SpaceX's $1.75T IPO is repricing RKLB, ASTS and LUNR

SpaceX is public at $1.75 trillion. Here's where the money goes next.

The SpaceX IPO closed in June and the number still doesn't feel real. $1.75 trillion. That's larger than every previous tech IPO combined, and it happened fast enough that most institutional allocation committees are still updating their models.

Here's the problem those institutions now face. They got their SpaceX allocation, or they didn't, but either way they now need to answer a question their investment committees are asking: what's our space exposure? For the ones who missed the IPO window, or who want more than SpaceX alone, the answer is a short list. There are almost no pure-play orbital launch companies on a public exchange. Which is why the repricing across three specific names deserves close attention right now.

Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ:RKLB) is the most direct read-across. It's the only other company currently flying an operational orbital rocket on a commercial basis. Before SpaceX went public, RKLB was easy to dismiss as a small-cap launch curiosity. Now it's the closest thing to a second SpaceX that an institution can actually buy. That's a different conversation entirely, and it changes the multiple the market is willing to assign it.

AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) is the more speculative angle, but arguably the more interesting one. Starlink proved you can build a viable satellite broadband business and that the market will pay handsomely for it. ASTS is building the next version of that thesis, connecting ordinary phones directly to satellites without any specialist hardware. SpaceX's public valuation is a concrete data point for what that kind of business is worth at scale. ASTS is nowhere near scale, but the ceiling just got raised.

Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) is the one that gets overlooked in this conversation because it doesn't build rockets. It builds lunar landers, and it flies them on SpaceX rockets under NASA contracts worth billions. That makes LUNR simultaneously a SpaceX customer and a NASA supplier, sitting at the intersection of two of the most powerful spending commitments in the space sector right now. When SpaceX re-rates, LUNR re-rates because it's operationally coupled to SpaceX's launch cadence.

The chain reaction here runs further than the obvious. SpaceX going public doesn't just validate these three companies. It forces every sovereign wealth fund, every large endowment, and every generalist fund manager with a mandate to hold growth assets to build a dedicated space allocation. That's new. Two years ago, 'space' was a theme. Now it has a $1.75 trillion reference point and a ticker. Allocators need to fill buckets, and RKLB, ASTS, and LUNR are the buckets available.

None of these are low-risk positions. RKLB still needs to scale its Neutron rocket to compete at the medium-lift tier. ASTS has to prove its commercial service works at the subscriber volumes that justify its current market cap. LUNR's revenue is lumpy and dependent on NASA budgets that Congress controls. The risks are real and specific.

But the setup is also specific. A $1.75 trillion IPO just told institutional capital that space is a legitimate asset class, and the public market currently has three meaningful ways to own it. That's a supply and demand problem that resolves in one direction.

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Quick Takes

Three more stories worth knowing about

Anthropic's IPO is coming. The AI application layer gets repriced with it.

Anthropic filed confidentially in June and is targeting a public listing this fall. When it lands, every AI-native software company gets a fresh valuation anchor. The beneficiaries aren't Nvidia or Microsoft, they already have their multiples. The real move is in the application layer: companies like SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) and UiPath (NYSE:PATH) that are currently priced as software businesses but will get repriced as AI businesses once a trillion-dollar AI-lab sets the benchmark. Watch how fast that narrative shifts the moment Anthropic's S-1 hits.

Golden Dome money is moving. Lockheed, RTX, and Kratos are already inside the fence.

Washington is steering serious capital into layered missile defense, and the spending lane is narrower than it looks. Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) owns the interceptor architecture. RTX (NYSE:RTX) owns sensors and battle management. Kratos Defense (NASDAQ:KTOS) is the asymmetric smaller-cap play, building drones and autonomous systems at a cost point the Pentagon is actively demanding. The golden dome isn't a single contract, it's a decade-long procurement cycle. The companies already embedded in that architecture don't need to win new bids. They need to not lose the ones they have.

First Solar holds 93 and the tariff wall holds with it

First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR) scores 93 on our model and it's not hard to see why. It's the only large-scale US-manufactured solar panel producer, which means every tariff on imported panels is a competitive gift. The IRA production credits haven't been rolled back, utility-scale solar demand is still growing, and FSLR's order backlog extends years out. The bear case is policy reversal. The bull case is that domestic manufacturing preferences have bipartisan support in a way that almost nothing else does right now. That's an unusual combination.

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Overlooked Stock

CRDO

Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd

Credo Technology (NASDAQ:CRDO) makes the high-speed connectivity chips that keep data moving inside hyperscale AI clusters. Active electrical cables, SerDes chiplets, PCIe retimers. Unglamorous names for genuinely critical components. As AI training runs get larger and the distances between GPUs shrink, the bandwidth between those GPUs becomes the constraint everything else runs into. Credo's products sit directly in that gap.

The company sells to hyperscalers and has a collaboration with AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) on rack-scale AI infrastructure. It's not a household name, which is part of the point. The AI infrastructure spending conversation has centered on Nvidia, then on power, then on memory. Connectivity is the next layer the market starts pricing properly once the others are understood. At a score of 92 in our model, it's worth spending an hour on the filings.

The Contrarian Take

SpaceX's $1.75 trillion valuation might actually be too cheap

Consensus treatment of the SpaceX IPO has been some version of 'extraordinary company, extraordinary price, probably priced for perfection.' That's a reasonable read if you benchmark it against other aerospace businesses. It falls apart if you think about what Starlink actually is.

Starlink isn't a rocket company that also sells internet. It's a global ISP with no meaningful competitor in most of its served geographies, growing at a pace no terrestrial telecom can match, with marginal cost economics that improve as the constellation gets denser. Global broadband is a multi-trillion dollar market. Starlink's addressable portion of it, the places where fiber and cable are structurally absent, runs into the hundreds of millions of potential subscribers.

At $1.75 trillion, SpaceX is being priced like a very large aerospace and defense company. If Starlink alone compounds at the rate its subscriber growth currently suggests, the parent company is priced like a mature business at a point when it's still early in its actual trajectory. The people calling it expensive may be using the wrong reference class entirely.