SpaceX at $1.75T just changed the math on RKLB

SpaceX is public at $1.75 trillion. Now every space stock gets repriced.

The SpaceX IPO was the largest in history. By the time June 2026 closed out, Elon Musk's rocket company had landed on public markets at a $1.75 trillion valuation, somewhere between Amazon and Alphabet in the pecking order of the world's most valuable companies. That number alone would have seemed like science fiction five years ago.

Here's what matters for the next six months: a $1.75 trillion reference point just got planted in every institutional fund manager's spreadsheet, and most of them can't buy SpaceX at the size they want. The float is tight, the index inclusion timeline is uncertain, and the early buyers already hold the best positions. So where does the overflow go?

It goes to the handful of other public companies with real space exposure. That's a short list.

Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ:RKLB) is the most obvious next stop. It is the only other company currently flying an operational orbital rocket on a commercial basis. Institutions that want launch exposure and can't get enough SpaceX have exactly one credible alternative on the open market. RKLB has been trading like a speculative small-cap for years. With a $1.75 trillion anchor now priced in the sector, that framing becomes harder to sustain.

AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) runs a different angle. Its thesis is satellite-based cellular broadband delivered directly to ordinary smartphones, no special hardware required. Starlink proved the satellite connectivity model works at scale. ASTS is betting on the next evolution of it. A richly valued, publicly traded SpaceX legitimises the entire satellite connectivity category and pulls analyst coverage toward every credible player in the space.

Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) is the most direct SpaceX adjacency play. It flies its lunar landers on SpaceX rockets. It holds NASA contracts worth billions. When the sector leader re-rates, the companies closest to it in the supply chain tend to follow. LUNR is both a customer and a partner to the company the market just said is worth $1.75 trillion.

The contrarian pushback is worth taking seriously. Post-IPO sector enthusiasm has a habit of washing out fast, particularly when the anchor stock itself corrects after the listing euphoria fades. RKLB, ASTS, and LUNR are all still early-stage businesses burning cash. If SpaceX disappoints as a public company, the sympathy trade runs in reverse.

But the setup has a logic to it that goes beyond simple momentum. What the SpaceX IPO actually did was force institutional capital to build a framework for valuing space companies. Before June 2026, there was no public reference. Now there is one at $1.75 trillion. Every analyst covering RKLB, ASTS, and LUNR has to rebuild their model relative to that number. Some will move their price targets up. Some will initiate coverage for the first time. The research cycle alone creates buying pressure that wasn't there six months ago.

The window where these three trade as afterthoughts is probably closing. Whether the trade works depends on execution, burn rates, and whether SpaceX holds its valuation through its first few quarterly reports as a public company. Those are real risks. But the repricing mechanism is now in motion, and it has a specific catalyst with a specific date attached to it.

✦

Quick Takes

Three more stories worth knowing about

Golden Dome spending is real, and Kratos is the name most people overlook

Washington's missile defence push has moved past the announcement phase. Actual contracts are flowing, and the big names, Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) and RTX (NYSE:RTX), are already in the architecture. But the asymmetric angle is Kratos Defense (NASDAQ:KTOS). Its drones and autonomous systems fit the Pentagon's shift toward lower-cost, distributed defence. LMT and RTX will get their share. KTOS is where the relative repricing could be most dramatic if the Golden Dome program scales the way the budget projections suggest it will.

Anthropic's IPO this fall sets up a specific trade in enterprise AI software

Anthropic filed confidentially on June 1 and is targeting a public listing this fall, with OpenAI's own listing pencilled in for 2027. When a trillion-dollar AI lab goes public, it does something concrete for every AI-adjacent stock: it forces every Fortune 500 board to accelerate their AI adoption timeline, because the board member who's been sceptical now has to explain why competitors are moving faster. UiPath (NYSE:PATH) is how companies actually push AI models into real enterprise workflows. A blockbuster AI-lab IPO is arguably the best catalyst PATH could get that doesn't show up in its own earnings.

SoundHound is the pure-play AI application bet hiding in plain sight

Most AI investment conversation centres on the model layer, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind. The application layer is where real revenue multiples compress or expand based on adoption speed. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) is one of the few genuinely pure-play public companies in voice AI, powering conversational interfaces across restaurants, automotive, and enterprise. It's not a name that shows up in most institutional AI coverage. When Anthropic's IPO pulls the AI category into mainstream investor portfolios, pure-play application layer companies tend to get discovered. SOUN is speculative, but the thesis is clean.

✦

Overlooked Stock

CRDO

Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd

Credo Technology Group (NASDAQ:CRDO) makes the high-speed connectivity chips that keep data moving inside hyperscale data centers without bleeding heat or power. Its active electrical cables and SerDes chiplets sit at the point where AI cluster performance either scales or hits a wall. As GPU clusters get denser and faster, the interconnect problem gets harder, and Credo has built its business specifically around solving it for the companies spending the most capital on AI compute. The customer list reads like the AI infrastructure spending map: hyperscalers, OEMs, optical module makers. Revenue has been accelerating alongside data center buildout. This is not a household name, which is partly the point. The companies actually supplying the specific components that make AI infrastructure work tend to trade at a discount to the names everyone already knows, until they don't.

The Contrarian Take

The SpaceX IPO valuation makes the case against RKLB just as clearly as it makes the case for it

The bull case for Rocket Lab rests on the idea that a $1.75 trillion SpaceX creates a re-rating for the whole sector. That's plausible. But consider what that valuation actually implies: SpaceX has Starlink generating real recurring revenue, Falcon 9 with a near-monopoly on commercial launch, Starship in active development, and a defense contract book most primes would sell assets to acquire. RKLB has a small rocket, Electron, and a growing spacecraft business. The valuation gap between them is not irrational. Institutional capital chasing space exposure via RKLB could discover quickly that the comparison to SpaceX is more flattering than the fundamentals justify. The sector re-rating thesis works until investors do the actual math, at which point RKLB's burn rate and competitive position against SpaceX itself on medium-lift becomes the story. Position sizing accordingly.