What a rocket company’s record valuation reveals about the work of mobilizing belief in a healthier world.
On June 12, 2026, SpaceX, the spaceflight, artificial intelligence, and telecommunications company, went public, opening at $150 per share, and, briefly, valuing at nearly two trillion dollars on its first day of trading, in the largest IPO in Wall Street history.
Yet this stellar opening arguably did not reflect a complete picture of the company’s fundamentals. SpaceX revenue ran to roughly $18.7 billion in 2025, against a net lossof nearly five billion, which put the IPO share price at something on the order of a hundred times the company’s actual sales, when a typical large company trades at a small fraction of that. By a careful sum-of-the-parts reckoning, the underlying business is worth perhaps half its market price; the rest of SpaceX’s value is based on something else: belief in the company’s future. This reflects how investing can be as much an act of faith as it is a pragmatic calculation about future returns. If an undertaking can inspire this faith, the sky is the limit—in the case of SpaceX, literally.
The current SpaceX valuation may well prove a bubble, and there is real folly in markets that run far ahead of substance. But underneath the speculation is something worth taking seriously, a lesson in how value is measured and how that value can create tangible opportunity for growth, innovation, and progress. In SpaceX, a commercial entity has gathered enormous momentum behind an aspiration that a great many people find worthwhile. This momentum has, in turn, given the company more resources to pursue, and perhaps fulfill, the wildest dreams of its inventors and leaders. This dynamic is worth understanding for any organization or enterprise in the business of seeking to generate interest and buy-in in its mission, and public health is no exception. We might ask, then, how can we mobilize belief—how can we build momentum—so that our mission enjoys the kind of support that will sustain new levels of success? How do we build, for public health, an aspiration that people will align with, get behind, fund, invest in, and follow?
Read more here