The starting gun for SpaceX's IPO hasn't fired yet, but is the "space sector" smart money already jumping the gun?

The “Five Little Dragons,” which have broadly recorded double-digit gains, may be an important entry point for understanding this round of repricing in commercial space.

By: Frank, Maitan MSX

This year’s most watched unicorn IPO in the U.S. stock market seems to be just one step away.

Insiders say SpaceX plans to secretly file its IPO registration statement as early as this week or next, aiming to list in June. The commercial space and space concept sector responded instantly—and it was exactly before this upturn began that on March 23, MSX screened and added five U.S.-listed commercial space tokens: MNTS.M, SIDU.M, PL.M, BKSY.M, and YSS.M. All of them generally recorded double-digit gains, with some individual stocks briefly rising to nearly 30% intraday. This left investors with a relatively ample window to get in.

It is also worth noting that SpaceX’s fundraising size may exceed 75 billion U.S. dollars. If it ultimately goes through, this would not only be significantly higher than the roughly 50 billion U.S. dollar target previously circulated in the market, but also far exceed Saudi Aramco’s 2019 fundraising record of 29.4 billion U.S. dollars, becoming the largest IPO in history—without question.

This also leads to the real question this article wants to discuss: beyond the rumor about SpaceX itself, what deeper logic is behind the rise in the commercial space sector this time? And does this repricing have the foundation to spread further?

I. SpaceX’s IPO—Is it the starting gun for the commercial space sector?

Although SpaceX has never been listed, its influence on the secondary market has never been absent.

To understand this, you first need to understand SpaceX’s position within the broader commercial space ecosystem. It is no more than just a rocket company—it is a foundational infrastructure provider that supports the operation of the entire commercial space industrial chain. It is also the strongest “valuation anchor” in global commercial space—from launch capacity to Starlink communications, from orbital transport to crewed flight, every technological breakthrough by SpaceX lowers costs and improves efficiency for a downstream group of small and medium-sized space companies across their commercial paths.

That is why this time’s strength in space stocks naturally begins with the catalyst of news that SpaceX may launch an IPO. With a fundraising target of 75 billion U.S. dollars and a potential valuation of 1.75 trillion U.S. dollars, these two figures are effectively like a shot of adrenaline for the entire commercial space sector.

So what we are seeing is not a single company going up, but rather the entire space concept starting to heat up in sync, forming a fairly clear sector-level resonance.

The most obvious manifestation is that the “Five Little Dragons” of commercial space that MSX added this time—MNTS.M, SIDU.M, PL.M, BKSY.M, and YSS.M—each has solid fundamentals. They can be seen as a concentrated coverage of several key directions in the commercial space industrial chain:

MNTS.M (Momentus) is positioned in the “last mile” orbital transfer service in low Earth orbit. Its Vigoride spacecraft program will ride on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for the next mission. Therefore, this is not just a simple launch—it is more like a commercial validation. It means that as the global satellite constellation build-out accelerates, orbital transfer demand is shifting from a “nice-to-have” into a “must-have.”

SIDU.M (Sidus Space) is a “door opener” for the defense establishment. It has already obtained qualification for multi-project office contracts from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), giving it entry tickets to bid continuously within the defense procurement system. For space companies in early stages, government contract qualifications are the most direct trigger for valuation reappraisal—and, beyond commercial orders, one of the most stable anchors for revenue.

PL.M (Planet Labs) is the remote-sensing leader with the most solid fundamentals in this round of the market. It is also the largest by total market cap among the five U.S.-listed tokens that MSX added this time. It has a global satellite constellation, daily revisit capability, and a subscription model for real-world, deployed commercial data.

This also makes it one of the few space companies that can be discussed using ARR and gross margin. Backlog orders grew 79% year over year to nearly 900 million U.S. dollars, and it also achieved profitability for the first time. The significance of this inflection point goes far beyond a single-quarter earnings number.

BKSY.M (BlackSky) is pushing its transformation from a “satellite company” into an “intelligence services provider.” Its core competitiveness comes from the closed-loop capability of high-frequency revisit plus AI analysis. For example, its third-generation (Gen-3) satellite constellation can deliver commercial 35-centimeter (0.35-meter) high-definition imagery. Combined with intelligence demand driven by geopolitical developments, its positioning—from selling data to selling decision-support—undoubtedly offers a premium far higher than that of a provider of remote sensing data alone.

YSS.M (York Space Systems) is the core supplier for the U.S. Army’s Proliferated Warfighter Situational Awareness (PWSA) program, a project backed by the military. Military contracts provide a foundation for predictable cash flow. As a newly minted IPO target in the near term, the fund-raising and accumulation cycle for institutions is not yet over, and the shareholding structure is relatively clean, giving it relatively high upside elasticity.

At bottom, MSX’s decision to add these five targets early is intended to cover the key directions in the commercial space industrial chain: some focus on in-orbit transport and mission execution, some on satellites and defense orders, some on Earth observation and remote-sensing data, and some are newly listed, high-elasticity satellite platform companies.

The significance of such a combination of targets is not merely betting on a single event. It is an attempt to make a forward layout around the main theme of “commercial space repricing,” across different beneficiary directions—and this is one of the core reasons MSX got ahead of a broad-based rise.

II. The repricing moving from “science fiction” to “hard currency”

Of course, if you simply interpret this rally as being driven by “news stimulation,” you would underestimate the backdrop of the times.

Looking back at the stock-selection logic ahead of this surge, MSX was not blindly trading sentiment. Instead, it picked up two core signals:

• On the one hand, at NVIDIA’s GTC conference that wrapped up last week, Huang Renxun announced a strategic, industry-level layout for the space sector—ranging from dedicated space-grade computing chips to a “digital twin of the universe” tailored to orbital environments. This indicates that AI is no longer only a productivity tool on the ground; it is becoming a foundational architecture for satellite autonomous navigation and real-time processing of low-orbit data.
• On the other hand, on March 23 itself, SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI jointly and unusually announced the launch of the “TERAFAB” project, aiming to produce one terawatt of AI computing chips every year using AI and highly automated manufacturing capabilities, mainly for space deployment. In other words, it drew an enormous, scalable growth “pie” on the secondary market.

Based on in-depth judgment of these two major signals, MSX’s research and investment team decisively completed the update coverage of the “Five Little Dragons” of commercial space on the 23rd.

As is well known, for a long time in the past, the commercial space sector has been viewed in the secondary market as “an awkward play,” and the core reason is that it has been a “money-burning” game: rockets, satellites, moon landing, deep space, Starlink—every word sounds exciting. But once it lands in capital markets, many companies have faced high R&D spending, long project cycles, slow realization of profitability, and heavy pressure on cash flow for years.

But this time, some things are starting to be different.

Starting in 2025, commercial space is no longer just about “launching rockets.” Instead, it is gradually being broken down into a more clear, and easier for capital markets to understand, real industrial chain. Especially beyond rocket launches, more truly deployable and sustainable businesses with orders that can be signed are coming into view:

Satellite manufacturing, in-orbit services, Earth observation, defense remote sensing, low-orbit communication networks, AI-enabled image analysis and intelligence distribution. This means that the value of commercial space is no longer only from a distant future vision; increasingly, it comes from verifiable orders, service capabilities, and customer demand.

Looking further, behind this repricing there are actually three deeper logics happening simultaneously.

First, a sharp decline in launch costs is changing the industry’s economic foundation. The maturation of reusable rocket technology is continuously lowering unit costs of reaching orbit. And as launch costs fall, it in turn lowers the threshold for satellite constellation build-out, in-orbit services, and data commercialization.

For many mid- and small-sized commercial space companies, this means that businesses that used to be limited to experimental validation stages now begin to have the potential to scale deployments and reach break-even. SpaceX itself is the biggest driver of this cost curve, which is why its IPO expectations can generate such a strong spillover effect across the whole sector.

Second, commercial space is beginning to align with larger, mainstream themes of the era. Today’s strongest market themes are basically AI, defense, communications, and new energy—and space infrastructure happens to intersect with all of these main lines. AI needs a steady supply of high-quality data and stronger edge-sensing capabilities. Defense systems are increasingly dependent on real-time reconnaissance, space communications, and distributed satellite networks. Global geopolitical competition also further elevates the strategic value of space capabilities.

When a sector starts embedding multiple mainstream narratives at the same time, it is no longer an isolated niche concept—it is more likely to become a theme hub where capital gets allocated repeatedly.

Finally, the market is starting to accept differentiated pricing within the commercial space sector. In the past, when people talked about space stocks, the market assumed they were sentiment-driven thematic assets that all rise and fall together. Now that the industry is gradually maturing, investors have started to realize that different companies’ value does not sit on the same level. For example, some sell satellite platforms, some sell imagery data, some sell defense contract qualifications, some sell in-orbit service capabilities, and some sell the equity “optionality” of the IPO stage.

This indicates that the commercial space sector is gradually transitioning from thematic linkage to “tiered pricing across the industrial chain.” Once a sector enters this stage, it often means it is no longer just a short-term concept. It begins to have a foundation for long-term research and continuous trading.

III. What this space-stock rally means for investors

So on the surface, this round of gains is indeed ignited by rising expectations for SpaceX. But at a deeper level, what truly drives the market to place fresh bets is that commercial space is evolving from a long-dated narrative sector into a “priceable sector” with an industrial-layer structure.

This is also the underlying logic shift that makes the capital market willing to start pricing seriously.

But after the heat, how far the rally can go ultimately still comes back to fundamental verification. MSX Research Institute believes that after short-term sentiment catalysts, what ultimately determines the depth and sustainability of this rally depends on the following key variables:

• Substantive progress in the SpaceX IPO process: secret submission of the registration statement is only the first step. Every node—roadshows, pricing, and listing—will continue to provide talking points and a capital “suction effect” for the sector.
• The implementation timeline of U.S. defense and space budget spending: incremental project budgets for the new fiscal year have already been confirmed, but which specific companies will receive the contract flows will be revealed gradually over the next two quarters. This is a major source of differentiation among stocks. After all, companies with contract award support and companies driven purely by sentiment will increasingly diverge in their trajectories.
• Companies’ cash reserves and financing capacity: most early-stage space companies are still in a loss-making stage. Rally periods are often also windows for raising funds. A signal worth paying special attention to is whether management chooses to “replenish ammunition” at high levels rather than cash out and exit—this is the most direct and also hardest to disguise indicator of internal confidence.

Of course, regardless of how it plays out in the short term, one direction has become increasingly clear: SpaceX’s IPO will not be the end point of this industrial story. The more likely outcome is that it will be the starting point for the entire commercial space industrial chain to truly enter mainstream capital markets’ vision.

Over the past decade, this sector’s story has mostly stayed at the PPT and concept level, with capital often pricing “imagination.” But in the coming years, the market will increasingly re-measure the value of these companies using real revenue, deployed contracts, and verifiable profitability milestones.

For investors, this is both an opportunity and a demand.

Sector resonance windows are not frequent. But only a handful of players can truly carry through the cycle.