Cathie Wood's ARK Invest Projects $2.5 Trillion Valuation For Elon Musk's SpaceX By 2030—7x Growth Through Mars, Starlink, Optimus

Ark Invest, led by Cathie Wood, has a bold new forecast for SpaceX, outlining a multitrillion-dollar future built on rockets, robots, and orbital internet.

What Happened: In collaboration with research firm Mach33, Ark unveiled a comprehensive, open-source model on Tuesday, forecasting a $2.5 trillion enterprise value for SpaceX by 2030, or a compounded annual growth rate of 38% since its last known valuation of $350 billion in 2024.

Using a Monte Carlo simulation with over one million iterations, ARK estimates a bear-case valuation of approximately $1.7 trillion, a bull-case scenario of $3.1 trillion, and the base-case at $2.5 trillion, projecting returns of 385.71%, 785.71% and 614.28% over 5 years, respectively.

“This estimate is our expected enterprise value for SpaceX in 2030,” the firm stated. The forecast incorporates 17 independent variables and reflects ARK's “biases and long-term positive view of the company.”

Central to this thesis is the projected growth of Starlink, SpaceX's satellite broadband business, which ARK believes could generate $300 billion in annual revenue once the constellation is complete, which is expected by 2035, and would account for 15% of total global communications spending.

The analysis also factors in the company’s Mars ambitions. It believes that once Starlink matures, with steady cash flows, SpaceX can divert resources toward building Martian infrastructure using “Mars-adapted Optimus Robots (Optimi).”

It delves heavily into the minutiae of the company’s operations, accounting for the productivity gains that come from reusable Starship rockets, the economics of Starlink’s bandwidth, with satellite performance measured in gigabits per kilogram, to arrive at its conclusions.

Wright’s Law plays a significant role in the firm’s forecasts, which essentially refers to projecting cost declines as a function of cumulative production.

Ark, nonetheless, covers the risks involved with its thesis, noting that “space is an inherently challenging domain with significant execution risk,” while other events such as CEO Elon Musk’s sudden departure or the failure to scale Optimus, could materially impact outcomes.

Why It Matters: Musk’s recent feud with President Donald Trump created significant headwinds for SpaceX, given its reliance on government contracts, which Trump threatened to cancel last week.

However, Musk has since hit back, posting on X that “whatever happens, we have got the spaceships, and they do not,” a subtle dig aimed at both the President and Bezos.

Early this week, it was reported that NASA and Pentagon officials have been urging Musk’s competitor, Jeff Bezos, and his Blue Origin to expedite the development of alternative rockets and spacecraft.

SpaceX is a privately held company, but investors looking for exposure to the stock can do so via private market ETFs such as the Ark Venture Fund ARKVX, the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF XOVR and the Destiny Tech100 Inc. DXYZ

Stock / ETF	Year-To-Date Performance	SpaceX Holdings
Ark Venture Fund ARKVX	+3.44%	13.25%
ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF XOVR	+1.22%	9.54%
Destiny Tech100 Inc. DXYZ	-27.92%	52.4%