Prominent Silicon Valley Investor: SpaceX is an Institutional Investor's 'Must Buy, Must Hold' Bet on the Future

**June 16** — On the latest episode of the BG2 podcast, Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter and co-host of the Silicon Valley investment-focused show alongside former Benchmark general partner Bill Gurley, labeled SpaceX a "must-buy, must-hold" asset for institutional investors. His core reasoning: the space giant sits at the unique intersection of two high-growth, in-demand sectors—the global space economy and surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) compute. BG2, a Silicon Valley podcast covering tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, pairs Gerstner—a long-focused technology growth investor whose work centers on cloud computing, AI, and high-growth tech names—with Gurley, a respected industry veteran. Gerstner explained that for anyone betting on the trajectory of artificial general intelligence (AGI), it’s critical to recognize two key points: first, the global compute capacity needed to advance AGI will far outpace current market expectations; second, the economic value of large language models (LLMs) in the future will be far larger than most people anticipate. Pairing this outlook with SpaceX’s core businesses, he argues, makes it nearly impossible to find a more direct, high-confidence bet on the future. Addressing valuation skepticism around a potential SpaceX IPO, Gerstner said critics fixate on last year’s revenue numbers, contrasting them with investment bank projections calling for several-fold revenue growth over the next three to four years—and questioning how many companies could pull off that kind of explosive expansion. But Gerstner counters by breaking down SpaceX’s business on first principles: he highlights Starlink, the firm’s ground-based AI compute operations, and its post-Cursor acquisition model business as the key drivers that can deliver this growth trajectory. He also noted that SpaceX’s valuation multiple has dropped from roughly 100x past revenue to about 39x after signing new deals, adding that the company added approximately $29 billion in new orders in a single month—a feat he called extremely rare.