SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought

Elon Musk's SpaceX isn't the financial juggernaut that many were expecting, according to the IPO prospectus it filed yesterday.The big picture: It's expected to be the largest IPO ever, and could make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.But the prospectus shows just how much the IPO depends on expectations for future growth and investor servility to Musk — as opposed to the current underlying business.Those expectations will be severely tested if SpaceX really wants to be valued at $1.75 trillion — which would make it one of the world's 10 most valuable companies.By the numbers: SpaceX is wildly unprofitable, reporting a $4.9 billion net loss on $18.67 billion in consolidated revenue for 2025.For context, 200 companies in the S&P 500 had more revenue last year than did SpaceX. This includes Tesla, whose sales were five times higher.SpaceX said that the AI unit containing X and xAI generated only $818 million in Q1 2026, about a third less than Twitter alone generated in the quarter before Musk took it over.Yes, but: There are some financial green shoots in the filing.For example, Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month to SpaceX for compute, and SpaceX says it will seek to sign similar contracts.Zoom in: The Starlink connectivity business, which years ago was a rumored IPO candidate as a standalone business, is SpaceX's only profitable unit and accounted for most of its Q1 revenue.Look ahead: SpaceX is expected to begin trading next month on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "SPCX."AI rivals OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to go public after Labor Day, with OpenAI seeming to be ahead on paperwork.The bottom line: SpaceX isn't quite David, but it's sure as hell not Goliath.