Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTDaniel Sparks, The Motley FoolFri, July 3, 2026 at 5:33 AM GMT+2 5 min readSpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12 at $135 per share, raising $75 billion in the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. Three weeks later, the rocket, satellite-internet, and artificial intelligence (AI) company commands a market capitalization of about $2.1 trillion. Only a handful of companies have ever been worth that much -- and every one of them earned billions in profits when it got there.SpaceX is different. Across 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, its reported losses add up to a trailing net loss of about $9.4 billion, set against roughly $19.3 billion in trailing revenue.Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »That combination raises a question worth answering before the company joins the Nasdaq-100 on July 7 -- an event that will make index funds automatic buyers of the stock. Has a money-losing business ever been valued this highly? And if it hasn't, should investors care?Image source: Getty Images.Start with the historical check. The market has valued unprofitable companies richly before, but the previous standard-bearers operated on a different scale entirely. Rivian, the electric-truck maker, briefly commanded a market value of about $150 billion in late 2021 while deeply unprofitable -- and that stood out as extreme at the time. Uber ran years of losses with a valuation that topped out around $100 billion. Amazon, the dot-com era's favorite money-loser, was worth only tens of billions back when it was losing money.SpaceX's $2.1 trillion is roughly 14 times the Rivian benchmark. I can't find a money-losing company in market history that has come anywhere close. So it's safe to say that SpaceX appears to be the most valuable unprofitable company the market has ever seen.Now, the loss itself deserves a closer look, because it isn't the loss of a struggling business. According to the company's IPO prospectus, SpaceX -- whose filings also include xAI, the AI business it absorbed -- generated $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, up 33% year over year, and lost $4.9 billion. Then it lost another $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026.But the composition matters. Starlink, the satellite-internet business, produced $11.4 billion of 2025 revenue -- about 61% of the total -- and generated $4.4 billion in operating profit. The losses come from everything surrounding it: about $3 billion a year of research and development spending on the Starship rocket program, plus the enormous computing costs of the AI operation. In plain terms, one highly profitable business is funding two gigantic bets.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info