Twenty-nine years ago, Amazon went public.
Before its IPO, only a handful of e-commerce companies had done the same. But Amazon demonstrated that online retail could become a major market.
Investors took notice. So did entrepreneurs. What followed was a startup boom — hundreds of young, online retailers going public as they raced to capitalize on this new market.
Now, venture capitalists believe we could be on the verge of a new boom. But this time, it’s not Amazon setting things in motion — it’s a different trillion-dollar industry giant.
And for investors like us, it’s leading to another wave of profit opportunities.
The $86 Billion Catalyst
In June, SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history, raising roughly $86 billion.
But as Fortune recently reported, the IPO’s biggest impact might have nothing to do with SpaceX itself. Instead, it could be what happens next.
You see, for decades, space was largely the domain of governments and enormous aerospace companies. Building satellites, launching rockets, and conducting experiments beyond Earth was too expensive and risky for most startups.
SpaceX changed the thinking.
In fact, as professional investors and startup founders told Fortune, SpaceX’s success is helping transform space from a government-dominated industry into a “supercharged startup market ripe for disruption.”
Here are the two big reasons why...
Space Just Got Cheaper
First, SpaceX changed the economics of going to space.
Historically, rockets were mostly disposable. You’d spend tons of money building one, launch it once, and then essentially throw it away.
SpaceX pioneered reusable rockets that can fly, land, and be launched again.
The result? According to Fortune, the cost of sending mass into space has fallen roughly 95% since 2008.
That’s a game-changer for startups. Ideas that might have required hundreds of millions of dollars just to literally get off the ground are suddenly economically feasible.
But that’s only half the story…
Space Just Got Less Risky
SpaceX also changed how investors perceive the space industry.
Its success proved that a private startup could challenge established aerospace giants, build a massive business, and generate extraordinary wealth for its early backers.
Consider Alphabet, Google’s parent company. In 2015, it invested roughly $900 million into SpaceX. Following SpaceX’s IPO, that investment was worth more than $90 billion.
That’s roughly a 100x return in about a decade. Returns like that get investors’ attention.
SpaceX showed them what’s possible. And now, they’re opening their wallets…
Investors Are Pouring In
During the first quarter of 2026, investors poured nearly $8 billion into space companies.
That’s nearly twice as much as the previous quarter — and an all-time record.
Investors completed 159 space-based deals during the quarter, bringing the trailing 12-month total to a record 654. And VCs expect this trend to continue.
Keval Desai, founder of early-stage investment firm Shakti VC, compares what’s happening today to the aftermath of Amazon’s IPO.
“The next decade in space is going to be full of startups,” he told Fortune.
His firm’s investments back up that prediction.
About 10% of Shakti’s portfolio has gone into space technology during the past five years. Over the next several years, Desai expects that figure to jump to 25% to 30%.
Where is all this money going?
Hotels, Power Plants, and Garbage Trucks
Not every space startup is trying to build the next SpaceX.
One startup is developing enormous solar panels designed for orbit. One wants to build a hotel on the moon. Another is developing what amounts to a robotic garbage collector for space — a spacecraft that captures dead satellites and other debris orbiting Earth.
Other startups are pursuing everything from communications and drug development to orbital computing.
In other words, entrepreneurs aren’t simply trying to build better rockets. They’re creating entirely new businesses that wouldn’t have been economical even a few years ago.
SpaceX is enabling this creation. By lowering the cost of reaching space — and proving there’s serious money to be made there — it’s paving the way for a new generation of startups.
And that’s what makes this trend so exciting for investors like us.
Your Ticket to the Space Economy
At Crowdability, we’re no strangers to the space industry.
We’ve been writing about space startups — and SpaceX — since 2014.
Back then, investing in private space companies might have seemed like a far-fetched idea. Today, billions of dollars are pouring into the sector. And it’s just getting started.
So keep an eye on your weekly Deals email, which we send every Monday at 11 am EST.
That’s where we highlight interesting early-stage investment opportunities — including companies aiming to profit from the emerging space economy.
And when you’re ready to dive deeper, consider Private Market Profits.
That’s our premium research service where we search for private deals — including space-related startups — that can potentially deliver at least 10x returns, and often far more.
SpaceX’s IPO wasn’t simply a payday for its early investors. It rolled out the red carpet for a new lineup of emerging private companies.
We’re ready to find those companies — and give you the chance to invest in them.
In the meantime, happy investing.
