Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for the biggest IPO in history, and its next-generation Starship vehicle may be the key to its sky-high valuation.
Yet, what may be more impressive than the vehicle’s specs is what it is meant to accomplish. The V3 will serve as the foundation for the myriad businesses that are helping fuel SpaceX’s eye-popping $1.7 trillion valuation, said Chad Anderson, the founder of VC firm Space Capital and an early SpaceX investor.
Anderson also sees a convergence between ground-based infrastructure and orbital infrastructure on a large scale, creating opportunities to move heavy industry off planet.
In addition, Starship is expected to play a role in building a base on the moon and eventually a colony on Mars. In fact, SpaceX’s IPO filing showed that Musk would receive additional shares if he puts data centers in orbit and builds a Mars colony.
“Starship also enables all kinds of frontier markets,” he said.
The Starship V3 is still in development and is currently undergoing test flights. After a scheduled test flight Thursday was scrapped, SpaceX successfully launched it on Friday evening.
Aleksandar Tomic, an economist and the associate dean for strategy, innovation, and technology at Boston College, told Fortune SpaceX’s prospectus leaves much up to the imagination.
“There are big questions, like what multiple should you evaluate it at, and then what multiple should you assign to the fact that Elon Musk is connected to it,” he said. “But it’s difficult to get into any of that, when he will not even tell you.”
Still, Anderson said in the CNBC interview that SpaceX cannot be valued like any other company. Its lofty ambitions with orbital data centers or a future Mars mission need to be taken into account. In short, SpaceX is more than just a rocket company, he said.
“Investors and allocators are pricing in 2040 economics here. You’re not looking at this business as a launch business. You’re looking at it as their launch business is a competitive advantage that gives them access to orbit,” he said.
