Al Root
The SpaceX initial public offering promises to be the capital markets event of the century, breaking records and creating a new trillion-dollar company for investors to add to their portfolios.
Elon Musk's commercial space company has leveraged its low-cost reusable rockets to disrupt space launch, communications, and, eventually, AI computing.
That disruptive power was on display in the recent bidding for wireless spectrum. Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission released the application status for the upcoming auction of advanced wireless spectrum, or AWS, three.
SpaceX is among the bidders, along with T-Mobile US, Verizon, AT&T, and others.
Wireless spectrum -- the frequencies that wireless calls and data travel over -- is a finite resource that every mobile company needs. Just as two radio stations in the same city can't broadcast on the same frequency, companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile need spectrum for their customers' calls and data.
In 2025, SpaceX spent some $17 billion on spectrum from EchoStar.
"Based on a broader set of bidders than the national carriers, we believe this spectrum auction can be a more competitive auction, especially given the compatibility of this spectrum with a broad diversity of devices and current wireless networks," wrote Citi analyst Michael Rollins in a Friday report.
The auction is slated to begin on June 2 and is likely to take at least several weeks to reach its conclusion, he added.
SpaceX will likely focus on unpaired blocks, which essentially means it is looking to deliver high-speed broadband directly to a phone.
The company's Starlink broadband product, built on a constellation of more than 10,000 satellites, already is profitable and has more than 10 million subscribers. High-speed direct-to-device data plans are another example of space-based systems muscling in on traditional terrestrial wireless data providers.
Starlink is a big reason that SpaceX was valued at some $800 billion late in 2025. Now, it's valued at about $1.3 trillion, thanks in part to its goal to build AI data centers in space.
AI data centers use a lot of power, but power in space is essentially unlimited thanks to the sun. To be sure, there are many technical challenges to overcome, but Musk believes it will be cheaper to run data centers from orbit than on the ground in just a few years.
The SpaceX IPO should happen in just a few weeks. As its management begins to speak, investors will get a better sense of its strategy, growth, and who that growth will impact most.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
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March 29, 2026 14:21 ET (18:21 GMT)
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