By Anhata Rooprai and Jaspreet Singh

June 11 (Reuters) - SpaceX's market debut on Friday is

expected to be the largest-ever IPO, capping the meteoric rise

of a company that has reshaped the space business with reusable

rockets and internet beamed from orbit and which now targets

space-based AI.

Aiming for a $1.75 trillion valuation that would instantly

rank it among the world's most valuable companies, SpaceX

is pitching itself as humanity's ticket to Mars.

Its financials, though, show a company whose aggressive

spending on computing power for AI and developing a new rocket

has overwhelmed the profits from its Starlink satellite internet

service.

Here are six charts that illustrate its business:

AI LOSSES OUTWEIGH BOOST FROM STARLINK

Last year, SpaceX's sales rose 33% to $18.67 billion, with

Starlink accounting for about 60% of the total thanks to its

about 10.3 million users across 9,600 satellites.

But merging with the money-losing xAI pushed the company to

a net loss of $4.94 billion last year, from a profit of $791

million in 2024, when the explosive growth of Starlink and its

reusable rocket launch business powered earnings.

SPACEX'S LAUNCH CADENCE SETS IT APART FROM RIVALS

SpaceX has gone from a single launch in 2006 to more than

two every week, far outpacing rivals and making it the go-to

launch partner for NASA and the Pentagon.

Its reusable Falcon 9 has powered that surge, while the

larger, still-in-development Starship is intended to carry crew

and cargo on an unprecedented scale.

Falcon Heavy essentially combines three Falcon 9 boosters to

form one of the world's most powerful rockets. It is capable of

lifting 64 metric tons to low-Earth orbit and currently launches

heavy military satellites and interplanetary probes.

XAI TRAILS AI RIVALS ANTHROPIC, OPENAI

SpaceX's biggest addressable market, it says, is AI. In

February, SpaceX acquired xAI and united two key parts of Musk's

business empire. But by many measures, xAI is behind rivals

Anthropic and OpenAI.

A recent report from finance startup Ramp showed that more

than 30% of its business customers were paying for Anthropic's

and OpenAI's AI services in April, with the Claude Code creator

overtaking OpenAI for the first time, while xAI's adoption

remained around 5%.

The data - based on Ramp's analysis of spending by about

50,000 customers - only captures a small slice of spending by

big enterprises on AI, an area where Anthropic is believed to be

the market leader.

SPACEX IS RAISING FUNDS AT A PRICEY MULTIPLE

Investors in the SpaceX IPO are being asked to pay a premium

that dwarfs the multiples at which some of the most valuable

tech companies trade. At $135 per share, SpaceX would trade at a

trailing price-to-sales multiple of roughly 94 - above companies

such as Nvidia ( NVDA ), Amazon ( AMZN ) and Meta and

closer to pure-play space peers such as Planet Labs and

Rocket Lab ( RKLB ), which trade at 50.4 and 115.4,

respectively, despite being younger companies.

Since SpaceX generated a loss last year, it cannot be

compared on a price-to-earnings ratio.

STARSHIP WILL LIFT SPACEX'S LAUNCH CAPACITY

The case for that premium rests partly on Starship, which is

designed to be reusable and carry over 100 metric tons to

low-Earth orbit, more than any other rocket flying today. This

would be crucial not just to SpaceX's launch business but also

to its ambitions to put AI data centers in orbit.

Current SpaceX rockets, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, can carry

about 22.8 metric tons and 63.8 metric tons to low-Earth orbit,

respectively.

The Starship's test flight in May marked a major milestone ahead

of the IPO, successfully deploying mock satellites and

completing a controlled Indian Ocean splashdown despite minor

engine issues.