At a rumored valuation somewhere between $2 trillion and $3 trillion, SpaceX would instantly become one of the largest companies on Earth.
Depending on where it ultimately opens, we’re talking about a company worth roughly 1% to 2% of the entire U.S. stock market.
One company.
Think about that.
At a $2 trillion valuation, SpaceX would represent roughly 6% of annual U.S. GDP. At $3 trillion, closer to 9%.
For context, Nvidia (NVDA) recently surpassed $5.5 trillion in market capitalization, representing more than 15% of annual U.S. GDP all by itself.
These are staggering numbers.
Naturally, investors are searching for historical comparisons.
I’ve been doing the same thing.
You can start with the giants.
U.S. Steel in 1901. The company that helped build modern America.
AT&T, which connected the country through a communications network unlike anything the world had ever seen.
RCA in 1919, the dominant public vehicle for the radio revolution. Investors weren’t buying radios. They were buying the future.
Ford, which transformed transportation and consumer mobility before eventually coming public in 1956.
There are useful lessons in all of those examples. In fact, I think it’s important to make those comparisons.
Size matters. Scale matters. Historical context matters.
But the more I think about SpaceX, the more I realize those comparisons only tell part of the story.
You see, size alone doesn’t make SpaceX unique.
What makes it unique is the combination of size, influence, and uncertainty.
Most of those earlier giants were building something we already understood.
Steel was going into buildings. Telephones were connecting people. Railroads were connecting places that already existed.
The opportunity was enormous, but investors generally knew what problem was being solved.
SpaceX feels different.
Yes, it’s a rocket company. But it’s also a satellite company.
A communications company. A defense company. An infrastructure company. An artificial intelligence infrastructure company.
And potentially things we don’t even have names for yet.
That’s what keeps bringing me back to a different set of historical comparisons.
Not the companies that dominated existing industries.
The companies that opened entirely new frontiers.
The Dutch East India Company
When most investors think about transformational companies, they immediately jump to railroads.
I understand why. The railroads connected a continent.
But the more I think about it, the more I believe the better analogy might be the Dutch East India Company.
Before the Dutch East India Company became the most important stock in the world, the Dutch Republic became one of the most important economies in the world.
That’s an important distinction.
The company didn’t create Dutch dominance.
Dutch dominance created the company.
Throughout the 1600s, the Dutch led the world in trade, finance, innovation, education, and naval power.
Amsterdam became the financial capital of the world. The Dutch guilder became the reserve currency. Capital from across Europe flowed into Dutch markets.
The Dutch East India Company wasn’t operating in isolation.
In many ways, it was the Dutch economy, military, and trading network wrapped into a single stock certificate.
If you wanted exposure to the greatest economic expansion of the era, global trade, there was one company that stood above everything else.
The Dutch East India Company, known as the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC).
Its influence was everywhere. The VOC logo appeared on ships, coins, warehouses, documents, cannons, and trade goods across the globe, making it one of the first truly global brands and one of the earliest corporate logos still recognized more than 400 years later.
That’s the scale we’re talking about.
One of the challenges when discussing the VOC is that people get distracted by sensational numbers. You’ll often hear estimates that it was worth $5 trillion, $10 trillion, or even more in today’s dollars.
The problem is that those figures depend entirely on the methodology.
Inflation adjustments over 400 years produce absurd-looking numbers.
I think there are better ways to think about it.
At its peak, estimates suggest the Dutch East India Company represented roughly 40% to 50% of Dutch GDP. At various points, it may have accounted for more than half of the investable stock market.
That’s easier to understand.
Imagine a company today worth nearly half of U.S. GDP while simultaneously representing a massive share of the investable stock market.
That’s the scale we’re talking about.
The reason I find this comparison more useful than railroads is because of the unknowns.
The railroads connected places people already knew existed.
The Dutch East India Company was venturing into territories where the opportunities, risks, discoveries, and profits were largely unknowable beforehand.
That’s much closer to space.
Nobody in 1602 could fully appreciate what global trade would become.
Nobody today can fully appreciate what a permanently accessible commercial space economy could become.
We’re talking about satellites, communications, manufacturing, defense applications, resource extraction, energy transmission, and possibilities we haven’t even thought of yet.
SpaceX isn’t just transporting things.
It’s opening access to a frontier.
The Bubble That Wasn’t… Until It Was
One of the biggest misconceptions about the Dutch East India Company is that it was some kind of short-lived speculative bubble.
It wasn’t.
The company thrived for nearly two centuries.
The stock produced extraordinary returns. It paid dividends for generations. It survived wars, recessions, political upheaval, and even the Tulip Mania era.
The bubble didn’t come first.
The success came first. A lot of success. That’s the part most people forget.
When investors hear “Dutch East India Company,” they immediately think about the ending. They think about speculation, excess, and collapse.
But the ending came much later.
For decades, the company was exactly what investors hoped it would be. It was the dominant public vehicle for one of the greatest economic expansions in history.
As global trade expanded,VOC expanded with it. Investors weren’t simply buying a stock. They were buying exposure to an entirely new world.
Eventually, the company lost its edge. Competition increased. The world changed. Leadership shifted elsewhere. The story ended.
All stories do.
But that’s not the lesson.
The lesson is that some of the greatest bubbles in history began as some of the greatest businesses in history.
Investors often assume those are opposite things.
They’re not.
The greatest manias in history usually start with something real.
Railroads were real. The internet was real. Both changed the world. Both eventually produced bubbles.
Artificial intelligence is real.
And space is very real.
Whether SpaceX ultimately becomes one of the greatest investments ever or one of the greatest bubbles ever is impossible to know today.
History suggests those outcomes aren’t mutually exclusive.
In fact, the biggest winners often spend years looking like both.
That’s why I think everybody’s asking the wrong question.
The question isn’t whether SpaceX is expensive.
The question isn’t whether the IPO will be overhyped.
The question is whether we’re dramatically underestimating the size of the opportunity.
Because if SpaceX really is opening the next great frontier, then the valuation everyone is arguing about today may eventually become the least interesting part of the story.
That’s what happened with VOC.
And that’s exactly why I can’t stop thinking about it.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs