact here about now he's gonna have two publicly traded companies? There's some rumor that there's gonna become one. Is there anything worth thinking about here? as part of this S one, as part of this IPO on Friday? What are your thoughts here?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:49)
Yeah, I I know that SpaceX shareholders were were sort of mixed on whether or not they agreed with ⁓ acquiring X AI. you know, I at this point I think if you're a Tesla shareholder, this is definitely something that you're could thinking about. it seems it seems I think reasonably likely that they will consolidate. ⁓ I I think there's a sort of the someone did the math on this, but in the in the S one
⁓ in the sort of key you know ownership ⁓ data you look at it and and the way it works out is just basically perfectly such that if he acquired Tesla as well and added Tesla that Elon would have ⁓ exactly 51% control over both. So it it does seem sort of built in that that's going to happen. and I think if that troubles you you know significantly then yeah that that makes sense ⁓ you know looking for good governance.
I think for a lot of people investing, ⁓ you know, the sort of Elon factor, the Elon control is is why they're interested. right. And I think that's probably then it makes more sense to invest, ⁓ to go after the IPO. ⁓ because for a lot of people that sort of that sort of is the draw and they're not concerned about the voting power. If you are, then then if you don't want Elon sort of in control, then ⁓ then yeah, probably not the best ⁓ investment.
Slava Rubin (22:11)
Go the business lines for a second.
Go for it, Jan-Erik Give us just a quick color here.
Jan-Erik Asplund (22:17)
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we can sort of have a very large market for Starlink with phones. We we sort of talked about this. We have Starship ⁓ logistics, you know, which kind of hinges on imagine it's you know one-fifth of the cost to get things into space that it is right now, which would sort of unlock a huge array of markets for them to to expand into and to offer others access into via Starship vehicles. then we have
This sort of question of of of compute. so, you know, ⁓ we have 15 billion a year from Anthropic year, add-on roughly 15 billion from Google, and we have $30 billion run rate. And that's still just terrestrial. So if you believe that they can get space data centers going, that is sort of potentially a dramatic unlock as well, because you're not reliant on sort of terrestrial infrastructure. And then the big one that we haven't talked about is.
where SpaceX is a sort of defense partner. And that has, you know, it's already in the in the in the billions of revenue, but ⁓ has a potential obviously to to be much larger with Starship. and that's not just the US, right? We have already ⁓ you know, we have plenty of NATO cross sales going on. ⁓ the UK just signed a deal with SpaceX. So that's a that's a big ⁓ international geopolitical business line as well.
Slava Rubin (23:36)
So this is us pulling together what the valuation is today using the current revenues from twenty twenty five. Obviously that's a bit dated and we'll have to double click on that in a second. Using the current comps from that slice of the industry. So Jan-Erik, where do we land here for if you are a normal company with a normal leader, what the value should potentially be?
Jan-Erik Asplund (24:01)
Yeah, normal company. try to imagine. So if we take ⁓ the left column for now, think about what this company sort of might be worth today if you tried to value it somewhat more, you know, moderately. ⁓ you have Starlink at roughly 11 billion revenue. you know, something like ⁓ T Mobile is at three and a half multiple. Let's say we give it a pretty healthy premium for being very fast growing, very profitable.
and and sort of having a monopolistic position. you know, you can sort of it you can sort of generously give it an 11x, give it 130 billion dollar value. space and launch, you know, we'll give it another again, premium for for having option value of Starship and 85% of the market for launch. put that at 55. And then if you take XAI as a kind of you know ⁓ AI business
give it like a 30 multiple, you end up with 100 billion. That adds up to ⁓ almost 300 billion today, which is a far cry from 1.75 or 1.8 trillion. but again, not accounting for the sort of AI ⁓ data center business. So let's say, you know, you have 30 billion.
Slava Rubin (25:13)
Really quickly, until two weeks ago or until a month ago, your analysis would say the fundamentals deserve on paper the sum of the parts a $300 billion company. And this company is going to IPO at one point seven trillion. So we're talking about, you know, a one point four trillion dollar gap in what seems to be fundamental analysis versus the actual pricing. I mean, that's just full on
Elon Factor, is that fair?
Jan-Erik Asplund (25:45)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.
Slava Rubin (25:48)
So these are the same people that would look at Tesla and see the same revenues, compare them to Ford GM, Chrysler, et cetera, and be like, this doesn't make any sense. But yet Tesla is performing and growing, and the stock is actually holding up in general. So we're trying to take both sides of this analysis. on the fundamentals, it's probably worth around 300 billion. but it's getting that Elon factor. So you can either be long or short based on where you're net out on that. But I'm
All of a sudden, let's just add in twenty five billion, right? Because of Google Anthropic twenty five billion gets dropped into that third line, right? So now that three point two goes to again, let's just use round numbers. That three point two goes to thirty. Is that right?
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:34)
Yeah, exactly. And and let's say let's say you do thirty thirty billion, you know, sort of twenty twenty six or like you know current run rate. ⁓ and you multiply that by ⁓ you know core weave. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which gets you to seven yeah, exactly. But yeah, just a little bit over. ⁓ so yeah.
Slava Rubin (26:45)
Five hundred forty.
About seven hundred billion. Or
If
now you're at seven hundred billion, you have definitely made a dent towards one point seven trillion, but you still have the Elon factor to double the price, right? To paint that in a different perspective, let's go to the valuation slide, eighteen, just to give perspective. Somebody's asking about the multiples. Here's multiples, you know, versus these are multiples of revenue, right? Jan-Erik
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:22)
Exactly. Yeah.
Slava Rubin (27:24)
And these are multiples of of revenue using the non colossus revenue, right?
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:29)
Exactly.
Slava Rubin (27:31)
So to be fair, if you expect the twenty twenty six revenue to be twenty five billion, so that's a seventy X revenue, right? You can now double that. So now it's fifty billion of revenue. So now your multiple is thirty five X, and now all of a sudden you're below Palantir Is that fair analysis?
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:53)
Yeah.
Slava Rubin (27:54)
Exactly. I checked him out. So yeah, again, if you want to be cynical on what I just did there, right? Is you can say that Google and anthropic revenue is not very sticky and maybe it's gone in February and it was all a facade a front. I would argue front or not, there's so much demand for the data center capabilities that Elon is just one of the best at actually doing infrastructure and making stuff that I think he's just going to capture that revenue.
I would go so far as to say, I have no insider information. I would go so far as to say is Elon might slowly give up the model business. Right. Like I don't think he's gonna stop doing grok but I don't know that he's gonna actively compete. I think he might end up, you know, putting a lot more energy into the data center business.
Jan-Erik Asplund (28:43)
I agree. There's also, you know, it's not really part of this slide deck, but you know, SpaceX has a sixty billion dollar option to acquire cursor, which tells me that that maybe grok is not or you know, XAI ⁓ as a foundational model business is not the priority. You know, if they're about to pay 60 billion to acquire ⁓ you know, the the sort of top independent AI coding app.
Slava Rubin (29:06)
Right. We have actually a question for the audience related to Musk said that grok had to be rebuilt from the ground up. When would we know that's achieved? is that really a question that you have any perspective on?
Jan-Erik Asplund (29:15)
no. I mean, my my inherent sense is in the current paradigm of AI in which we exist, it doesn't seem possible to catch up if you're gonna start rebuilding from scratch now. but you know, who knows with open source, with the scale improvements continuing at the current pace they are or not. it's hard to predict that, ⁓ for sure.
Slava Rubin (29:40)
So I'm just gonna say one more time, and I'm sorry we're repeating myself. But the 70x on revenues for 2026 revenues with 25 billion is quite significant. It's 70x. But literally in the last couple of days, because of all the Colossus revenue from Anthropic and Google coming in, they've doubled their revenue practically overnight. And this cuts the multiples in half. This does not make SpaceX cheap.
in any way, shape, or form whatsoever, but it actually is cheaper on a multiples perspective versus Cerebrus, which just had a massive IPO and totally crushed. Totally crushed. ⁓ I wanna go to the the projections. So now that we're talking about ⁓ what we think are the the values and what is potential IPO, we'll get there. What do the projections look like? So I'm just gonna call out
that these numbers have not been updated for the new data center revenue. So the twenty five billion that just came in, ⁓ this is not updated for that. So we're talking us through projections.
Jan-Erik Asplund (30:46)
Absolutely. So so, you know, bear case, bear case kind of hinges, I think, largely on the AI boom does not continue. You know, we sort of enter not an AI winter, but you know, kind of public market enthusiasm for for funding, ⁓ massive capex build outs wanes. We have sort of the the the curve sort of goes more flat as far as AI improvements. And what we're looking at
you know, in twenty thirty is not really so much an an AI business as, you know, the top launch provider in the US with this, you know, great satellite business that's still profitable and and then and still great. and the company's doing yeah, 75 billion in revenue, maybe value to 10x that. so, you know, at that point it's roughly similar to our base case valuation, you know.
today if you incorporate the data center business. ⁓ but that's obviously a big a loss if you're investing in the in the IPO.
And base case is basically flat. So this is ⁓ you know, assuming assuming growth on all fronts. you know, this is sort of our initial evaluation analysis was that 1.75 trillion depends on these three lines of business continuing to grow into 2030. And that's sort of where the valuation makes sense. That was sort of the core contention that this is being priced for 2030. And then the bull case was based on, you know.
Starship works you know next year roughly we start seeing that produce new lines of business and then Starlink takes off. We start seeing you know either sort of Grok V2 or cursor you know taking off driving revenue for XAI and then sort of you know getting us to 150 billion revenue doubling the valuation from IPO
Now I think this ⁓ this anthropic, this Google thing is like you said, kind of like Heisenberg's, you know, ⁓ or Schrdinger's ⁓ line of business. It's like it's kind of real. You might look at it and think it's not real. ⁓ but let's say, you know, it is, and we're adding an extra thirty billion a year. you know, we get to some very different numbers. Maybe you could add on, I don't know, I don't know depends on where you're at twenty thirty, let's say a hundred billion.
in revenue, then ⁓ this starts to look, you know, quite different. ⁓ you might add add a whole 200 or sorry, 100 billion onto there for 250 billion in revenue in the in the bull case. depending on how sort of how much you want to discount that given some of the stuff we've seen about contract terms and whether it's real and all that.
Slava Rubin (33:28)
Right now your bull case is a three trillion dollar value, $150 billion of revenue at a twenty X multiple. Does the new data center revenue change your bull case or is it top out at three trillion for 2030?
Jan-Erik Asplund (33:41)
I think I mean, yeah, I I think for me it definitely bumps it up a bit. Like I don't I don't I agree with what you sort of what you said about how you could look at it if you were being more cynical. I would think that this yeah could be a great business for them, especially with the you know, constraints that the entire industry is under. So I don't know that I would put it to two fifty, ⁓ maybe like two hundred in the bull case.
Slava Rubin (34:06)
Got it. So two hundred out of twenty multiple, four trillion. now we're talking. So let's go to the five ways you could play it. I think that's why a lot of people are on this call. So I think we've given enough background. ⁓ so here are kind of the five options and we'll dig into this a little bit more. And I would love any commentary from the audience. The way we see it is there's five ways to play this IPO. Number one, you could just get into the proxies now, yesterday, or whenever you want. And we've been suggesting this already for a while.
You can own Google and get some nice exposure, et cetera, et cetera. Or you could get into the IPO and we'll talk about that in a second. You could try to flip on day one, or you can buy and hold, and we'll talk about how long you should hold, or or then you could just play the the adjacent names because SpaceX is already marked up to the gill. So maybe there's other places to make money. So we're gonna actually discuss all of these options in a little bit more detail. But to really know how to think about this, you have to really think about
the IPO lock up. So let's go to ⁓ the actual lockup slide and break that down.
⁓ so Jan-Erik has done a great job here to show what is concerning, meaning if I'm a buyer, it's marked as red because there's supply hitting the market. And if I'm a buyer, demand is coming in through green. and this is you know, because people are buying. so what's typically happening in these situations is actually just the 180-day standard lockup.
It IPOs, no one sells anything that has private shares, not employees, not funds. And then after 180 days, there's just this clean line where everybody gets to then, you know, sell all on the same day. Elon B Elon is not doing anything the normal way. He has his completely unique waterfall, which I would argue has a lot of risk of putting in a lot of supply into the market.
But it also has these nuances. See, it's going to IPO on June 12th. There's already gonna be some demand coming in through the indexes. but there's a 20% share release as soon as the Q2 earnings come out on July 25th. And there's an extra bonus release if the stock stays above a certain amount, above a certain price for enough days. Now, layer that in ⁓ so you can already have.
By the end of July, right, you can have significant supply out there. Is that fair, Jan-Erik?
Jan-Erik Asplund (36:37)
Yeah, exactly. And it's yeah, this kind of staggered supply.
Slava Rubin (36:41)
⁓ and then this gets us to all the various unlock windows. I do think that if ⁓ if you're serious about getting into this IPO, you should be considering these dates. You might even want to take a screenshot of this. You should be thinking about these dates and how this affects you. Now, on the flip side, is it fair to say that on June 13th, June 14th, sorry, that's the weekend, but June 15th, June 22nd, you know.
June twenty-fifth, July first, July fourth, nothing's coming unlocked, right? So for the first couple few weeks, it's pretty locked up, right?
Jan-Erik Asplund (37:22)
Yeah, except for your thirty percent retail ⁓ allocation, which is sort of tradable from day one.
Slava Rubin (37:28)
⁓ great point, great point. So this this IPO is different than many other IPOs because most IPOs historically had virtually no retail allocation. Robinhood, Schwab, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ Fidelity, but in the last few years, there's been a lot more exposure to IPOs through these retail brokerages.
Elon has taken that even further, and I think doing one of the biggest numbers ever for retail exposure because it's such a big number, 75 billion in total. 30% of it is going to retail. So I heard on Friday some interesting stuff. I heard that Fidelity is not allowing you to sell, even though you're retail, they're not allowing you to sell in the first month. And if you do, you're not going to get any more IPOs into your brokerage account. So
It's a really interesting situation that's happening in retail where some of them are, yeah, we're retail, you can buy and sell whatever you want. Others are like, No, we're part of, you know, the guard that is holding down the stock. That's how we got our allocation. We can't just be flipping. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with retail. Also, just last week the rumor came out that the the IPO Roadshow is already sold out. Now, I don't know what's propaganda, I don't know what's marketing.
But supposedly what seems to be like this massive nut that had to be filled, which is 75 billion, apparently it's already sold out. And there's no more ⁓ capacity to get any more of it. Now, whether or not your brokerage house got some of that capacity and will offer it to you or you win your lottery or whatever, is you'll find out that this week. But it's a really interesting point as it relates to retail. Any further thoughts here on this IPO lockup?
Jan-Erik Asplund (39:10)
Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously it's been a hot ticket on the private markets. It's continuing to be one here. But ⁓ like we've sort of been saying, right, there's no you know, it's not a really cause to panic, in my opinion, if you don't get that allocation. precisely because of these events that are listed here under supply, right? There's going to be this liquidity being created. ⁓ there's gonna be selling pressure, there's gonna be opportunities.
⁓ eighty percent of the company is out of lockup as of November. So yeah, you'll you'll have a chance.
Slava Rubin (39:42)
Nice. Let's go back to the slide that everybody's thinking about, which is the five ways.
So you know, you could go through the proxies. There's Destiny, there's VCX, there's others. You could buy some Tesla, you could buy some Alphabet. We gave you a whole list of them when we talked about October 2025. You could buy ⁓ you know, Echo Star, which would have worked out quite nicely for you, I think. or you could try to get access to the IPO, which we just walked through that, right? Officially you shouldn't have a lockup. It's 30%, 3x the standard.
But some of these brokerages are putting in their own lockup, even though it's not formal lockup. So that's very interesting. are you gonna try to flip day one? You know, just buy the actual IPO and then try to flip it because it's just quote unquote obviously gonna go up? I'm not sure. Let's talk about that, right? The bull cases, you could have made a lot of money with ARM or Alibaba and the bear cases.
You know, one of the hottest companies like this in the past was Facebook. And if you bought the IPO, it didn't work out for you actually. If you held it for, you know, 14 years to today, you made, I think, over 20X, if not more. But you've had to wait a minute and your idea of flipping on day one didn't work out for you because you actually went down 50% over the course of the first year. So keep that in mind if you think it's just an obvious up-to-the-right hot company demand that equals automatic success. Because literally
The hottest company 14 years ago was Facebook. And there was nothing hotter than to try to get into Facebook. And without the IPO'd, you are not making money if you were flipping. So buyer beware on that standpoint. Now, if you're buying and holding, you know, what are you buying and what are you holding to? ⁓ if you're buying the IPO pop, let's say it pops to two trillion for round numbers, is getting to three trillion by Jan-Erik's twenty thirty four years from now. Is that interesting? You want to make fifty percent in four years?
Definitely not something to sneeze at. If that was guaranteed for me, I would do that all day, all night. But it has risk, obviously. So is that what you're looking for? So think about what price you want as your entry point. The other thing to think about with the buy and hold is what is the what's the entry price, right? Do you have to buy it the date IPOs, or is there an opportunity to try to buy on some dips? Right. So let's talk about that. And then the ripple effect stocks, which is
I think there's going to be a lot of people making a lot of money in terms of liquidity. And where does that liquidity go? Are they just gonna go right back into buying SpaceX? Obviously not, 'cause they just got liquidity, so they decided to sell. So where are they gonna put their money? Jan-Erik, give me some opinions.
Jan-Erik Asplund (42:12)
Yeah, I I think that well, the opening day is definitely above my pay grade, I think. if you are gonna do that, then you should be well aware of everything that you just said. And and obviously I you're probably well aware of you know, Friday we had the biggest plunge in the QQQ in, you know, over a year, went down five percent. you know, sort of almost like this very ominous signal ahead of the SpaceX IPO with the market ⁓ you know, seemingly
⁓ reacting to to different things, ⁓ macro things, but in part sort of this massive, you know, investment in AI capex that's happening across the industry. ⁓ and so if you, you know, if you want to just consider that and and what that might mean for you know the the guarantee of a of a opening day pop you know it it it it definitely is is something to to to be aware of that we're in a sort of moment where
⁓ you know, these AI businesses and and you know, now you're sort of underwriting a major AI dentist data center is shifting, right? We're starting to see Google looking towards the public markets for capital to fund that expansion. ⁓ I I believe Meta, there was a rumor that Meta was doing similar. So it's not, it's no longer just the sort of big tech, you know, Google's ad machine cash flow that's funding that that build out. You know, they're starting to look to the public markets.
And so I I think that's worth keeping in mind there. ⁓ I think long-term is definitely what Elon wants. you know, everyone who got retail allocation ⁓ to join the sort of you know the meme, ⁓ the meme stock community that already is exists with Tesla and that you know he wants to engender with SpaceX. I think the vision is you sort of take the bull case as as you know as likely given.
The Elon empire and all of his companies is likely, you know, past performance when it comes to sort of surmounting technical barriers, and start to think it could be, you know, 3 trillion in a couple of years from now, but then it could be 6 trillion a few years later, you know, 12 trillion a few years later, you're kind of betting on this kind of exponential, you know, Elon effect growth. and on SpaceX being, you know, ⁓ having built an $18 billion business without
you know, this AI upturn, right? And now that being sort of brought into the equation to where SpaceX can be a fundamental player in, you know, the ⁓ future of the AI industry. And so I think that is maybe to me, that's sort of safest, safest in quotes, bet on SpaceX is you expect, you know, ⁓ this company to be, you know, massively important in AI. You you believe in Elon as an entrepreneur.
And you wanna sort of participate long term, that's what makes the most sense to me versus trying to, you know, or do a short term short term swing trader on on SpaceX on the IPO ⁓ personally.
Slava Rubin (45:06)
⁓ what do you predict the day one prices? What's the pop? IPO's at one point seven five trillion hundred thirty five dollars a share. What happens on day one, Jan-Erik? Where ⁓ no one's keeping track here except this is being archived forever.
Jan-Erik Asplund (45:21)
Except they will be tweeted with my prediction next to it. So I gotta be careful. But well I I yeah, I it's definitely not being being sort of structured for a pop, right? I I think with the kind of the restrictions, but also the retail allocation, I think that they're sort of maybe trying to engineer a little bit more of a of a of a you know.
a a flat kind of float at least for the first few weeks. about but I'm not a huge expert. I would say I I think it'll sort of end the first day roughly roughly ⁓ roughly flat and yeah, is gonna look ridiculous when you know it doesn't, but that's my that's my feeling about it.
Slava Rubin (46:00)
So does it cost cross two trillion on day one or you're saying it doesn't?
Jan-Erik Asplund (46:04)
⁓
Slava Rubin (46:04)
Flat sound of the note but I'm just making
Jan-Erik Asplund (46:06)
Sure.
I'm gonna say I'm gonna I'm gonna say it doesn't.
Slava Rubin (46:09)
Yeah, fair enough. I mean, so here are my thoughts. One other piece of information is, you know, Elon has so much control over so many industries that my understanding is with the bankers, the bankers that got to underwrite this opportunity, if for any reason the actual IPO starts trading down, I believe, and everybody please do your own diligence, please do your own analysis. I believe you got the banks to promise to.
Buy and hold up the stock with their own balance sheets. So if for some reason the IPO, you know, goes down, ⁓ I believe you're gonna have the banks that are doing the IPO have to step in. And I think that's a very interesting and also to me quite positive as a downside risk protection. You know, I think that if you can get, well, as a matter of fact.
Real time here for anybody who wants to vote, we don't have a proper survey for this, but I'd love to see it in the chat or in the QA. Are you thinking one, two, three, four, or five? If you're putting in money, are you buying via proxy right now or soon? Are you trying to get into the IPO and you genuinely think you're gonna get into it, not like, you know, I wishy wish, I hope I got into it? Or are you planning on flipping in the first couple of days, first week, or are you just planning to buy and hold? Or you just think the SpaceX train is ridiculous and there's a lot of
you know, adjacent names to really make the money. So throw in some numbers into the ⁓ the Q and A for me if you want to give me response. My thoughts are if you can get into the IPO, into number two, the access into the IPO, I do think that it's gonna go up for the first few days, couple of weeks. I do think that there's not a lot of liquidity, sorry, not a lot of opportunity to sell for folks because they are locked up. And I do think
It will go up. I predict that it will touch 2 trillion. I don't know that if it's going to stay there, but I do predict that it touches it and it might even go over. but I I do think that's ⁓ the near-term opportunity. I do think by the end of the summer or by back to school, I am concerned it's gonna hit some choppy waters.
With all the IPO lockup kind of trickiness and that waterfall of liquidity coming. And that is just a lot of people who get the right to sell. Now, some of them get the right to sell because the stock is up 20%, which is a great thing to have. but I would not be surprised if there are some nice buying opportunities. Do I think it's gonna be Facebook, where you get to buy at 50% of the IPO price within the first year?
I'm gonna say no, it's not gonna hit 50%, but I do think it's gonna be some nice sales available. And if you're willing to be an opportunistic buyer into DCA, dollar cost average in. So if you just put aside ten dollars over the course of year one and found to try to find your spots where because there is either fundamental reasons because of SpaceX, or macro reasons because of geopolitics, inflation, rates, et cetera.
Some other ridiculous things that happen, which just pulls down the risk on trade off of SpaceX and it gets super discounted. I would deploy those $10 $1 at a time over the course of the next year. And I think that would do quite well into the buy and hold category. Cause I do think five, 10 years from now, this is a significant business. And 10 years from now, I do think it has for sure an opportunity of being a five trillion dollar company.
And I think if space becomes what space can become, it has 10 trillion in its crosshairs. I do think the ripple effects trade is interesting, ⁓ but hard to track and navigate, and you gotta really know your stuff. but if space becomes what it is and SpaceX becomes that big of a business, there's going to be other businesses that are going to benefit. so in short, I do think for you short term traders, if you can get into the IPO, not because you buy after it IPO'd.
I think if you buy the pop, it's gonna be tough. But if you can get into the IPO, I think there's an opportunity to make some quick 10, 20, 30 percent. but you gotta move fast if that's gonna happen. And otherwise, I think the real play is to try to get, you know, opportunistically into the discounted opportunities along the next year. so yeah, we got to buy and hold. My prediction is initially will go up and it will s.
be quite volatile as expected for all AI related businesses, might stabilize ones that drop it comes live as long as it sticks to the upper revenue and growth trajectory. Clarification, the underwriters will support the price for the first week or so only. ⁓ we got one person trying to get into the IPO. he doesn't have to get promises from the underwriters to buy and support the price if it falls below the IPO price. That's standard practice of Wall Street banks. I used to work at Wall Street. We got another person who's buy and hold. Nice.
we got one person here who's looking to flip on day one. ⁓ another person is trying to get into the IPO. All right, guys, I think we're coming to the end of our conversation. Is there anything else we could answer for you? Please throw it into the conversation here. This has been interesting. Jan-Erik, any closing thoughts here?
Jan-Erik Asplund (51:17)
I'm I'm yeah, I'm like a kid on Christmas. Yeah, I can't wait now to see which one of us is accurate and I you know look forward to ⁓ watching the stock price closely.
Slava Rubin (51:24)
You know, for years I have been saying the best time to buy SpaceX is today. I've been saying that for many, many, many years. And that you know, it has to change now because now they're going to IPO, and I could genuinely say I'm not sure if that's true anymore. so it's wild times, twenty two over twenty years in the making.
this is the beginning of potentially a massive IPO window with OpenAI, Anthropic and others right behind. So like I started out in the beginning of the conversation, happy SpaceX IPO week if you celebrate. this is crazy times. Thank you very much everybody for joining and ⁓ we'll catch you on the other side.
Goodbye.
