Elon Musk’s SpaceX is racing toward what may be the largest IPO in history, but Patrick Boyle, former hedge fund manager, says the numbers look more like a science experiment than a business.

He called SpaceX a “money furnace”, hours after the company’s prospectus hit the SEC ahead of a Nasdaq debut expected June 12 under ticker SPCX.

The rocket maker posted a net loss of roughly $4.3 billion in the first quarter on $4.7 billion in revenue, according to the filing. The company has lost around $37 billion since inception.

“This is the most out there valuation of any company you can think of,” Boyle said. “It’s way beyond the valuation of Nvidia, and Nvidia is hugely profitable with massive margins. SpaceX just isn’t.”

The AI Unit Is Doing The Damage

The bleeding is concentrated in one place. Starlink, the connectivity arm, turned an operating profit of about $1.19 billion in the quarter, while the space division lost $662 million and the AI unit folded in from the xAI merger lost roughly $2.5 billion.

The prospectus disclosed that Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX around $1.25 billion a month to rent capacity at its Colossus data centers through 2029.

The irony is that SpaceX appears to need that rental revenue to fund the chips and supercomputers it is buying to compete with Anthropic in the first place.

The filing also outlines plans for solar-powered data centers in orbit, designed to sidestep terrestrial power and cooling limits, the kind of detail behind Boyle’s “science experiment” line.

The Index Controversy

Nasdaq rewrote its index rules effective May 1, letting top-40 companies join the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days, down from a months-long seasoning period, and weighting thin-float stocks at up to five times their actual float.

SpaceX reportedly plans to float only about 5% of its shares.

Critics argue that combination could force passive funds like the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) to buy billions in stock at inflated prices, with retail index holders potentially left exposed once any lock-up expires.

What Prediction Markets Say

Traders appear unfazed. Polymarket assigns a 94% chance of a June listing, and an 87% probability that SpaceX delivers 2026’s biggest IPO.

Polymarket trades estimate a 71% chance the market cap will be above $2 trillion. NYU’s Aswath Damodaran, meanwhile, pegged fair value closer to $1.22 trillion, well below the $2 trillion figure.

Boyle suspects the timing is no accident, reflecting a scramble to list before rivals soak up investor cash. That race is already on, with OpenAI reportedly moving to file as soon as Friday.

Image: Shutterstock