Elon Musk makes sky-high trillion-dollar forecast for SpaceX revenue

By Jules Rimmer

The world's first trillionaire says he would be surprised not to see trillion-dollar revenue by 2031

Elon Musk makes a bold sales forecast for SpaceX.

Last year, SpaceX collected $18.7 billion in revenue.

In a posting on the X social media service owned by SpaceX, Elon Musk offered this prediction: "I would be surprised if revenue is not greater than $1 trillion in 2031."

This was no slip of the tongue. A few minutes earlier, he had posted, " I think SpaceX might be able to reach approximately $1 trillion in revenue by 2030."

Musk is no stranger to ambitious promises that have proven difficult to keep. The New York Times recently listed 602 of them, including plans to colonize Mars by 2024, to operate a fleet of 1 million robotaxis by 2020, and repeated claims about full self-driving cars on various timelines. These were among the more eye-catching commitments that never materialized. But coming just two days after the listing of SpaceX on Nasdaq, the revenue forecast will generate investor interest - and controversy.

It also raises a legal issue. U.S. law generally requires a quiet period of 40 days after the IPO, during which time the company and any of the underwriters are prohibited from any communications about the stock. That's usually interpreted to mean that insiders can't say anything that is not in the prospectus. The word "trillion" is mentioned 59 times in the prospectus, but not in this forecast.

How the Securities and Exchange Commission will treat a breach like this is unclear. Last month, Musk settled an SEC lawsuit over the timeliness of his Twitter stock purchases by paying a $1.5 million fine and not admitting wrongdoing - a far cry from the $150 million the agency had previously sought.

Besides the legal question, the forecasts are more ambitious than those made by underwriters of the flotation. The two lead advisers on the deal were far more conservative. Goldman Sachs's estimate is $474 billion in 2030, while Morgan Stanley has $330 billion penciled in, according to forecasts shared with investors reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The market enthusiasm continued for SpaceX (SPCX) on Monday, with the stock up more than 7% in morning trade.

Achieving $1 trillion won't be easy, even with two recent deals that will help revenue growth this year.

A week ago, SpaceX entered into an agreement with Google (GOOG) to provide cloud services for $920 million per month over the next 32 months. Last month, SpaceX entered a similar agreement with Anthropic to rent compute capacity at its Colossus data center for $1.2 billion per month over three years.

The current strength of the SpaceX stock price will be tested more rigorously when early investors can start selling up to 20% of their shares after second-quarter earnings are released on June 30. The lockup structure allows those investors to make further sales at various stages over the next six months. Musk is tied in for one year.

-Jules Rimmer

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-15-26 1058ET