Elon Musk says he can see a path for SpaceX to be worth “orders of magnitude more than the current Earth economy.” He wrote it in an X post on October 8 and opened by acknowledging it would sound crazy. It is a claim about the far future, with no date and no plan attached.
The numbers
SpaceX traded at about $162 a share in early October, a market value of $2.21 trillion. Musk owns about 48.4% of the company per a recent SEC filing, and an estimate puts his wealth at just over $1.02 trillion. SpaceX shares rose 48% in three months, against 3.12% for the S&P 500, and the company went public about five months ago. World GDP, for comparison, is upwards of $126 trillion.
What experts say
The reaction from analysts has been skeptical. Shammi Thakur of Vyansa Intelligence says Musk’s wording implies a value above $1,000 trillion and that it is “not testable on any investable timeline.” Technology futurist Jeff Stollman says patents on cooling for space-based data centers could be valuable, but nowhere near the size of the global economy. Asteroid mining, space transport and space-based computing are the usual candidates for new revenue, and analysts see them as unlikely to produce tens of trillions of dollars.
The scale
Our own math, using the figures above: one order of magnitude is 10 times, so 10 times $126 trillion is about $1.26 quadrillion. That is roughly 570 times SpaceX’s current value of $2.21 trillion. Musk said “orders” in the plural, which would be more.
Our take: this is a big prediction with no date and no plan attached, so it cannot be checked. It is also worth remembering that Musk owns nearly half of the company. Even so, the real figures here are striking: the company is worth $2.21 trillion five months after it listed. See how a SpaceX deal hit phone carriers last week: SpaceX Agrees to Buy Phone Airwaves; Carrier Shares Fall.
