SpaceX has made its biggest move yet into the phone business by agreeing to buy all of Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum on Thursday. According to Bloomberg, the deal involves combining SpaceX's satellite network with terrestrial infrastructure using the low-band spectrum to improve coverage inside buildings. Financial terms weren't disclosed, and the deal still requires FCC approval. Musk described the acquisition as transformative, stating 'To the casual observer, this won't seem like much. To those who understand the spectrum wars, it's an earthquake.'
Elon Musk has significantly escalated his vision for SpaceX, moving from suggesting the rocket and satellite company could become worth more than the rest of Earth to saying it could eventually be worth 'orders of magnitude more' than the current global economy. In his latest post on X on October 15, 2026, Musk stated that SpaceX will probably top $100 trillion within 10 years, representing a 4,700% increase from its current market value of $2.07 trillion. As per Live Mint, Musk had previously described a $100 trillion SpaceX as only 'possible' late last year, but now considers it more probable. The latest pronouncement suggests SpaceX could achieve a market capitalisation of upward of $12 quadrillion in the future, representing approximately 5,500 times its current valuation.
The spectrum deal has already triggered significant market reactions, with AT&T (T:NYSE) and Verizon (VZ:NYSE) each falling nearly 10% on Friday, and *T-Mobile (TMUS:NASDAQ) falling about 13%**. The bigger drop for T-Mobile stems from an awkward backstory involving the spectrum. As reported by Bloomberg, those 800 MHz licenses used to be T-Mobile's own - the company handed them to Grain in August for $2.9 billion plus Grain's 600 MHz holdings, with the FCC's terms requiring Grain to find someone to put the underused spectrum to work. The fact that Grain is now selling to a would-be rival has created competitive concerns in the telecommunications sector.
Despite Musk's ambitious valuation targets, SpaceX faces significant financial challenges that raise questions about its ability to justify such a massive market cap. According to Forbes, SpaceX shares have swung hard in the four months since the company went public in the largest IPO on record, with shares peaking at $225.64 but soon sliding to push Musk back below $1 trillion. The company's financials show only Starlink turning an operating profit last quarter, while the AI division spent $15.8 billion on infrastructure over the same period. To fund the buildout, SpaceX is reportedly seeking $40 billion more in debt for Nvidia chips. SpaceX's credit default swaps have surged, with five-year contracts reaching 194 basis points, up from about 110 in June, making it cost $19,400 a year to insure $1 million of SpaceX debt.
In a follow-up post on October 10, 2026, Musk clarified that his statements about SpaceX's potential valuation should not be interpreted as extreme confidence in the outcome. As reported by Live Mint, Musk wrote that 'Seeing a path' is not a statement of extreme confidence that we will achieve that outcome. Just means that I believe there is such a path and the probability of achieving it is not zero'. The clarification is important because 'orders of magnitude' is not a precise valuation target, and Musk did not specify how many orders of magnitude he had in mind or when such a valuation might be achieved.
Musk's latest comments are part of a broader argument that industries operating beyond Earth could eventually exceed the economic value of industries on the planet. As reported by Live Mint, in January, Musk argued that space-based industries could vastly exceed the value of all economic activity on Earth because of the enormous amount of solar energy available in space. 'Space-based industries will vastly exceed the value of all of Earth, given that you could harness roughly 100,000 times more energy than Earth and still be using less than a millionth of the Sun's energy!' he wrote, arguing that access to abundant solar energy and the ability to expand infrastructure beyond Earth's physical limits could enable industries to operate at a scale that is difficult to achieve on the planet.
