SpaceX Will Swallow Nearly the Entire U.S. Economy, According to Elon Musk
SpaceX's CEO thinks SpaceX could one day account for 88% of U.S. GDP. But he doesn't say when.
By Rich Smith
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +1.61%) CEO Elon Musk just might be the first investor ever to think in trillions as a matter of course. For the world's first trillionaire investor, that probably makes sense -- but it's still a little mind-boggling.
Take Musk's latest post on X, for example:
In the future, a trillion times a trillion dollars will be spent on making antimatter to travel to other star systems
-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2026
Most of us ordinary humans struggle to wrap our minds around just how big "a trillion" is. But here is Musk, running way out ahead of the rest of us and using the figure in ordinary speech -- sometimes twice in one sentence!
Can SpaceX go from billions to trillions?
Or take another example, this one from the SpaceX prospectus filed just before the IPO last week. In that document, the space/social media/artificial intelligence company argued that people should invest in SpaceX because it has "identified the largest [total addressable market] in human history." Across its three main businesses, space (rockets), connectivity (Starlink), and AI, Musk believes his company could potentially capture as much as $28.5 trillion in annual revenue.
Specifically:
$370 billion from space
$1.6 trillion from connectivity ($870 billion from Starlink Broadband and $740 billion from Starlink Mobile and "additional opportunities")
And $26.5 trillion from AI, including AI infrastructure, consumer subscriptions, digital advertising, and enterprise applications
A trillion pipe dreams
And Elon Musk thinks SpaceX can make that much revenue every year? This seems a mite ambitious. Recall that last year, SpaceX booked only $18.7 billion in total revenue across its three main divisions. Going from $18.7 billion to $28.5 trillion will require growing revenue a total of 152,300%.
To be fair, the prospectus never actually says when Musk believes SpaceX will reach a $28.5 trillion total addressable market. He might think that's the size of the addressable market today. He might be talking about 100 years from now.
All I know for sure is that, according to the statistics site worldomater.info, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the entire United States today is only $32.4 trillion. SpaceX seems to be saying that one day its own revenue stream will be 12% smaller than that of the United States -- or put another way, that up to 88% of the goods and services produced in the United States will be produced by SpaceX.
Like I said, ambitious.
Before relying too much on Musk's prediction, make sure to check your risk tolerance, just in case things don't work out quite as well as he's promising.