$2tn SpaceX IPO is coming – here's how to play space tech investing ahead of launch

Space tech is the next frontier in investing and the much-hyped$2tn SpaceX IPO is going to be the mothership.

We don’t have a date yet on the IPO but there’s already a way to gain access to SpaceX directly and to the wider space economy which could stand to benefit from the IPO buzz.

Investing trusts: Investors can get instant exposure to SpaceX with London-listed investment trusts Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) and the Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (EWI). SMT has over 20% of its net asset value in SpaceX and EWI has about 15% in the company. These offer tangible oven-ready though not pureplay access to SpaceX. Another trust with nearly 7% in SpaceX is the Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust (USA).

Venture capital: Seraphim Space Investment Trust (SSIT) is effectively the public market’s closest thing to a specialist venture-capital gateway into SpaceTech — a London-listed trust giving retail investors exposure to private and late-stage companies spanning Earth observation, defence intelligence, in-space logistics, communications and next-gen navigation. It was launched five years ago as the world’s first listed SpaceTech investment trust, targeting what it sees as a multi-decade structural growth story tied to defence, AI infrastructure, climate monitoring and sovereign communications. The portfolio typically holds 20–50 companies, with a heavy bias toward the US, UK and Europe. I had a look at Seraphim in a bit more depth last month.

ETFs: A popular name is the VanEck Space Innovators ETF - ticker JEDI, which owns stakes in some of the best-known listed space economy stocks including Planet Labs, Rocket Lab, ViaSat, EchoStar, Globalstar and the Seraphim-backed AST SpaceMobile. JEDI has trebled in the last year. Cathie Wood's ARK Space & Defence Innovation UCITS ETF (ARKX) has also drawn a lot of interest.

Or pick your own with these single stocks: Check out our brand-new Space Economy shortlist.

Morgan Stanley has also been looking at this and identified 60 companies it thinks will profit from the expanding space economy. This is less about moonshots and more about the companies behind the ecosystem of satellites, data and communications - think miners, fuel producers and manufacturers of industrial gases and propulsion systems.

“The Space 60: Picks & Shovels for the Final Frontier” report breaks the space tech sector down into a framework based around the 7 different sectors that build up the space economy. This is a helpful way to look at the sector as it demonstrates the depth and breadth of companies involved in this nascent economic horizon.

The seven are Raw Materials & Mining, including the likes of rare earths miner MP Materials and aluminium giant Alcoa; Speciality Metals & Alloys, including glassware specialist Corning and alloys firms Carpenter; Propulsion & Fuels, which includes Air Products and Linde; Electronics & Semiconductors, including STMicro, Broadcom and Nvidia; Components & Subsystems – think nut and bolts firms like infrared specialist Teledyne and Parker Hannifin, which makes valves; Spacecraft & Launch Systems, which includes large cap names like Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin as well as the likes of Rocket Lab and Kratos; and finally Satellite Operators & Services, which means anything from Viasat and AST SpaceMobile to Amazon.