NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 (Reuters) – Over the past quarter century, Elon Musk has revitalized space travel, turning cosmic exploration into a thriving business. In its next move, SpaceX is eyeing an even bigger opportunity in something more mundane: creating artificial intelligence for businesses.
SpaceX calculates that its total addressable market (TAM) — a closely watched metric — could reach $28.5 trillion, according to an S-1 filing reviewed by Reuters. TAM is the maximum revenue that a company could generate if it acquired all customers in a given market.
The S-1 regulatory filing, in which companies disclose their financials and key risks before going public, shows that SpaceX expects more than 90% of that market — or $26.5 trillion — could come from the AI sector. The vast majority of this value, US$22.7 trillion, could come from AI for enterprises.
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The company is moving forward with the initial public offering (IPO) expected for this summer in the northern hemisphere (from June to September), targeting a valuation of approximately US$1.75 trillion. It seeks to raise around US$75 billion, which would represent the largest initial public offering in history.
“We believe we have identified the largest addressable and actionable market in human history,” the company quoted in the filing.
The new information about where SpaceX sees its biggest market opportunity stands in stark contrast to how the company currently makes money.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
While a company’s TAM is neither a prediction nor a valuation, it is an important indicator for investors evaluating the potential of a high-growth company.
These numbers are often vast and rarely questioned. When Uber went public in 2019, it claimed a $5.7 trillion market opportunity for its ride-sharing business alone.
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The stunning opportunity identified by SpaceX, hidden in more than 300 pages detailing its financials, underscores Musk’s long-standing desire to play a central role in advancing AI technology.
Currently, the AI market for companies is dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, leaders in the artificial intelligence sector who are engaged in intense competition. Both indicated their intention to go public this year.
In February, SpaceX acquired xAI, an AI research company founded by Musk in early 2023. The record seen by Reuters shows that xAI remains a fledgling and deeply loss-making operation.
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The AI unit reported an operating loss of US$6.4 billion in 2025, much larger than the US$1.6 billion loss the previous year.
Those losses eclipsed the $4.4 billion in operating profit generated by Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet business and its largest revenue engine. Starlink generated US$11.4 billion of its total revenue of US$18.7 billion last year. Overall, SpaceX lost $4.9 billion.
SpaceX’s AI unit is also resource-hungry. By 2025, SpaceX’s total capex rose to $20.7 billion, with AI accounting for $12.7 billion — more than it spent on its space and connectivity businesses combined.
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The company said it could capitalize on some of xAI’s pre-existing tools, such as Grok Enterprise and an agentic or autonomous platform it is developing with Tesla called Macrohard.
In the filing, the company warned potential investors about its big-spending plans to develop AI and other technologies, including manufacturing the keys to power artificial intelligence, called graphics processing units, or GPUs.
SpaceX also said it would set up a specialized sales force and send employees known as advanced engineers to work directly with customers and help their workforces adopt AI.
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“We believe that our business strategy, which focuses on meeting the digital needs of the world’s largest industries with AI solutions, competitively positions us to pursue this rapid growth opportunity,” SpaceX said in the document.
A source familiar with the company’s finances was not convinced.
“If you decide that you’re going to be really conservative about this and only value the deals that I can actually see, you’re not going to get anywhere near the value that the market will almost certainly assign,” the source said.
