SpaceX snags Street-high $300 price target at MS as firm enters Nasdaq 100
SpaceX snags Street-high $300 price target at MS as firm enters Nasdaq 100.
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Morgan Stanley initiated coverage of SpaceX ( SPCX ) on Tuesday with an Overweight rating and a $300 price target. It's the most bullish call among Wall Street's biggest investment banks and comes as SpaceX j oins the Nasdaq 100 index .
In a note titled "AI's Final Frontier" that landed this morning, lead analyst Adam Jonas's target implies 87% upside from Monday's close of around $160.
Jonas and the MS team argue SpaceX holds "an 'X of 1' position in space infrastructure," framing the rocket launch company as one that can transform energy into intelligence (data centers using solar power), with "near-monopoly launch economics, the world's largest LEO satellite network, and a fast-scaling AI infrastructure business," Jonas said, all in to "one infrastructure stack."
Launch: The launch business depends on the development of Starship, its largest rocket. Jonas expects the vehicle to become operational in the fourth quarter of this year, with launch costs falling to roughly $500 per kilogram by 2030 and under $150 by 2040 as total Starship launches scale from 46 in 2027 to more than 6,000 annually by 2040.
Starlink: the team sees the network evolving into the default connectivity layer for virtually every device beyond the reach of terrestrial infrastructure.
"Terrestrial AI" (AKA land-based data centers): Morgan Stanley contends the market underappreciates SpaceX's data center economics, estimating cost per watt at half the industry average, excluding chips and deployment speeds six to eight times faster than peers, thanks to vertical-integration initiatives like Terafab (chip building) and Solarfab (solar equipment).
Enterprise AI: the firm sees "neocloud rental deals" — including recent agreements with Anthropic and Google — giving way over time to more end-to-end AI services, with the $60 billion Cursor acquisition (annual recurring revenue of $4 billion, up from around $500 million a year ago) noted as an asset the market has yet to fully price.
Morgan Stanley sees revenue aggressively climbing from $45 billion this year to $319 billion in 2030 and $3.3 trillion by 2040, alongside operating margins approaching 59%.
The price target depends on SpaceX inventing entirely new markets for connectivity and physical AI services that do not exist today. Jonas concedes the point, showing an intentionally wide range of options, from a $75 bear case to a $600 bull case, the latter implying a market value near $8 trillion.
"Our $600 bull case assumes faster execution across Starship, orbital compute, and Terafab, with AI more than 60% of valuation. Our $75 bear case assumes Starship slips to 2029 and AI monetization and deployment speed miss expectations, leaving Space and Connectivity at roughly 90% of valuation," Jonas wrote.
Risks to Morgan Stanley's model include capital expenditures reaching $300 billion per year by 2031, requiring an average of around $84 billion in external capital annually from 2027 through 2034. "If debt markets cannot absorb this financing need, SpaceX may need to issue equity, reduce growth investment, or slow deployment," Jonas noted.
Other risks include dependence on founder and CEO Elon Musk, potential conflicts with Tesla-related ventures, unproven technologies, and regulatory exposure spanning the spectrum, orbital debris, export controls, and AI regulation.
Morgan Stanley and Jonas's $300 price target is the highest among major investment banks that have issued research since the IPO quiet period lifted.
Wells Fargo initiated coverage with an Overweight rating and a $230 target, with analyst Ken Gawrelski seeing "multiple call options" beyond 2029 as Starship matures. UBS started with a Buy and $210 price target, crediting the company with "an unparalleled set of assets" across reusable rockets and Starlink. Goldman Sachs ($205), Citi ($200), and Bernstein ($239) round out the other major banks and their calls.
Jonas's note comes on SpaceX's Tuesday debut in the Nasdaq 100 — fast-tracked under the exchange's new "Fast Entry" rule just weeks after its IPO — makes index funds buyers of the stock, with JPMorgan estimating the inclusion could drive up to $4.3 billion in inflows.
Pras Subramanian is Lead Transportation Reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram .
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