The Wall Street Journal
The Journal.
THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2026
6/11/2026 4:00:00 PMShare This Episode
Is SpaceX Worth the Hype?
スペースXは期待に見合う価値があるのか？
SpaceX is preparing the largest public offering ever on Friday. Elon Musk’s space-satellite-AI-social-media company plans to sell $75 billion worth of shares at a “take-it-or-leave-it” price of $135 a share. WSJ’s Corrie Driebusch takes us inside the SpaceX books and details what investors are thinking about the massive IPO. Ryan Knutson hosts.
• worth the hype /wɜːrθ ðə haɪp/ 期待に見合う価値がある
• public offering /ˈpʌblɪk ˈɔːfərɪŋ/ 株式公開、IPO
• largest public offering ever /ˈlɑːrdʒɪst ˈpʌblɪk ˈɔːfərɪŋ ˈevər/ 史上最大の株式公開
• take-it-or-leave-it /ˌteɪkɪtɔːrˈliːvɪt/ 受け入れるか断るかしかない、一切値引き交渉の余地がない
• take someone inside /teɪk ˈsʌmwʌn ɪnˈsaɪd/ ～の内部事情を紹介する
• the books /ðə bʊks/ 会計帳簿、財務内容、経営実態
• IPO (Initial Public Offering) /ˌaɪ piː ˈoʊ/ 新規株式公開
Ryan Knutson: Elon Musk's company SpaceX is going public, meaning at some point on Friday, SpaceX will begin selling shares on the stock market, and it's aiming to raise a lot of money.
Corrie Driebusch: SpaceX is by far the largest IPO ever, so I don't even have to say the largest that I've covered. It's the largest ever.
Ryan Knutson: Our colleague, Corrie Driebusch, is an expert in initial public offerings, or IPOs, and she says that the amount of money that SpaceX is aiming to raise, a whopping $75 billion, is more than the amount typically raised in an entire year by all other IPOs combined.
Corrie Driebusch: Think about the total dollars that are raised in a year by IPOs in the U.S.
Ryan Knutson: All of the companies that are listing, all of the money that they're raising from all these investors?
Corrie Driebusch: Yeah. All the companies listing in the U.S. to raise money each year. If you look back the last 10 years, that total has only exceeded the $75 billion SpaceX is going for twice.
Ryan Knutson: That is, forgive the pun, astronomical.
Corrie Driebusch: It's pretty crazy.
Ryan Knutson: What does that tell you?
Corrie Driebusch: It speaks a lot to the craziness of what SpaceX hopes and dreams to do. They kind of believe in almost the "impossible".
Ryan Knutson: The price SpaceX is selling shares for values the company at $1.77 trillion. That puts it among the top 10 most valuable companies in the world. On paper, does it look like SpaceX is a company that should be worth $1.7 trillion?
Corrie Driebusch: SpaceX is selling itself based on its potential, not its current ability to turn profits. SpaceX in its current iteration is unprofitable. You're buying in to what it could be, not what it is right now.
• put A among B /pʊt əˈmʌŋ/ AをBの仲間入りさせる
• on paper /ɑːn ˈpeɪpər/ 理論上は、数字上は
• current iteration /ˈkɜːrənt ˌɪtəˈreɪʃən/ 現在の事業形態、現行バージョン
• buy into /baɪ ˈɪntuː/ ～の考えや将来性を信じる、期待して投資する
Ryan Knutson: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Thursday, June 11th.
Coming up on the show, is SpaceX really worth $1.7 trillion?
When Elon Musk founded SpaceX in the early 2000s, he had big dreams for what the company could accomplish.
Elon Musk: The long-term goal of SpaceX is perhaps not a very commercial-sounding goal at all, which is it's to really build the technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary.
Ryan Knutson: Human life on other planets, his vision wasn't always taken that seriously. For one, Musk didn't have a background in aerospace. For the most part, launching rockets into space had been NASA's domain, not a private company's. It didn't help that getting rockets into orbit is no easy task. It's literally rocket science, plus it's super expensive and dangerous. The first three rockets SpaceX launched-
Speaker 4: And here we go in 10, nine, eight, seven-
Ryan Knutson: ... they never made it into orbit.
Speaker 4: ... six, five, four...
Ryan Knutson: The Falcon 1 rockets, which cost millions of dollars to make, were either destroyed or lost mid-flight. In 2008, SpaceX finally started to take off when Falcon 1 Flight 4 successfully reached orbit.
Speaker 5: Which means Falcon 1 has made history-
Speaker 6: Pilar separation confirmation.
Speaker 5: ... as the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach Earth orbit from the ground.
• payload separation confirmation /ˈpeɪloʊd ˌsepəˈreɪʃən ˌkɑːnfərˈmeɪʃən/ 搭載物分離確認
Ryan Knutson: SpaceX later expanded beyond the rocket business. It went on to launch a satellite internet arm called Starlink, and it eventually merged with XAI, Musk's artificial intelligence startup, which also owns the social media platform X, by the way. So SpaceX is now a rockets, internet, AI, and social media company. How all that works out financially was mostly a mystery. Since it was a privately owned company, it didn't have to disclose very much, even to its original investors.
Corrie Driebusch: One thing that's been fascinating about SpaceX for the many years that I've been watching the company is it's been notoriously so secretive about its finances. The majority of pre-IPO investors have been in the dark about how much it made or lost.
Ryan Knutson: That's changing now that the company's going public. To be listed on stock exchanges, companies have to disclose a lot. A few weeks ago, SpaceX released a document that was several hundred pages long and outlined the financial state of the business. Let's start with a part of the business that's making money, Starlink.
Corrie Driebusch: When you think of SpaceX, even just the name, you think of rockets and space travel, but the part of the business that's really propping up the company right now is actually much more boring. That's the constellation of satellites that provide high speed internet to people all over the world, even in very remote locations.
Ryan Knutson: Starlink has 10 million subscribers, five times more than it had three years ago. Last year, the Starlink division was responsible for $11 billion of revenue, which amounted to more than 60% of SpaceX's total sales. While Starlink is the profitable segment of the company, a big money-losing segment is the AI division.
• constellation /ˌkɑːnstəˈleɪʃən/ （衛星の）コンステレーション、衛星群
• satellite /ˈsætəlaɪt/ 人工衛星
Corrie Driebusch: Yes, SpaceX has its famous space business, which includes rockets. Then it also has Starlink. Then the final real segment of the business is earlier this year it acquired another Musk company, XAI, the maker of Grok. So it now has this artificial intelligence segment, which is unprofitable.
Ryan Knutson: The XAI division only brought in around $3 billion in revenue, but it's spending money like crazy, trying to build data centers and improve its technology in an arms race with rivals like OpenAI and Google. When you add it all up, the Starlink, the rockets, the AI, SpaceX is not a profitable company. It generated roughly $19 billion in revenue, but still lost nearly $5 billion overall last year. This is why some analysts are raising eyebrows over this $1.77 trillion valuation. Not to get too technical, but that means that SpaceX is listing at 94 times sales. By comparison, Apple's price-to-sales ratio is around 10, even though it has more than 20 times the revenue that SpaceX does. Does anybody look at this potential valuation and say, "I don't think so"? I mean, any analysts out there that are skeptical?
• raise eyebrows /reɪz ˈaɪbraʊz/ 驚きや疑問を引き起こす
• times sales /taɪmz seɪlz/ 売上高倍率
• price-to-sales ratio /praɪs tə seɪlz ˈreɪʃioʊ/ 株価売上高倍率（P/Sレシオ）
Corrie Driebusch: Morningstar came out and put out a valuation that was significantly low. I think it was below $800 billion they said was the more reasonable valuation.
Ryan Knutson: Still pretty big, but yeah, that's like less than half of what people are anticipating.
Corrie Driebusch: Exactly.
Ryan Knutson: Just to say, it isn't uncommon for companies to go public while operating at a financial loss, especially in the tech world. A lot of what drives companies to go public is actually the need for an influx of cash so it can be reinvested into the company to grow for the future. The future is really what makes people excited about SpaceX. Some of the banks SpaceX is working with on this IPO thinks SpaceX's future could be really lucrative.
just to say「ただ言っておくと」
• lucrative /ˈluːkrətɪv/ 利益を生む、非常に儲かる
Corrie Driebusch: The future of SpaceX, if you believe these analysts, is the AI segment, this really unprofitable, very new segment to the company. By 2027, research analysts at the two banks that are leading the IPO, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, they both project the company's revenues from AI to eclipse the revenues from space and satellite segments. By 2035, Morgan Stanley research analysts projected AI to bring in around $1.1 trillion in revenues.
Ryan Knutson: Holy cow.
• eclipse /ɪˈklɪps/ 上回る、しのぐ
Corrie Driebusch: Again, you can believe it or not, but that all goes into this 1.77 trillion valuation.
Ryan Knutson: What is so exciting about the AI division? I mean, why do they think it could make so much money?
Corrie Driebusch: Part of what SpaceX is focusing on right now is not necessarily like your chatbot. Obviously they have Grok, but what they include in part of their AI business is seeing this future of operating AI data centers in space.
Elon Musk: ... that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space, and that'll be true within two years, maybe three. Three at the latest.
Corrie Driebusch: What Musk and a few other mines have started to talk about in the last few years has been why don't we take these data centers and put them in space, and allow this big computing to orbit the earth, and that allows to scale up technology without the headaches that are being faced on earth.
Ryan Knutson: There are three headaches that putting a data center in space would theoretically help with: power, cooling, and the growing backlash against data center construction. These orbital data centers will be powered by the sun through solar panels, and cooled by the frigid temperatures in space. Unlike on earth, little green men aren't going to be saying, "Please don't put this data center in my sector of space." At least, not that we know of.
Corrie Driebusch: We don't.
Ryan Knutson: We haven't heard from them directly.
Corrie Driebusch: SpaceX sees this as, okay, SpaceX has this very dominant position where they're able to launch things into space fairly easily when you think about it. They have gotten this down pat. They are able to do this, and they figured, you know what? We can be the ones to operate orbital data centers and we can do that both for XAI and for other AI companies that might need that.
• get something down pat /ɡet ... daʊn pæt/ ～を完全に習得する
Ryan Knutson: Right. Because other AI companies don't own rockets in the same way that SpaceX does.
Corrie Driebusch: Not even rockets. They don't know how to launch the rockets.
Ryan Knutson: And so, in some ways the idea is that the market that SpaceX is going to have, so to speak, or that it could unlock, is space, like all of space, and everything that could potentially come with it?
Corrie Driebusch: Yes. What they call a total addressable market of $20 trillion of potential sales are out there.
Ryan Knutson: $28 trillion. That's how big SpaceX thinks the space market could be. To put that in perspective, that's about as much as the annual GDP of the entire U.S. economy. In its IPO filing, SpaceX said those revenue opportunities were the largest in "human history", with the majority of that revenue coming from future AI-related business.
Corrie Driebusch: What SpaceX needs to do to hit these projections that analysts are seeing in the future, trillions of dollars of revenue, it's all about AI. To make that work, you need to make orbital data centers work. So you have to have real confidence that that's going to happen because if that doesn't happen, where are these profits coming from?
Ryan Knutson: What could that mean for investors if SpaceX doesn't hit its goals? That's next.
Before a company goes public, it goes on tour, or what's called a roadshow, where it tries to figure out how much money big-time investors are willing to pay for the stock, but SpaceX didn't take the usual approach.
Corrie Driebusch: Typically, when a company launches its roadshow pitch to investors or they go around, they get feedback from investors saying, "Hey, how much would you pay? We're thinking in this price range, this like $5 or $10 price range." SpaceX turned that on their head and said, "You know what? We don't want drama on this IPO roadshow. We're just going to tell you this is the price, take it or leave it." So they launched the roadshow with a $135 share price, said, "Take it or leave it," and that's what investors are grappling with right now.
• turn something on its head /tɜːrn ... ɑːn ɪts hed/ 従来の考え方を覆す
Ryan Knutson: Musk is banking on the hope that a lot of people are willing to buy at that price. See, back in 2020, Musk made a promise. He tweeted that he was a huge fan of individual investors, aka retail investors, or people who buy shares through apps like Robinhood with their personal investment accounts. He said that when SpaceX went public, he'd make sure those individual investors get, "Top priority." "You can hold me to it," he said. And he's kept that promise. When SpaceX goes public, as much as a third of the offering could be sold to individuals, which is way more than usual. Part of the reason Musk loves individual investors is because they love him. At Tesla, one of his other companies, individual investors' faith and enthusiasm helped Tesla's valuation reach levels higher than its sales alone would explain. What kinds of things have you been hearing from retail investors in terms of how they're feeling about this coming IPO?
• bank on /bæŋk ɑːn/ ～を当てにする、期待する
• hold someone to it /hoʊld ˈsʌmwʌn tə ɪt/ 約束を守らせる
Corrie Driebusch: There are a lot of believers, and I would say that's what we are hearing. There is extreme interest in the IPO. There's such a group of Musk fans who like, "In Musk, I trust," they believe in Musk, they believe in this dream. They're just happy to be a part of it.
Ryan Knutson: Corrie and a colleague spoke to some everyday investors earlier this week, like Tamar June, a tech executive in her 60s who uses Starlink at home. She says she wants to be in on SpaceX in part because she believes in Musk.
Tamar June: The man can execute. He can execute on his vision.
Ryan Knutson: Dean Noory is another investor who wants in. He doesn't consider himself a Musk fanboy, but he's been listening to Musk's videos and podcast interviews and learning about SpaceX for years.
Dean Noory: They're the only organization that I believe is tee'd up and ready for the total market that's going to become available in space.
Ryan Knutson: And Josh Hill, a sales manager at a manufacturing company says that while he's skeptical of the Musk hype, he does plan to buy in eventually.
Josh Hill: He's done a really good job of doing what he does best, and that's hyping things up and moving pieces around to make it look attractive at two trillion.
• tee up /tiː ʌp/ 準備を整える
• move pieces around /muːv ˈpiːsɪz əˈraʊnd/ 駒を動かすように調整する
Corrie Driebusch: It's shocking to me how much interest I hear.
Ryan Knutson: Why? Why is it shocking to you?
Corrie Driebusch: I would say the shocking part is the lack of price sensitivity, not just, "I would buy it for this price." It's more, "I just want shares." That is what is so surprising to me, is to hear this fervor of nothing will go wrong. It has to go up. As anyone who has covered markets for so many years, we know that markets don't always go up. The potential to make a lot of people a lot of money is big, but there's also a potential to really erode the trust of the individual investor. Honestly, that's what I'm thinking about individual investors here. What happens if they see this huge loss?
• fervor /ˈfɜːrvər/ 熱狂、熱意
• erode /ɪˈroʊd/ 徐々に損なう
Ryan Knutson: You know the old adage, buy low, sell high? That's what earned Musk a lot of fans with Tesla. Investors had years to buy that stock while it was still pretty cheap, and they made tons of money when it started skyrocketing about a decade ago. With SpaceX, much of the rise in its valuation actually took place when it was a private company. Its current valuation, $1.7 trillion, already bakes in a lot of those feature expectations.
• old adage /ˌoʊld ˈædɪdʒ/ 古い格言、ことわざ
• bake in /beɪk ɪn/ （期待や要素を）織り込む
Corrie Driebusch: Tesla, that valuation has rocketed up higher while it was a public company so individuals were all able to participate in that. If it comes down, even if it has a day when it comes down 15, 20%, a lot of those folks got in at a much lower level. They're still in the green. Here, we're seeing everyone get in at a very, very high level, and that's just... I just worry, but I'm a warrior.
• in the green /ɪn ðə ɡriːn/ 含み益がある、利益が出ている
• worrier /ˈwɜːriər/ 心配性な人
Ryan Knutson: Even if you have zero plans to buy SpaceX stock, Corrie says that if you have a 401k or other investments in retirement funds, you might not have a choice. The NASDAQ 100 Index, which tracks the 100 major U.S. companies, has agreed to change its rules to include SpaceX in the next month. That means major investment funds attract the NASDAQ 100, some of which might be in your 401k, will automatically buy SpaceX.
Corrie Driebusch: Usually, these indexes say you need to wait at least three months, maybe a year, before you're allowed to be in our index because we need the stock to be less volatile, fewer stock swings. We don't want it right when you go public. It needs "seasoning" time. But what the advisors or bankers were saying to the index providers was, "SpaceX is going to come public as one of the largest companies in the world. If you don't have it in your index, you're missing out on a huge part of the market."
• seasoning time /ˈsiːzənɪŋ taɪm/ 熟成期間、様子見期間
• miss out on /mɪs aʊt ɑːn/ ～を逃す
Ryan Knutson: Not every index sees it as worth the risk though. For instance, the S&P 500 isn't changing its rules. SpaceX isn't the only company with a major IPO coming. Anthropic and OpenAI are also expected to go public later this year. We're hearing about so many other IPOs that are coming down the pipeline around artificial intelligence in particular. Why are there so many companies that are looking to IPO right now?
Corrie Driebusch: It comes back to how much cash these companies are burning through, and how fast they're burning through that cash. Of course, if SpaceX's IPO trades down, I think OpenAI and Anthropic are going to have to reevaluate their plans.
• come back to /kʌm bæk tuː/ 結局～に行き着く
• burn through /bɜːrn θruː/ 急速に使い果たす
• trade down /treɪd daʊn/ 株価が下落する
Ryan Knutson: So far, that doesn't look like it's going to be an issue. BlackRock alone wants to buy at least $5 billion worth of SpaceX shares, according to people familiar with the matter, and other large asset managers have also made clear their intention to buy. There's all this excitement now, but does that tell you anything about whether SpaceX will actually live up to all this hype?
Corrie Driebusch: I mean, that is the-
Ryan Knutson: $1.7 trillion question?
Corrie Driebusch: Yeah, that's a $1 trillion question and it's going to be fascinating and exciting to watch on Friday.
Ryan Knutson: That's all for today, Thursday, June 11th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Hannah Aaron Lang, Ben Cohen, Becky Peterson, Micah Madenberg, and Tim Higgins. These credits have been updated, by the way, to correct Becky Peterson's name. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
The Journal. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2026
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bull = nonsense（でたらめ、たわごと）
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He's a man amongst boys.
（彼は別格だ。） -
This feels like a personal vendetta.（これは個人的な恨みのように見える。）
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He pulled himself up by the bootstraps.
（彼は苦境から自力で這い上がった。） -
Coffee is a staple of office life.
（コーヒーはオフィス生活の定番だ。） -
And if that weren't enough, sales fell again.
（そのうえ売上まで再び落ち込んだ。） -
Consumers can't stomach higher prices.
（消費者は値上げに耐えられない。）
• seared /sɪrd/ 表面を強火で焼いた
• old-timey /ˌoʊld ˈtaɪmi/ 古風な、昔ながらの
• brassy /ˈbræsi/ 華やかな、金管楽器のような響きの
• old world /ˌoʊld ˈwɜːrld/ 古き良き伝統的な雰囲気の
• ripping good /ˈrɪpɪŋ ɡʊd/ とても素晴らしい（口語）
• trot /trɑːt/ 小走りする
• breeding bull /ˈbriːdɪŋ bʊl/ 種雄牛
• herd /hɜːrd/ 牛の群れ
• hulking /ˈhʌlkɪŋ/ 巨大でがっしりした
• no bull /noʊ bʊl/ 冗談ではない、本当に
• calf (calves) /kæf/ 子牛
• father calves /ˈfɑːðər kævz/ 子牛をもうける
• father /ˈfɑːðər/ （子の）父となる
• vicious /ˈvɪʃəs/ 容赦ない、えげつない、攻撃的な
• personal vendetta /ˌpɜːrsənəl venˈdetə/ 個人的な恨み、確執
• the knives come out /ðə naɪvz kʌm aʊt/ 激しい対立が始まる
• decoy /ˈdiːkɔɪ/ おとり
• bid on someone's behalf /bɪd ɑːn sʌmwʌnz bɪˈhæf/ 代理で入札する
• throw off ... /θroʊ ɔːf/ ～を惑わせる、混乱させる
• cutthroat /ˈkʌtθroʊt/ 熾烈な、情け容赦ない
• edgy /ˈedʒi/ 緊張感のある、ピリピリした
• at times /æt taɪmz/ 時には
• sale barn /seɪl bɑːrn/ 家畜競売場
• make out /meɪk aʊt/ うまくやる、成果を上げる
• eye-watering /ˈaɪ ˌwɔːtərɪŋ/ 目が飛び出るほど高い、驚くべき
• lackluster /ˈlækˌlʌstər/ 冴えない、ぱっとしない
• take out debt /teɪk aʊt det/ 借金をする、融資を受ける
• stay in business /steɪ ɪn ˈbɪznəs/ 廃業せずに事業を続ける
• dire straits /ˌdaɪər ˈstreɪts/ 深刻な苦境、窮地
• pull yourself up by the bootstraps /pʊl jɔːrˈself ʌp baɪ ðə ˈbuːtstræps/ 自力で立ち直る、逆境を自力で乗り越える
• bootstrap mentality /ˈbuːtstræp menˈtæləti/ 自助努力の精神
• hay /heɪ/ 干し草
• feed /fiːd/ 飼料
• turn a profit /tɜːrn ə ˈprɑːfɪt/ 利益を上げる
• euthanize /ˈjuːθənaɪz/ 安楽死させる
• leave the business altogether /liːv ðə ˈbɪznəs ˌɔːltəˈɡeðər/ 完全に廃業する
• golden ticket /ˈɡoʊldən ˈtɪkɪt/ 成功への切符、状況を一変させるもの
• barbecue joint /ˈbɑːrbɪkjuː dʒɔɪnt/ バーベキュー店
• lose money on ... /luːz ˈmʌni ɑːn/ ～で赤字を出す
• brisket /ˈbrɪskɪt/ ブリスケット（牛の胸肉）
• staple /ˈsteɪpəl/ 定番の、主要な
• staple menu item /ˈsteɪpəl ˈmenjuː ˈaɪtəm/ 定番メニュー
• pitmaster /ˈpɪtˌmæstər/ バーベキュー職人
• steer someone away from ... /stɪr əˈweɪ frəm/ ～から遠ざける、別のものへ誘導する
• plead with someone to ... /pliːd wɪð/ ～するよう懇願する、強く訴える
• replenish /rɪˈplenɪʃ/ 補充する、回復させる
• if that weren't enough /ɪf ðæt wɜːrnt ɪˈnʌf/ それだけでも十分悪いのに
• flesh-eating /ˈfleʃ ˌiːtɪŋ/ 肉を食べる
• parasite /ˈpærəsaɪt/ 寄生虫
• go around /ɡoʊ əˈraʊnd/ 広まる、流行する
• New World screwworm /nuː wɜːrld ˈskruːwɜːrm/ 新世界スクリューワーム
• protein /ˈproʊtiːn/ タンパク源
• stomach (verb) /ˈstʌmək/ 我慢して受け入れる
• for good /fɔːr ɡʊd/ 永久に、ずっと
• slice into ... /slaɪs ˈɪntuː/ ～を切り分ける
• glossy /ˈɡlɔːsi/ つやのある
• juice /dʒuːs/ 肉汁
• ribbon of fat /ˈrɪbən əv fæt/ 脂の筋、脂の層
• be on the hook for ... /ɑːn ðə hʊk fɔːr/ ～の責任を負う、～を支払う羽目になる
• wouldn't have minded /ˈmaɪndɪd/ ～でも構わなかった