Venture capitalist Steve Westly says SpaceX is “three moonshots in one company” and the math only works if most of them pay off.

On June 12, SpaceX (SPCX) just pulled off the biggest initial public offering in stock market history.

• The company raised $75 billion, priced shares at $135 each, and debuted on the Nasdaq with a bang, jumping 19% on its first day of trading, according to CNBC.

• By the closing bell, shares had settled around $161. That put the company’s market cap at roughly $2.1 trillion.

• The pop continued after hours, lifting the valuation closer to $2.2 trillion.

But behind the celebratory bell-ringing, a veteran investor with deep experience with Elon Musk has a pointed message for anyone considering buying in.

SpaceX is not just a rocket company

SpaceX isn’t just a rocket company anymore. Musk folded his artificial intelligence startup xAI into SpaceX in February 2026.

The combined entity consists of AI data centers, the Grok AI models, the X social network (formerly Twitter), and an AI image generator.

So SpaceX now spans three very different businesses: rockets and space exploration, Starlink satellite internet, and an AI division.

More AI:

The only part currently turning a profit is Starlink. According to the SEC filings, the satellite internet unit generated $4.4 billion in operating profit last year.

The AI division, by contrast, lost $6.4 billion while bringing in just $3.2 billion in revenue, as CNN reported.

The company has lost $41.3 billion in total since its founding in 2002, according to its prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Steve Westly’s candid warning about the $2 trillion SpaceX valuation

Westly, who served on Tesla’s board and founded The Westly Group, told CNBC‘s “Squawk Box Europe” that figuring out what SpaceX is worth isn’t easy.

The three businesses inside it are, in his words, “completely disparate.”

His bottom line? At least two of the three bets need to work out.

“SpaceX is three moonshots in one company, but I think they’re going to need to make at least two of these moonshots successful to keep that $2 trillion valuation,” Westly told CNBC.

SpaceX’s own IPO prospectus acknowledged that some of its plans rely on technologies that do not yet exist.

Related: 5 reasons why the SpaceX IPO could be an absolute dud

There’s also the governance issue. Musk holds super-voting Class B shares that give him around 85% of the shareholder vote, CNN reported.