In this episode of The Brainstorm, Brett, Nick and Sam are joined by Daniel Maguire and Tasha Keeney to discuss the expected June 12th initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX. SpaceX’s recently filed S-1 revealed a significant opportunity across launch, Starlink, AI compute, and orbital data centers. The team unpacks the bull and bear cases, Starship’s role, and whether SpaceX could become the backbone of future AI infrastructure. Key Points From This Episode: SpaceX’s S-1 reframed the company as an AI infrastructure story, with xAI, Colossus data centers, and the Anthropic deal suggesting a major opportunity beyond launch and Starlink. Starship is the key unlock, potentially driving launch costs below $100/kg, accelerating Starlink bandwidth deployment, and making orbital data centers economically viable. The biggest risks are execution and monetization, including Starship reusability timelines, turning bandwidth into revenue, staying competitive at the AI frontier, and managing potential future integration with Tesla. If you know ARK, you know we focus on long-term innovation. But that doesn’t mean we ignore breaking news. Every day, we debate the latest developments in tech and markets. Now, we’re bringing those conversations to you in “The Brainstorm,” a co-production from ARK, WOLF, and Public. Tune in weekly for our quick takes on what’s shaping innovation right now. Learn more about WOLF: https://wolf.financial Learn more about Public: https://public.com/ Disclosure: http://arkinv.st/39rzF94

SpaceX IPO Story Is Bigger Than Rockets | The Brainstorm EP 133

FYI - For Your Innovation

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** FYI - For Your Innovation

## Participants

- **Brett Winton** (ARK Invest)
- **Nick Grous** (ARK Invest)
- **Sam Korus** (ARK Invest)
- **Tasha Keeney** (ARK Invest)
- **Daniel Maguire** (ARK Invest)

## Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Brainstorm. Today we have the SpaceX Brain Trust, Tasha, Brett, Daniel, Sam. We got some new information, SpaceX S1 as well as a Starship test flight. Maybe I'll kick it off just open question to the group. What was the big takeaway from the S1 that maybe wasn't known prior to some of this information coming out?

Tasha, we'll start with you and then we'll go round robin. Tasha, Tasha, Ph.D.: Sure. And you know, we wrote about this in the newsletter this week. It seems like the biggest surprise is the $1.25 billion payment that Anthropic is making to SpaceX per month. This is for the Colossus 1 data center and a portion of Colossus 2. We don't know the exact amount of compute that that's for, but overall, what does this mean?

Tasha, Ph.D.: Well, it shows that, you know, if you think of XAI, right, as a company that's currently kind of like a cash drag on the business, it shows that they can monetize the data center assets, you know, which they have said that they've built in record time compared to industry standard. Tasha, Ph.D.: So and it also suggests that, you know, they don't need that portion of compute, which is which is interesting, at least not for now, or they're they're choosing to to rent it out as opposed to use it themselves.

Tasha, Ph.D.: But you know, a little bit of a sneak peek as to what like the future business model could look like for space data centers. But you know, here, this is on Earth for now. Tasha, Ph.D.: Yeah, actually, it's funny because it's going to be a race between it looked as if prior that connectivity revenue, which is Starlink and Starshield would be, you know, the bulk of revenue on a forward basis.

Tasha, Ph.D.: But now, suddenly, AI is in the race earlier than we expected, in that if they're going to monetize these data center assets on the ground, you know, an annualized 15 billion would put it ahead of current Starlink or connectivity revenue, though, if they can commercially launch, you know, a fully reusable rocket, actually, we would anticipate that the connectivity revenue will will actually massively accelerate here.

Tasha, Ph.D.: And so it's, I would say, AI more competitive in terms of its share of top line of the business than we would have guessed. Sam, Daniel, anything else? Daniel, you want to go first? You're on mute. Daniel, you want to go first? You're on mute. Daniel, sorry, yeah, I was on mute. That's also representative of the TAM, $28.5 trillion, of which I think $26.5 trillion was AI and the $1.6 trillion being the connectivity.

So, really represents the enormous opportunity that AI has. And that breakdown was interesting. I think they called it like the largest TAM of the univ...

SpaceX IPO Story Is Bigger Than Rockets | The Brainstorm EP 133

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
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SpaceX IPO Story Is Bigger Than Rockets | The Brainstorm EP 133

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.