The SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) could come as soon as June 12. With the company looking to raise $75 billion at around a $1.8 trillion valuation, SpaceX will be the largest IPO in history.
SpaceX will heavily disrupt markets through the capital it raises as well as at the index level through eventual inclusion in the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) and Nasdaq-100, the latter of which consists of the 100 largest non-financial companies by market cap listed on the Nasdaq exchange.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
But even if SpaceX achieves a $1.8 trillion valuation, it wouldn’t crack the top three holdings in S&P 500 index funds or even growth-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) such as the Vanguard Growth ETF or Vanguard Meta Cap Growth ETF, as Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Broadcom are all worth more.
However, there is one low-cost Vanguard ETF where SpaceX could become a top-three holding.
The case for communications
There are 11 stock market sectors under the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). It’s an imperfect system, as Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Broadcom are in the technology sector, while Amazon and Tesla are in consumer discretionary, and Alphabet and Meta Platforms are in communications.
Even without Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, and Meta, the tech sector still makes up a staggering 38.6% of the S&P 500. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude large language models, and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, are both expected to go public later this year and will almost certainly get added to the tech sector, making it an even larger share of the index.
But SpaceX may be better suited for the communications sector. GICS methodology aims to align companies with their primary revenue streams. That’s why Amazon was added to the consumer discretionary sector back when Amazon Prime was more valuable than Amazon Web Services. SpaceX’s main revenue driver is Starlink, a network of low-Earth orbit broadband and mobile satellites. Starlink exited 2025 with 9,600 satellites and is adding hundreds more each quarter. Starlink has revolutionized communications by beaming high-speed internet from space to previously inaccessible remote locations. What’s more, SpaceX also owns X (formerly Twitter), which was in the communications sector when it was a public company.
