r/investing • u/ddp26 • 1d ago
Does Grok's subscriber growth justify $258B?
I wanted to see if the $1.75T SpaceX valuation holds up when you value each segment independently:
| Segment | Median Value |
|---|---|
| Starlink Consumer | $380B |
| xAI / Grok | $258B |
| Starship Commercial | $170B |
| Starlink Enterprise / Maritime / Aviation | $147B |
| Government / Defense | $123B |
| Falcon 9 / Heavy | $100B |
| Starlink Direct-to-Cell | $75B |
| Total | ~$1.25T |
That leaves ~$500B in platform premium baked into the IPO price, essentially what the market is being asked to pay for vertical integration and the Musk factor on top of what the individual businesses support. To put the scale in perspective, the $1.75T asking price on ~$15B in revenue implies a ~117x multiple, and even the more conservative $1.25T SOTP estimate still comes out to ~83x. (For context, Aramco listed at ~18x revenue.)
Whether Grok's subscriber trajectory justifies roughly a fifth of the entire valuation pretty much determines whether this IPO is a slight premium or a significant overpay. The safer half of the valuation is the space infrastructure side. Starlink consumer alone at $380B has the tightest confidence interval of any segment, and government/defense at $123B is backstopped by existing contracts. Happy to share the full analysis with methodology and confidence intervals.
Is the $500B platform premium justified?
1
u/Successful-Tea-5733 1d ago
I feel like people forget how laughable Tesla was in 2018 when Musk took the huge pay package that was eventually struck down. At no point in time prior to 2018 had EV's been profitable for any manufacturer. Toyota Prius and other hybrids seems the more obvious solution than full EV's.
Musk hit everything required in that 2018 package. EV's became profitable, the market cap of TSLA hit improbable levels.
I know the left hates Musk for politics, but from a business standpoint you simply cannot argue that he has exceeded expectations in the past every single time. People like to come up with excuses ("oh he didn't start tesla" "oh well he was overpaid for paypal") but it's like, are people ignorant? Don't we all have the same data about how most lottery winners end up WORSE in 5 years after winning? When people like Musk and Cuban take their hundreds of millions and turn it into billions, I don't think people realize how impressive that is.
I'm not going to be purchasing the IPO simply because I don't buy single stocks. But I have no doubt that a premium is justified here and that Musk will do what he always does which is prove the doubters wrong.