Ron Baron says SpaceX could be worth $10 trillion, $20 trillion or $30 trillion in 10 to 15 years, a forecast that would make the rocket company far larger than its reported $1.78 trillion IPO valuation. In a CNBC interview in May, the Baron Capital founder said he could be “very low” in that estimate and called SpaceX the company that would become the largest on the planet.
The timing is why the market is paying attention now. SpaceX reportedly sought to raise $75 billion in its initial public offering, and the company was said to have the option to sell underwriters another $11.2 billion in shares. A deal that size would give the public market its first fixed price on a business that has mostly been judged by private buyers, where Baron Capital’s stake has already swollen from $1.7 billion to $15 billion.
Baron has been running Baron Capital since 1982, and the firm launched with $10 million in capital before growing to nearly $56 billion in value. It bought into SpaceX in 2017, when the company was still private, and the investment has been one of the clearest examples of how private-market markups can transform a position before any listing ever happens. If SpaceX were to raise at least $70 billion in the IPO, Baron Capital’s holding would be worth $24 billion at the time of the listing.
That is where the arithmetic turns sharp. A jump from $1.78 trillion to $30 trillion would mean the company would have to multiply its value by more than 16 times in 10 to 15 years. Even the low end of Baron’s range, $10 trillion, would require a rise of more than fivefold. He is not alone in betting on the company’s reach: in late April, he told investors the stock would soar over the next 10 to 15 years on the public markets, and his long record with Tesla shows he has been willing to wait for years before the payoff arrives.
SpaceX also has a path, at least on paper, that is bigger than rockets alone. In its registration statement, the company said it could begin putting data centers in space as early as 2028. The question now is whether the IPO price and the public market’s first verdict leave SpaceX closer to Baron’s most aggressive valuation or merely give him another step toward it.
