In a recent interview, Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, shared his long-term assessments of SpaceX 's development, Starship, Starlink, space data centers, and other companies under Elon Musk's umbrella since investing in the company in 2019. He emphasized that his views are based on a compilation and understanding of publicly available information and are not insider information. However, he stated frankly that SpaceX's true breakthrough may only be beginning.
In 2019, SpaceX was largely ignored by the market.
Maguire recalls that when he first invested in SpaceX in 2019, the market generally still viewed it as a simple rocket launch company. At that time, SpaceX only launched 13 times a year, and the global rocket launch market was worth about $5-6 billion. Even assuming the company achieved full market share and an EBITDA margin of 40%, the profit margin was still theoretically limited.
Against this backdrop, SpaceX's valuation of approximately $36 billion at the time was considered close to the industry's achievable profit ceiling, with limited room for growth. Meanwhile, the market gave Starlink almost no valuation, deeming Starship too risky and its success uncertain. Musk's overall assessment was still influenced by Tesla's production hell. Maguire described this period as one of high market reserve and a significant lack of investment consensus.
SpaceX's decision-making logic is to first overcome bottlenecks, and then consider scaling.
Maguire pointed out that SpaceX's development pace has always revolved around "solving key bottlenecks first." The company did not go all out to push Starlink from the beginning, but only accelerated Starlink at the end of 2018 after the Falcon 9's reusable technology matured and launch reliability improved significantly.
This reflects the company's internal expectation that future launch capabilities would expand rapidly, and the need to start thinking about "what to do with these launch capabilities." It was in this context that Starlink became the first large-scale commercial application.
Starlink takes shape, moving from rural internet to global data infrastructure.
Maguire stated that as its deployment scales up, Starlink has evolved from a consumer satellite network into a long-distance data transmission infrastructure in space. Currently, approximately 9,000 low-Earth orbit satellites are operational, transmitting data to each other via laser links, enabling the movement of large amounts of information across continents without the need for physical undersea cables.
Maguire points out that Starlink's commercialization path started with rural and consumer networks, then expanded to the enterprise and aviation markets, and further extended to government and defense applications. In some scenarios, Starlink's stability has even surpassed that of terrestrial networks, and it is gradually playing a key role in long-distance data transmission.
D2D initiates a new growth curve; Starship mass production reshapes the launch supply and demand structure.
In 2024-2025, Starlink will launch Direct to Cell (D2D) technology, which will allow ordinary mobile phones to connect directly to satellites without a base station, making it particularly suitable for deserts, oceans and remote areas.
Maguire cited SpaceX data, stating that by the end of 2024, Starlink had approximately 9.2 million core users and D2D users approximately 6 million, with rapid growth. He believes that in the long term, the scale of D2D may surpass that of traditional home satellite networks. He also pointed out that confidence in Starship within SpaceX has shifted, with the company predicting that Starship will enter a stable, reusable, and mass-producible phase by 2026. Even with the full-speed expansion of Starlink and D2D, SpaceX may still face a situation of overcapacity in launches.
Extending its vertical integration advantages, SpaceX is developing new applications for space data centers.
Maguire stated that SpaceX has begun to seriously evaluate the feasibility of space data centers in the past six months, mainly because the development of ground-based AI is limited by electricity, regulations, and construction speed, while Starship brings a significant reduction in launch costs.
He pointed out that Musk has spoken publicly about this direction on multiple occasions, and after completing relevant calculations, he believes that the model is economically feasible and has a huge potential market size. Looking back at the investment results, Maguire has accumulated approximately $1.2 billion in investment since 2019, with a current book value of approximately $12 billion, corresponding to a valuation of approximately $800 billion for SpaceX; however, he emphasized that the company is still in a very early stage, and the IPO is merely a capital structure transformation, not the end point of growth.
According to Maguire, SpaceX’s core advantages lie in its highly vertical integration, the concentrated burst of long-term investment, and the ability to quickly transform technological potential into practical momentum. As for Starship, Starlink, D2D, or the space data center that has not yet been fully revealed, SpaceX has only completed the preliminary preparations so far.
This article, "Sequoia Capital: SpaceX's Growth Momentum Is About to Be Unleashed, Starship and Space Data Centers Are Key to Ignition," first appeared on ABMedia ABMedia .
