Elon Musk says SpaceX will hit $1 trillion in revenue by 2030 but Amazon may beat him to it first

Elon Musk has set a new target for SpaceX, $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. It is an extraordinary number for a company analysts currently expect to generate $44.63 billion in revenue this year. And it may be the one prediction even Musk's most loyal supporters find difficult to take at face value.

SpaceX went public in June at $135 a share, briefly surging to approximately $225 before falling sharply to a low of around $104. The stock has since recovered to $143, just above its IPO price. In the second quarter, the company generated $7.8 billion in revenue. To reach $1 trillion by 2030, SpaceX would need to grow at a pace that would make it the fastest-expanding company in corporate history by a significant margin.

Two companies are far better positioned to cross the $1 trillion revenue threshold by 2030, and both of them are already closing in.

Amazon generated $716.9 billion in revenue in 2025 and needs a compound annual growth rate of just 6.88% to reach $1 trillion by 2030. So far in 2026, it is running well above that pace. In the first six months of the year, Amazon posted revenue of $382.1 billion, up 18% year over year, putting it on a trajectory to hit the milestone ahead of schedule.

The engine behind that growth is Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing division, which has posted accelerating sales growth in recent quarters and remains the global leader in cloud infrastructure. Chief executive Andy Jassy has noted that 85% of IT spending still happens on-premises, a figure that points to the vast runway still ahead for AWS as enterprises continue migrating workloads to the cloud. Amazon is also investing in internally developed AI chips that could boost margins in its cloud segment while potentially opening a new revenue stream if the company sells those chips externally.

Walmart is the second company in striking distance, though the timeline is tighter. The retail giant generated $713.2 billion in revenue in its fiscal year 2026, which ended Jan. 31, 2026, up 4.7% year over year. Reaching $1 trillion would require a compound annual growth rate of approximately 7%, which Walmart has not consistently achieved. The more likely scenario is that Walmart crosses the threshold in its fiscal year ending January 2032, a year later than Musk's SpaceX target.

What makes Walmart compelling regardless of the $1 trillion timeline is the resilience of its underlying business. The company benefits from unmatched scale in supplier negotiations, passing cost savings directly to customers in a way that outperforms most retail peers during economic downturns. Approximately 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store, giving its e-commerce operations a fulfillment advantage that has driven faster online sales growth in recent years. Those e-commerce sales carry higher margins than brick-and-mortar operations, improving the company's long-term profit profile. Walmart's advertising business has also been growing strongly.

Walmart is additionally a Dividend King, a designation reserved for companies that have raised their dividend for 50 or more consecutive years, a track record that signals the kind of durable cash generation long-term income investors look for.

Musk's $1 trillion prediction for SpaceX is not impossible. The company's Starlink satellite internet service, its launch business, its space-based data center ambitions and the Terafab chip factory it is co-developing with Tesla could collectively generate revenues that are difficult to model today. But the gap between $44.63 billion in projected 2026 revenue and $1 trillion in 2030 revenue is a chasm that would require execution at a scale and speed that has no precedent in corporate history.

Amazon is the better bet to get there first. And it may not even need to wait until 2030.