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Decoder · 4 min · Oct 17, 2026

Mobile service gives SpaceX another valuation narrative

Walter Piecyk

Telecom Analyst, LightShed Partners

Covers wireless networks, spectrum and smartphones as a LightShed Partners partner and TMT analyst.

  • Nilay PatelHost · Editor-in-chief, The Verge

    Helped start The Verge in 2011 and has hosted Decoder since 2020.

About this segment

Piecyk says mobile is another story supporting SpaceX’s valuation alongside AI and space computing. Investors may focus less on near-term earnings than on where capital goes and when the threat reaches carriers.

From “Why Elon Musk wants to sell you cell service | Decoder”, Oct 17, 2026. Watch the full episode

“Because what do all of these things need? Whether it's robotaxi, whether it's data centers in space, they need money. And money needs a narrative.”
Walter Piecykat 27:42 · Decoder27:42

Takeaways

  1. Piecyk sees wireless as one of several narratives supporting SpaceX’s valuation.
  2. The company must choose between mobile and other capital-intensive projects.
  3. A delayed build would postpone, not eliminate, the threat to carriers.
Watch 3:56 from 25:36

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 18:41SpaceX will still need macro towers4:05
  2. 38:18Verizon has lost its network advantage6:01

  3. 25:36Mobile service gives SpaceX another valuation narrative3:56

  4. 10:08SpaceX could sell service before its network is complete2:38Up next

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 25:49

    that because I know you cover the company and I know you cover the industry. There's some part of SpaceX that is just a meme stock, right? People love Elon. There's some part of Tesla where it's not valued like a car company. It's valued like a software company, even though it is very much a car company. And we've yet to see where the software multiples might come from for Tesla. I think the same is true of SpaceX, right? It's a huge IPO, but people are buying the physics miracle of the rockets launching and landing. They're buying the promise of Mars. They're buying the promise of AI, whatever that promise is, however frothy that market is. Those are are valued against hopes and dreams.

  2. 26:26

    Telecom. is not. It's well known. You can be a telecom analyst and you can examine the value of the spectrum. You understand the build outs. The customers are not confusing. Consumers are going to pay some amount of money. There are other competitors that are built in at scale. Why do you think SpaceX would chain itself to a business that is easy to value when all of its other businesses are their dreams? You can't value dreams. It's just whatever is the biggest number.

  3. 26:54

    I mean, I don't think it's an either or. And I would think that when you look at people's attempt to justify the valuation of SpaceX, a lot of that value is going to land on data centers in space and the data centers on the ground. And that's where a lot of the value – and Starlink to a certain extent. But that's not the launch business, which theoretically is their business, right? It's not even the AI provision business, right? We're describing them as a hyperscaler.

  4. 27:22

    Yeah, exactly. And well, the AI, those are other big chunks of it. There's a lot of different stories here, but it doesn't mean that they don't pursue this. If constantly is having connectivity and constellations and they're talking about connectivity in space, right? Because they believe, right, that there's going to be a demand for connectivity between the data centers, whether it's theirs or others and their constellations. There are already data centers that I think are using, you know, their constellation to connect.

  5. 27:45

    So I think when they looked at it, it was just another part of the narrative that you build in terms of SpaceX and justifying the valuation. Because what do all of these things need? Whether it's robotaxi, whether it's data centers in space, they need money. And money needs a narrative. And this is just another one of the narrative to stack on top to say, here's how we can drive incremental value.

  6. 28:12

    And the value is, you know, if you look at the enterprise values of these telcos in the United States, you're talking about like a trillion dollars, right? So, that's a trillion dollars of enterprise value. They're obviously not going to capture a trillion dollars, right? Because part of it is shrinking the telcos down at the same time at getting whatever that stake is and the CapEx related to it.

  7. 28:33

    I think the fair question is, you know, if, you know, capital gets more scarce, like how do you allocate between these different things? Don't you want to push TerraFab forward a little bit more or get those terrestrial data centers built so that you can start monetizing the billions of dollars that you're getting there versus diverting whatever the dollars are here for the telco? reasonable thing. The problem for the telcos is even if that's happening at SpaceX and this gets delayed a year, that doesn't help them, right? That, you know, the overhang of when that's going to occur, whether that's a year, two years, three years, is always going to be there. They're not going to say, hey, we're just giving up on going after this. It's just going to be a capital allocation issue in the near term that's going to delay when the actual impact hits the telcos in