SpaceX Needs Growth

Imagine you own a small, successful restaurant chain. A couple of neighborhood locations with dedicated fans and decent lines that are never too long or too short. Life is great. Then, your whole town decides your business is worth $250 million… and hands you $15 million to go prove it. That’s probably why Elon Musk seems so frazzled in recent interviews. The world’s richest man was essentially given the same mandate by investors in Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) , scaled many times larger. The mammoth initial public offering raised $85 billion in cash for his company… and investors are now demanding that the company be worth somewhere north of $1.5 trillion. To fulfill that promise, Musk is implementing a familiar Big Tech tactic: Use acquisitions to juice internal growth. In early June, SEC filings revealed Musk had personally spent at least $1 billion to buy APR Energy, a company focused on powering AI data centers. Then on June 16, SpaceX bought AI coding platform Cursor for $60 billion – a roughly 100% premium to that startup’s last private valuation. SpaceX will continue snapping up companies… and many will be public firms investors like you can buy before it happens. I will discuss the seven most likely publicly traded candidates below. Of course, others will be privately owned, like Cursor was. InvestorPlace Senior Analyst Luke Lango can help you get in on these earlier-stage deals. In a new free presentation, The 2026 Megadeal Event , he lays out his method for spotting these targets and step-by-step instructions for buying them before everyone else gets in. Click here to watch that free presentation. And now, the seven public companies I think SpaceX has in its acquisition crosshairs. Tier 1: “I’d Be Surprised If They Don’t Happen” Tesla Inc. (TSLA): The most obvious SpaceX acquisition is more of a family reunion. On July 22, Elon Musk told investors on Tesla’s earnings call that “there’s more and more overlap” between his two companies. Betting markets are giving a 64% chance of an acquisition by the end of 2027, while some analysts say the chance could be as high as 90%. The rationale is straightforward: A SPCX-TSLA merger would consolidate Musk’s technology empire. Tesla could supply batteries and manufacturing expertise to SpaceX’s satellites and AI infrastructure, while Starlink could provide connectivity for Tesla vehicles and humanoid robots. Most importantly, the two firms can reduce double-spending on AI research. Both companies are currently pursuing expensive AI projects (Tesla’s Robotaxis, xAI’s large language models), and putting them under one roof would give them better access to computing power and talent. A deal would also benefit Tesla shareholders, because Musk only controls around 20% of voting shares at the electric vehicle maker (vs. 80%-85% at SpaceX). He would have to offer a relatively hefty premium to Tesla’s shareholders – probably between $420 (ha!) and $500 per share – because Tesla shareholders would be losing both future upside and voting power at the new entity. (Musk can then unilaterally approve the deal at SpaceX.) Of course, Tesla remains a risky bet that I still avoid, but the possibility of a SpaceX takeover should stop anyone from betting against this stock. EchoStar Corp. (ECHO): In September 2025, this telecom and satellite company negotiated a deal with SpaceX to exchange some of its satellite spectrum for SpaceX stock. Think of satellite spectrum like an FM radio frequency; a company must “own” a channel to use it. EchoStar had plenty of unused spectrum through Dish Network, and SpaceX needed it for Starlink. SpaceX paid with a mix of cash and its own stock and bought even more two months later. Now, those same Spac...