Thanks to our amazing community members like you, we've reached the top 15 of Spotify's video podcasts, the top 10 audio podcasts on both Apple and Spotify for the tech category, so you all make this possible. If you want to support us more, check out our Patreon that's patreon.com/stage 0 News so we can keep this free and open for you to enjoy. Something interesting happened the other day.
I was looking through our stats on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and I noticed that about 55% of you are not subscribed to the show. That means 45% of you are subscribed and I really do appreciate your support of the other 55% of you are awesome. But I'm going to ask you for a favor. Could you please hit the subscribe button? It'll take you one second. I'm going to promise you 10 years of this podcast for free,
No pay walls. I'm not going to charge you anything ever, but I'm going to give you 10 years of this show for free. I've already been doing it for five years and I plan on doing it for 10 more. And the only way that we can continue doing this is with your support. So one second of your time to hit the subscribe button right now would help the show tremendously. Thank you so much.
SpaceX just set a secondary share price of $421.00 per share, valuing Elon Musk's rocket company at roughly $800 billion. On October, Sam Altman's Open AI had reached a $500 billion valuation, making it the most valuable private company in the world. SpaceX held that title before Open AI took it. Now Musk is taking it back, and the gap is not even close. The $800 billion figure comes from an internal tender offer where employees and early investors can share sell shares
to approved buyers. So what happens when two of the biggest names in tech are racing each other to the top spot on a list that did not exist even 10 years ago? And the rivalry between Musk and Altman started when they Co founded Open AI together in 2015 that was turned into a public
valuation war. We're going to cover the new SpaceX numbers, the IPO plans for 2026, why Google is about the book, a massive paper gain from all of this, and what the secondary sale tells us about where private tech valuations are headed. And we'll get right back into this right after the short break. Spacex's 800 dollar, $800 billion valuation was discussed by the company's board at Star Base in Texas.
And the company is also preparing for a possible IPO in late 2026. They could raise more than $30 billion. If that happens, it would be the largest public offering ever, beating Saudi Aramco's $29 billion listing in 2019. Now, here's the key point. This is not a fundraising round. SpaceX has been doing that for years. SpaceX is not raising new
capital with this transaction. It is a secondary share sale, which means existing shareholders like employees and early investors can shell sell their stakes to approved buyers. Now, SpaceX runs these tender offers twice a year to give people liquidity. In July, the share price was
$212. Now it's 421. They doubled it in six months, and the company told shareholders it's preparing for a 2026 IPO that would fund what the internal memo called an insane flight rate for the Starship rocket, artificial intelligent data centers in space, and a base on the moon. Now, Musk confirmed the IPO plans on X this week, responding to Eric Berger with the words, as usual, Eric is accurate. Now, the target valuation for
the IPO is $1.5 trillion. That would put SpaceX in the same range as Meta or Amazon. All right, let's keep going here. The October secondary sale at Open AI valued the company at $500 billion after employees sold about 6.6 billion in stock to investors, including Thrive Capital, SoftBank and Abu Dhabi G or MGX. Now, that deal pushed Open AI past SpaceX, which have been valued at 400 billion, and Musk let Altman hold that lead for about two months. Now. SpaceX is $300 billion ahead now.
The Musk and Altman rivalry runs deeper than valuations, though runs deeper than money. They Co founded Open AI together in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, and Musk left in 2018 and later started his own AI company, XAI. He since sued Open AI multiple times, accusing it of abandoning its original nonprofit mission. After taking billions from Microsoft, Open AI is now restructuring into a for profit company, which would allow it to pursue its own IPO down the
road. Alphabet, Google's parent company, is about to book another sizable paper gain money money because of Spacex's new valuation. Alphabet has been an investor in SpaceX since at least 2015 and when it joined Fidelity and a billion dollar funding round for a combined stake of about 10% at the time. In April 2025, Alphabet disclosed an $8 billion unrealized gain tied to its SpaceX investment after a tender offer valued the company at 350 billion.
Now, that gain helped push Alphabet's quarterly net income 46% higher than the prior year, with SpaceX now valued at more than double that figure. Investors are expecting another accounting boost when Alphabet reports earnings. So what do we know right now? What's going on? Spaces is expected to generate about $15 billion in revenue in 2025 and between 2020, 22 billion and 24 billion in 2026.
Most of that comes from Starlink, the satellite Internet service that now has thousands of satellites in orbit and serves millions of people. The company already launches more than 80% of global payload weight through its Falcon 9, which is reusable and reliable enough to handle government contracts and commercial customers.
And the IPO timeline is not locked in, though SpaceX CFO Brett Johnson said in an internal memo the timing could change and the company may decide not to even move forward with it. Market conditions, regulatory factors and execution on Starship all play into that
decision. The company had previously floated the idea of spinning off Starlink for a separate IPO, but the current plan is to list everything the entire company that would give public investors exposure to both the launch business and the satellite Internet business in one offering. And here's the bigger picture. This valuation race isn't just about their egos. Could be between Altman and Elon. It's about how much money is flowing into frontier technology
companies. SpaceX wants to make life multi planetary open. EA wants to build artificial general intelligence. Both ideas sounded like science fiction about 10 years ago. Now they're attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in private capital to do those things. AI, robotics, and defense tech startups have hit all time highs of multibillion dollar valuations in this past year, and the SpaceX and Open AI valuations are the most visible examples. But they're part of a broader surge now.
The valuation Musk is setting now is designed to level set the company's fair market value before their IPO. If the tender offer succeeds at 421 per share and the IPO proceeds in late 2026, SpaceX would be positioned as one of the largest public companies in the world. Alphabet would see its stake jump even higher in value.
Employees who held shares through multiple tender rounds would be sitting on a lot of money, and Musk would have reclaimed the title of running the most valuable private company, at least until the IPO paperwork is filed. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stagezero and please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.