SpaceX conquered space, now eyes bigger opportunity in AI
NEW YORK: Over the last quarter century, Elon Musk revived space travel, turning cosmic exploration into thriving businesses.
For its next act, Musk's SpaceX is eyeing an even bigger opportunity in something more prosaic: building artificial intelligence (AI) for the enterprise.
SpaceX estimates that its total addressable market (TAM) - a closely watched metric - could be as much as US$28.5 trillion, according to a S-1 filing reviewed by Reuters.
TAM is the maximum revenue a company could generate if it captured every customer in a particular market.
The S-1 regulatory filing, in which companies disclose their financials and key risks before going public, shows that SpaceX expects more than 90% of that market, or US$26.5 trillion, could stem from the AI sector.
The vast majority of that, US$22.7 trillion, could come from AI for businesses.
The company is moving ahead with an IPO expected this summer targeting a valuation of roughly US$1.75 trillion and seeking to raise about US$75 billion, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history.
"We believe we have identified the largest actionable TAM in human history," according to the filing.
The new information about where SpaceX sees its biggest market opportunity stands in stark contrast to how the company currently makes its money.
SpaceX did not reply to a request for comment.
Although a company's TAM is neither a forecast or a valuation, it is an important indicator for investors evaluating a high-growth company's potential.
These figures are often vast and rarely questioned. When Uber went public in 2019, it claimed a US$5.7 trillion market opportunity for its ride-sharing business alone.
The eye-popping opportunity identified by SpaceX, tucked into more than 300 pages detailing its finances, underscores Musk's long-held desire to occupy a central role in the advancement of AI technology.
The AI for enterprise market is currently dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, AI industry leaders locked in intense competition, and both of which have indicated intentions to go public as early as this year.
In February, SpaceX acquired xAI, an AI research company founded by Musk in early 2023. The filing seen by Reuters shows that xAI remains a nascent and deeply loss-making operation.
The AI unit posted an operating loss of US$6.4 billion in 2025, sharply wider than the US$1.6 billion loss a year earlier.
Those losses eclipsed the US$4.4 billion in operating profit generated by Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet business and its largest revenue engine, which brought in US$11.4 billion of its US$18.7 billion total revenue last year. Overall, SpaceX lost US$4.9 billion.
SpaceX's AI unit is also resource hungry. In 2025, SpaceX's total capex surged to US$20.7 billion, with AI accounting for US$12.7 billion - more than it spent on its space and connectivity businesses combined.
The company said it could capitalise on some of xAI's preexisting tools, such as Grok Enterprise and an agentic or autonomous platform it is developing with Tesla called Macrohard.
In the filing, the company warned prospective investors of its big spending plans to develop AI and other technologies, including manufacturing the keys to powering artificial intelligence called graphics processing units, or GPUs.
SpaceX also said it would assemble a specialised salesforce and send employees known as forward deployed engineers to embed directly with customers to help their workforces embrace AI.
"We believe that our enterprise strategy, which is focused on serving the digital needs of the world's largest industries with Al solutions, positions us competitively to pursue this rapidly growing opportunity," SpaceX said in the filing.
One source familiar with the financials of the company was not convinced.
"If you decide I'm going to be really sober about this and only value the businesses that I can actually see, you're not going to be in the ballpark of what the market will almost certainly set the valuation to be," the source said.