Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire following the initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX. It’s the largest IPO in history. The firm raked in $85 billion, reaching a peak valuation of over $2.6 trillion within days of its debut, briefly surpassing Amazon.

Musk’s net worth shot up to roughly equal to roughly 3% of US GDP. The net worth of J.D. Rockefeller, the world’s first-ever billionaire, was 1.5% of GDP in his day.

In a Manhattan high-rise, JP Morgan bankers and SpaceX executives celebrated the event with lavish ostentation, including Tomahawk steaks branded with company logos and a “dessert in the stars.”

Before a coterie of investors and salaried employees in Texas, Musk pontificated that, “There’s always problems on Earth … things that we wish to be better … but there also have to be things that get you excited about the future, that make you glad to wake up in the morning.” 

This optimistic vision of an interplanetary future is cold comfort for a working class wracked with those earthly problems. Workers can’t live on heady thoughts of the future when the present is crumbling beneath their feet.

Hype vs. reality

SpaceX’s fat government contracts, near monopoly on space travel, and Starlink satellites played a major significant role in attaining the record IPO valuation. But successfully leveraging AI hype was decisive.

Last year, Musk folded his struggling xAI startup into the SpaceX umbrella. Paradoxically, xAI was the reason for the company’s shortfall in profits: SpaceX saw a net loss of $4.9 billion last year. Musk claims it will reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. How will this be achieved?

In their IPO prospectus, SpaceX admits they’ll use “technologies that do not exist, [which] may not achieve commercial viability, [to] establish a lunar economy, transport humans and cargo to the Moon and Mars, and develop human augmentation systems.” 

Besides the promise of wholly-reusable rockets and a Martian utopia, much of the hype is in relation to the spacefaring “orbital data centers” SpaceX claims will become a reality “as early as 2028.”

Data centers are exceedingly expensive to fund, build, and fuel on Earth. In space, solar power is free and uninterrupted. Plus, space lacks the pesky neighbors that earthly capitalists must contend with. But the plans are far closer to sci-fi fantasy than viable technology.

The bigger question is whether the trillions projected to be invested in AI and space travel will ever return a profit.

AI bubble 

That Musk has reached this summit on the back of an unprofitable enterprise epitomizes the absurd logic of the AI boom. Tech firms on the S&P 500 are trading for an average of 39 times their earnings. SpaceX’s market value reached over 90 times last year’s revenue.

While most investors and analysts acknowledge the bubble, many are buying in hoping to make a quick fortune before the bubble pops. The alternative is letting money sit idle in an otherwise decrepit economy. Without tech spending, US GDP would have grown only 0.1% in the first half of 2025. 

The IPO’s timing was telling. The stock market continues to “defy gravity.” OpenAI and Anthropic are poised to follow SpaceX with their own IPOs this year. Rather than a sign of renewed zeal, however, The Wall Street Journal posited the wave of historic IPOs likely reveals we’re “past peak excitement over AI.”

Private companies generally go public to tap into the vast sums on the stock market when private investors can’t quench their thirst for rapid expansion. 

Startups and “hyperscalers” alike are throwing cash into the firebox to power the AI build-out. But returns on this heavy investment are scant and most of these companies are bleeding cash. 

The story is the same across the AI industry. It’s commonplace among the so-called hyperscalers: shift capital from where average returns are currently being made, into risky investments where they hope to make superprofits in the future. 

This is a tried and tested recipe for overproduction and a stock market crash. And it won’t be the rich who lose their shirts.

Impact on workers

The Nasdaq-100, the gold standard index for tech firms, rewrote its rules for entry ahead of the SpaceX IPO. Among other changes, it lowered the bar for companies lacking cashflow and consistent profitability, and reduced the period they must wait to be added to prove there’s demand. 

Before their alteration, the rules sought to safeguard the billions in pensions and 401(k)s invested in the fund from turbulent businesses. Their revision ties those billions to an inflated, unprofitable company. Already, less than two weeks after the IPO, SpaceX stock fell 23% in three days of tech selloffs, and Musk temporarily lost his trillionaire crown. 

Nearly two-thirds of Americans own stock directly or through pension funds and 401(k)s. One-fifth of US household assets are invested in stocks. Ordinary Americans could well see their savings wiped out, and bear the brunt of the ensuing economic recession.

Musk is right—we should look to our future. But he’s wrong if he thinks the future rests in his hands. Our future is in the hands of the workers who’ll wage a revolutionary struggle against Musk and his parasitic class.