SpaceX Revenue: Morgan Stanley Eyes $3.4T by 2040

Morgan Stanley projects SpaceX revenue reaching $3.4 trillion by 2040, as the space economy accelerates toward a $1 trillion milestone and an IPO redefines the sector.

Morgan Stanley projects SpaceX revenue at $3.4 trillion by 2040, a 182-fold increase from 2025's $18.7 billion.
Starlink generated $11.4 billion in 2025 — 61% of total revenue — and is projected to reach $144 billion by 2030.
The broader space economy stands at $626.4 billion in 2025 and is on course to cross $1.4 trillion by the late 2030s.

Lead

SpaceX, the private launch and satellite company controlled by Elon Musk, is the subject of one of the most ambitious revenue forecasts in Wall Street history. Morgan Stanley, serving as co-lead underwriter on the company's forthcoming initial public offering, projects SpaceX revenue growing from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $3.4 trillion by 2040 — a trajectory that would make SpaceX one of the largest enterprises ever created. The projection arrives as the company prepares to price its IPO at $135 per share on June 12, 2026, at a headline valuation of $1.77 trillion.

What Happened

The $3.4 trillion revenue target for 2040 is underpinned by a projected $2.7 trillion EBITDA figure, with the company reaching $474 billion in annual revenue as early as 2030. Free cash flow is expected to hit $72 billion by 2031. Morgan Stanley also pegs SpaceX's enterprise valuation at $2.5 trillion by 2030 and $12.8 trillion by 2040.

Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter, published its own forecasts pointing to $474 billion in 2030 revenue, with the AI segment alone accounting for $322 billion — a 100-fold increase from the $3.2 billion recorded in 2025.

Business Segments Driving the Forecast

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite broadband service, remains the company's core profit engine. The constellation — now numbering more than 9,600 satellites serving roughly 10 to 12 million subscribers across 160-plus countries — posted $11.4 billion in 2025 revenue, up 48% year-over-year. Operating profit from Starlink reached $4.4 billion for the year, even as the broader company reported a net loss of $4.9 billion. By 2030, Goldman Sachs projects Starlink revenue at $144 billion, supported by third-generation satellites slated for launch in 2026 and a subscriber base that could approach 23 million by 2035.

The AI segment, currently generating $3.2 billion, is forecast to scale most aggressively. Encompassing Grok, SpaceX-associated data infrastructure, and a planned terafab semiconductor facility, the division is projected to reach $15.6 billion in 2026 — a 388% jump — and $190 billion to $322 billion by 2030 depending on the model used.

Space and launch services, historically the company's founding business line, generated $4.1 billion in 2025 through Pentagon and NASA contracts and is projected at $8.3 billion by 2030, a comparatively modest but stable growth trajectory.

Space Economy Context

SpaceX's forecasts arrive against a backdrop of rapid expansion in the broader space economy. The sector currently stands at $626.4 billion globally and is on course to surpass the $1 trillion threshold between 2032 and 2035, with projections extending to $1.4 trillion to $1.8 trillion by the late 2030s. Commercial satellite services, government defense contracts, and emerging lunar logistics programs are driving the structural shift.

SpaceX, by any measure, occupies the dominant position in this ecosystem — controlling the majority of global commercial launch capacity and holding the only proven high-throughput low-Earth-orbit broadband network at scale.

Valuation Divergence

Not all assessments align with the underwriters' projections. Morningstar published an independent fair-value estimate of $780 billion — less than half the $1.77 trillion IPO target — characterizing the offering as nearly twice fair value. The firm flagged governance risk stemming from Musk's 82% to 85% voting control under the dual-class share structure, and raised the possibility that xAI, Musk's separate artificial intelligence venture, represents a material threat of value dilution.

Financial analysts outside the underwriting syndicate have also noted that the Goldman Sachs AI projections implicitly require SpaceX to surpass the commercial reach of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in AI services — an outcome that remains speculative even in optimistic scenarios.

Outlook

The SpaceX IPO and its associated projections mark a structural turning point for both the space economy and for investor understanding of what SpaceX represents — less a launch company, and increasingly an infrastructure and AI conglomerate operating at planetary scale. Morgan Stanley's $3.4 trillion SpaceX revenue forecast for 2040 sets a benchmark that will be measured against Starlink subscriber growth, AI segment monetization, and the trajectory of the broader space economy over the next 15 years. The June 12 listing will be the first major test of whether institutional capital accepts the valuation gap between underwriter optimism and independent analysis.

Mentioned tickers: SPCX, MS, GS, TSLA

Analysis