FEATURED ARTICLE

You Can’t Buy SpaceX Yet — But the Market Found a Way

Let’s just say it plainly: the biggest IPO in financial history is officially on the calendar.

SpaceX filed its confidential draft registration statement with the SEC on April 1, 2026 — a move confirmed independently by Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal. This isn’t cocktail party chatter anymore. This is real, and it’s happening fast.

Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite empire is heading for a targeted $75 billion raise at a $1.75 trillion valuation, with a June listing on the Nasdaq. For context on just how absurd that is: Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO raised $29.4 billion — SpaceX is targeting more than 2.5 times that figure. If the valuation holds, SpaceX would debut as the sixth most valuable public company on Earth — ahead of Meta, Berkshire Hathaway, and every energy company ever listed.

There’s one problem, of course. You can’t buy it yet.

So the market is doing exactly what markets do when a massive, visible trade is forming on the horizon — it finds the nearest on-ramp. Right now, that means Rocket Lab (RKLB) and AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) are where the unusual call volume is showing up. And that’s what we need to talk about.

First, Let’s Talk About the Mother Ship

Before we dig into the proxies, it’s worth spending a minute on SpaceX itself — because the valuation math is genuinely wild, and it matters for how you think about the halo effect on RKLB and ASTS.

SpaceX merged with Musk’s xAI in February 2026, creating a combined entity he valued at $1.25 trillion at the time. Two months later, they’re out here targeting $1.75–$2 trillion. That’s a 40–60% step-up in valuation in a matter of weeks. The $2 trillion valuation leans heavily on AI hype — and you can see why skeptics are raising eyebrows.

The underlying business, though? Starlink confirmed it surpassed 10 million subscribers in February 2026, with revenues projected as high as $24 billion for this year. Over the course of 2025, SpaceX conducted 165 orbital flights. It also holds over $24.4 billion in federal contracts since 2008, including from NASA, the Air Force, and Space Force. That’s a real business, no question.

But here’s the honest tension: a $2 trillion valuation means IPO investors are paying more than 80 times sales — an astronomically expensive valuation for a company in the trillion-dollar club, especially when Nvidia at the peak of its AI-driven rally traded at only 40 to 45 times revenue. Even the bulls have to acknowledge that this is “everything goes perfectly” pricing.

The IPO structure itself is genuinely unprecedented. SpaceX outlined details at a meeting with its full syndicate of bankers, emphasizing retail investors as a critical and larger part of this deal than any IPO in history — those are the CFO’s own words. Up to 30% of shares may be allocated to retail investors — triple the industry standard — and the company plans a special event for 1,500 individual investors on June 11. The roadshow launches the week of June 8, with about 125 financial analysts from the 21 underwriting banks scheduled to meet with the company the day before.

Bottom line: this IPO has the ingredients to create a massive sentiment wave in the commercial space sector well before a single share changes hands publicly. And that wave is already moving — which is exactly why RKLB and ASTS are doing what they’re doing in the options market.

RKLB: The Operator Proxy — And It’s Not Just Hype

Rocket Lab is the most operationally serious pure-play space company you can actually buy in a public market. Let’s get the numbers on the table.

Rocket Lab posted revenue of $602 million for the twelve months ending December 31, 2025 — a 37.96% increase year-over-year. Q4 revenue came in at $180 million, up 35.7% year-over-year. And looking ahead, Q1 2026 revenue is expected between $185 million and $200 million — up 57% year-over-year. That is not a company coasting on narrative. That is a company printing real, accelerating revenue.

The backlog is the number that really gets my attention: a record $1.85 billion at year-end — up 73% year-over-year — driven largely by the SDA Tranche III award, with the company expecting roughly 37% of that backlog to convert to revenue in the next 12 months. That means near-term revenue visibility is genuinely exceptional for a company this size.

Operationally, Rocket Lab flew 21 missions in 2025 with a 100% success rate — a new annual launch record. They were also awarded the largest contract in company history — the $816 million SDA Tranche III prime award to design and manufacture 18 spacecraft — giving them over $1.3 billion in combined SDA contracts. Oh, and two spacecraft they built for NASA and UC Berkeley were successfully launched toward Mars for the ESCAPADE mission, proving Rocket Lab can deliver decadal-class science missions on rapid timelines for a fraction of the cost of traditional interplanetary programs.

On margins: Q4 2025 GAAP gross margin was 38%, with non-GAAP gross margin at 44.3%. FY2026 revenue guidance is set at $885.46 million, reflecting continued momentum, with management emphasizing investments in Neutron development and infrastructure expansion.

Now, the honest part. RKLB is still loss-making. The GAAP EPS loss was $0.09 in Q4, with the adjusted EBITDA loss narrowing but still present. And Neutron — the medium-lift vehicle that will be RKLB’s real game-changer — hit a delay. The stage 1 tank ruptured during qualification testing due to a manufacturing defect in a hand-laid autoclave joint; production was moved to automated fiber placement, with first Neutron launch now targeted for Q4 2026.

Here’s the proxy trade logic in plain English: when SpaceX IPO headlines hit the tape, RKLB’s options market wakes up. Investors looking for space sector exposure without single-stock concentration are naturally looking at Rocket Lab, which surged on the filing news. The put/call ratio on RKLB has been running below 0.70 — a distinctly bullish skew — and the pattern of unusual call volume correlating with SpaceX news cycles has been consistent. Traders are making a simple bet: if the SpaceX IPO legitimizes commercial space as a multi-trillion dollar investable category, RKLB gets re-rated alongside it. That’s the thesis.

What makes this proxy more interesting than most: the underlying business actually supports the attention. This isn’t pure sentiment. Revenues have been growing at an average rate of 43.9% per year. RKLB recently raised $474 million through an equity offering, reinforcing balance sheet strength. The stock is up 224% over the trailing one-year period — and analysts have an average target of $86.68 with a high-end target of $120. That’s not a sleepy space name.

ASTS: The High-Beta Swing — Extraordinary Vision, Extraordinary Risk

AST SpaceMobile is a different conversation entirely. RKLB is a grounded operator with a track record. ASTS is a moonshot — and I mean that almost literally.

The vision: AST SpaceMobile is building the first and only global cellular broadband network in space to operate directly with standard, unmodified mobile devices — targeting 4G and 5G space-based cellular broadband to every device, everywhere, for today’s nearly 6 billion mobile subscribers globally. No specialized hardware. No satellite phone. Just your regular smartphone — connected from low Earth orbit. If that works at scale, the addressable market is almost incomprehensibly large.

The hardware progress is real. In February 2026, ASTS announced the successful unfolding of BlueBird 6 — featuring the largest commercial communications array antenna ever deployed in LEO, spanning approximately 2,400 square feet and engineered to support peak data speeds of up to 120 Mbps. At nearly 2,400 square feet, BlueBird 6 is over three times the size and 10x the capacity of AST SpaceMobile’s six satellites previously in orbit. The company is on track to launch 45–60 satellites by the end of 2026, with launches planned every one to two months on average.

The next key hardware milestone is BlueBird 7. The imminent launch of BlueBird 7, featuring what the company describes as the largest commercial communications array in LEO, underscores how AST SpaceMobile is moving from technology proof-of-concept toward a revenue-generating global network built on agreements with over 45 mobile network operators.

The partnership infrastructure is also genuinely impressive. ASTS has agreements with over 50 mobile network operators globally with nearly 3 billion combined subscribers, along with strategic partnerships with AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Rakuten, Google, American Tower, Bell, and STC Group. That’s not a startup with a pitch deck — that’s a company with signed relationships at the carrier level.

Now let’s look at the financials — where things get complex. For full year 2025, ASTS reported revenue of $70.9 million, primarily derived from strategic government contracts with the Space Development Agency and milestone payments from carrier partners. The net loss was $341.9 million, reflecting the heavy capital expenditure associated with manufacturing the massive Block 2 BlueBird satellites. As of April 2026, the company has a liquidity position of approximately $3.9 billion — a war chest bolstered by the recent convertible offering and strategic prepayments from Verizon and AT&T.

The stock’s journey has been something else. After trading near $12 in early 2024, ASTS reached an all-time high of approximately $129.30 in January 2026, driven by the successful launch of its Block 2 satellites and the crystallization of commercial revenue. As of early April 2026, the stock has pulled back into the $80–$92 range as the market digests the dilution required to fund the full 60-satellite constellation needed for continuous service.

The valuation, though, requires a leap of faith. The market cap on $70.9 million in trailing revenue is extreme by any standard. You’re not buying what ASTS is — you’re buying what ASTS could be. Even the lowest analyst estimates assume revenue could reach about $1.9 billion and earnings about $1.7 billion by 2029 — yet they still flag schedule risk on the 45 to 60 satellite buildout as a key concern. One narrative projects $2.1 billion in revenue and $2.1 billion in earnings by 2028 — a figure that requires 385.7% yearly revenue growth and roughly a $2.4 billion earnings swing from the current net loss.

The SpaceX connection here is a double-edged sword. On one hand, a $2 trillion SpaceX valuation validates the entire direct-to-cell satellite thesis — it says the market believes space-based connectivity is worth staggering sums. On the other hand, SpaceX, in partnership with T-Mobile, is ASTS’s primary rival in the direct-to-cell market, and a massive SpaceX IPO also spotlights its most formidable competitor. Traders are betting on the rising tide; the risk is that the rising tide belongs mostly to SpaceX.

Why the Proxy Trade Works — And Where It Breaks

Let me explain the mechanics clearly, because understanding this is the difference between making a smart opportunistic bet and getting caught in a sentiment trap.

When SpaceX IPO news breaks — the S-1 filing, a new valuation report, a retail investor event announcement — it triggers a well-worn playbook from institutional allocators: deploy capital into the most credible publicly traded analogs while the private market is closed. A successful SpaceX IPO at this valuation legitimizes commercial spaceflight as an investable sector at scale, likely accelerating capital flows to competitors and suppliers alike. That’s the fundamental driver of the proxy bid.

For RKLB, the proxy logic is grounded in something tangible. This is a company generating $600+ million in annual revenue, growing at nearly 40% per year, with a $1.85 billion backlog, 21 successful launches in 2025, and a government contract portfolio that includes some of the most sensitive national security programs in the country. When SpaceX gets re-rated by the IPO narrative, RKLB’s multiple gets pulled up with it — but the underlying business doesn’t become a fantasy. It was already real.

For ASTS, the logic is more thematic and more fragile. The proxy bid is essentially a bet that space-based connectivity gets treated as a category trade, not a company-specific trade. When that works, ASTS gets levered upside because it’s the highest-beta name in the sector. When it breaks — a launch delay, a dilutive capital raise, a SpaceX D2C announcement that compresses ASTS’s differentiation — the unwind can be sharp. ASTS has reported negative operating cash flow and deeply negative free cash flow, with capital expenditures approaching $266 million — a reminder that the execution bar here is high, and the margin for error is narrow.

The options flow has been telling this story clearly. Unusual call volume in both names simultaneously is almost always correlated with a SpaceX headline cycle. That’s event-driven, sentiment-driven trading — not a fundamental re-rating. Smart money knows the difference. The key discipline is sizing for the former, not treating it as the latter.

The Catalyst Calendar: Mark These Dates

There are five events between now and year-end that will move both RKLB and ASTS, whether you’re positioned or not. Here’s what to watch:

• SpaceX S-1 Goes Public (Late May 2026): SpaceX plans to make its IPO prospectus public in late May. This is the single biggest sector-wide catalyst on the board. Analysts will get their first real look at Starlink margins, xAI integration costs, and the full financial picture. Expect a significant repricing event across every space name when this drops.
• SpaceX Roadshow Week of June 8 + Retail Investor Event June 11: SpaceX plans to host 1,500 retail investors on June 11 at what has been described as a major investor event. This will be an enormous media moment and is likely to generate another round of sentiment-driven buying in the proxy names.
• RKLB Q1 2026 Earnings (May 11, 2026): The announcement is scheduled for May 11 post-market, with consensus revenue estimates of $190.83 million and EPS estimates of -$0.04 normalized. With guidance of $185M–$200M, any meaningful beat here would be amplified by the SpaceX backdrop and could trigger a significant move in the stock.
• ASTS BlueBird 7 Launch: The BlueBird 7 launch is the key near-term catalyst for ASTS, while the biggest risk remains schedule or cost setbacks in this capital-intensive rollout. Every successful launch moves the company closer to the 45-satellite threshold needed for genuine commercial continuous service — and re-rates the stock.
• RKLB Neutron First Launch (Q4 2026 Target): This is the long-game catalyst. Neutron’s first launch is now targeted for Q4 2026 after the stage one tank issue, with subsequent launches expected to follow more rapidly. A successful Neutron demonstration fundamentally changes RKLB’s competitive position, total addressable market, and valuation story — all at once.

The Bottom Line

Here’s how I’d frame this: the SpaceX IPO is a capital markets event unlike anything the space sector has ever experienced. It creates a public benchmark — a real-time market price for what the world’s most capable launch provider is actually worth. That benchmark will have gravitational consequences for every public space name, whether those companies deserve the valuation lift or not.

RKLB deserves serious attention as a proxy. The business is real, the growth is real, the contracts are real, and the SpaceX IPO narrative simply amplifies a multiple that was already supported by fundamentals. That’s a better trade setup than most.

ASTS is a higher-risk proposition — a bet on execution across a capital-intensive satellite rollout in a market where your primary competitor is about to be flush with $75 billion in fresh IPO capital. The upside case is extraordinary. So is the execution bar.

What both names have in common right now: they’re riding a wave that has a specific timeline and a known end date. The SpaceX IPO, whenever it prices, will be the peak of this sentiment cycle — not necessarily the beginning of the next one. The traders extracting value from this proxy relationship understand that. Position accordingly, size appropriately, and know which catalyst you’re trading before you’re in it.

This is not a moment to be reckless. But it is absolutely a moment to be paying attention.

For informational and educational purposes only. Not investment advice. Trading involves risk, including loss of principal.