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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Economic Dynamism
Published on
May 25, 2026
Contributors
Joel Kotkin

SpaceX IPO Will Bolster America’s Tech Supremacy

Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin
Senior Research Fellow
Joel Kotkin
Summary
The United States is still the country forging the planetary future.

Summary
The United States is still the country forging the planetary future.

Listen to this article

The coming IPO for SpaceX matters less for its gargantuan size than because it marks a dramatic change in the tech sphere. The IPO has the potential to make SpaceX one of the world’s most valuable companies, given suggestions that the listing could raise $80 billion in funding. This is far higher than the $26 billion raised by the world’s most profitable company, Saudi Aramco, in 2019. More significantly, however, after decades in which software has ruled America’s stock market, the SpaceX IPO represents a step toward a new age where the most valuable tech companies are centered around space. This signals a broader shift in investor confidence away from purely digital platforms and toward physical, infrastructure-heavy innovation.

Whereas the enormous wealth of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon is built on improving the experience of the internet, SpaceX and other rising space firms are expanding the human horizon into space. This is significant, as it suggests that the next era of technological dominance may lie in scientific expansion and the resulting industrial capacity, rather than internet infrastructure. The potential is almost incalculable. Global space industry revenues have grown to over $600 billion in the past few years and are projected to hit $1.8 trillion by 2035. Clearly, investors view the sector as a long-term economic frontier.

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