Being Exponential With Luke Lango
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Being Exponential With Luke Lango
5 Space Stocks About to Explode | SpaceX, ASTS, RKLB, PL, BKSY
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In this episode of Being Exponential, Luke Lango takes a deep dive into five of the most exciting opportunities in the rapidly evolving space economy: SpaceX (SPCX), AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), Rocket Lab (RKLB), Planet Labs (PL), and BlackSky (BKSY).
We begin with SpaceX, the company redefining the future of space exploration, satellite communications, AI infrastructure, and orbital compute. Following its historic IPO, Luke breaks down what SpaceX's massive valuation means for investors and the broader space sector.
Next, we examine AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) and the race to build the world's first space-based cellular broadband network. Can direct-to-device satellite connectivity become the next trillion-dollar communications platform?
We also cover Rocket Lab (RKLB), often called the "public SpaceX alternative." From launch services and defense contracts to the upcoming Neutron rocket, Luke explains why Rocket Lab remains one of the strongest pure-play space growth stories.
Then we turn to Planet Labs (PL) and BlackSky (BKSY), two leaders in satellite imagery, geospatial intelligence, and AI-powered Earth observation. As governments, militaries, and enterprises increasingly rely on real-time data from space, these companies sit at the intersection of AI, defense, national security, and satellite analytics.
From SpaceX and Starlink to satellite broadband, orbital infrastructure, Earth intelligence, defense technology, and AI in space, this episode explores the trends driving the next generation of exponential growth.
🎧 Subscribe to Being Exponential with Luke Lango for weekly insights on space stocks, AI investing, emerging technologies, and the future of innovation.
Hello and welcome to Being Exponential. Last week the stock market went to the moon. We're going to talk about it. All right, Luke, uh, we're going to start off with the stock uh this week, with the one that's on everybody's minds. SpaceX, the literally the biggest IPO in the history of ever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, the SpaceX IPO has been massive and it's been a massive success, right? I mean, we IPO'd IPO price is $135, opened around $150, and we've been going up up and away ever since. I think it hit a high of $225 today. So the valuation is approaching $3 trillion. The stocks up more than 50% from its IPO price. This has been a massive, massive success, which is why this week we're not just going to talk about SpaceX. We're talking about uh all space stocks. Five space stocks this week that we're identifying, singling out. Um, let's see, the SpaceX IPO, it's been a huge success for a few reasons. One of which definitely you got to acknowledge is mechanical, right? IPOs, the way IPOs are structured, uh, the mechanical nature of them is such that they're supposed to go higher because there's not a lot of supply on the onset. That when an IPO or on a stock IPOs, most of the tradable shares are locked up, meaning most of the shares outstanding cannot be sold. They're just locked up uh behind more or less a time wall, if you will. And that's true of the SpaceX IPO, that only about 5% of the float is tradable right now. So you have very limited supply against the backdrop of massive demand because obviously it's Elon Musk and it's also the first of its kind company with this kind of rocket launch infrastructure. There's obviously Rocket Lab out there, but SpaceX is much bigger, uh, doing many more launches. They got Starlink, they got the orbital compute, they want to go to Mars, et cetera, et cetera. So you have massive demand for exposure to a company like this, and then you have limited supply, it creates a huge supply-demand imbalance, which is mechanically pushes shares higher uh post-IPO. So that's definitely happening. But beyond that, I think the fundamentals here actually are supportive of the current valuation. I mean, you have to look at SpaceX as, at least in the near term, creating the AWS or the Azure or the Google Cloud of space-based AI infrastructure. And you have to also think that space-based AI infrastructure, orbital compute is the future of AI compute, right? SpaceX already owns the hardest part of the stack. They own reusable launch, Starlink, satellite manufacturing, ground networks, uh, soon Starship scale payload capacity. And that stuff matters because orbital compute only works if launch costs collapse and satellite production scales. And SpaceX is the one company, the only company that can solve both in the next maybe two, three, four, five years. Uh, and that's massive because orbital compute at scale is going to be bigger and better than terrestrial compute because of the cost curves. You see, terrestrial compute costs today are about a dollar per GPU hour per R estimates. We've done a lot of work on this, and that's significantly lower than orbital compute costs, which are about $142 per GPU hour. Again, per R estimates, our work suggests as much. But the terrestrial compute cost curve is mostly resource bound. And being a resource-bound curve, it is upward sloping. Whereas the orbital compute cost curve is mostly technology bound, and being a technology bound cost curve, it's exponentially downward sloping. Now, what that means in plain English is that the core cost inputs for terrestrial compute, they're resources, right? We're talking electricity, we're talking land, we're talking water, we're talking uh permitting. And those costs follow resource scarcity curves. They don't tend to drop over time. Meanwhile, the core cost inputs for orbital compute are technologies, launch costs, chips, on-orbit servicing, networking, uh, space solar manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera. And those costs follow technology curves, which tend to drop exponentially over time, Wright's law, with the doubling of um production of a certain technology, the cost drop a fixed percentage, X percent every single time. Now, the result's going to inevitably be a massive drop in the unit cost of orbital compute against a stagnant to even slightly rising uh unit cost curve for uh terrestrial compute. And I think that the, at least our team's work suggests that the crossover is gonna happen at some point in the 2030s and potentially as early as 2030, if um SpaceX really rapidly scales the Starship rocket. And that means that within the next five years, there is potentially a tipping point where orbital compute becomes cheaper than terrestrial compute. And when that happens, everyone's gonna go to the stars. And that makes SpaceX so valuable because AI compute is the most valuable infrastructure asset in humanity. Um, that compute's gonna increasingly move to the stars, and SpaceX is the only company in the world that can launch that compute into space. So SpaceX is the gatekeeper to the future of creating humanity's most valuable infrastructure asset. And that alone, in my opinion, is worth. I mean, what are we trading at? Looking at the numbers here, $34 billion in projected 2026 sales on a $2.8 trillion market cap. That's about 80, 81, 82 times 2026 estimated sales. That feels big, but at the same time, it feels viable if indeed you are the gatekeeper to the future of creating humanity's most viable infrastructure asset. And so from that perspective, I think this stock continues to run, especially before you get um some lockup expirations in August. So I think in July this one continues to stay hot. Then I think in the second half of the year we cool down because you get the lockup expirations, and then some people that have worked there 10, 15, 20 years who were making 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand, now have tens of millions of dollars in stock. Of course, they're gonna unload some. So you get some choppiness in the second half of the year. Probably want to buy that dip because I think 27, 28, the stock goes a lot higher. This could be a $400 stock by the end of next year. That's my opinion, at least.
SPEAKER_00Roger, that uh I just wanted to pick your brain. I know some of these, some of these uh items, just because it is the biggest stock we're talking about today, I just wanted to restate a couple of questions and then uh an additional question on top of that. Um, so some of the you know bearish uh statements on SpaceX is that two out of the three companies in the fold are not profitable, right? I just wanted you to address that again really quickly. And then what do you make of Elon's projection for a trillion dollars in revenue for SpaceX by 2030?
SPEAKER_01Uh so uh two of the segments, two of the segments not being profitable, I I I could care less about. I mean, that's that's ridiculous to make that one of the bearish arguments. Who cares, right? If a company is growing at uh revenues are growing 83% this year, 77% next year, if we kind of look out even further, um, we have this loads, 53% growth the year after that. So you got 83, 77%, and 53. Those are your revenue growth rates for the next three years. I don't give a crap about your profits if you're growing that quickly. You need to spend to grow. That's the name of the game. Spend to grow. We've seen with Tesla that Elon successfully spends to grow, and then once it has grown, can scale into the profit. So that's the model here. I don't care about the lag of profitability in those two or three, two of the three segments, especially when that second segment, the space one, that's all because of the Starship rocket. They're just spending a bunch of money on this rocket. But once you get that reusable rocket that is up and running and doing launches every single day, then all of a sudden your profit margins go absolutely absurd. You get a 60, 70% e-bit down margin business there. So, not at all concerned about the profits there. And on the AI side of things, we've seen that with um OpenAI, we've seen that with Anthropic. Those companies well scale, it'll be okay there. So I'm not at all concerned about the profit margins. And then in terms of the trillion dollar revenue projection by 2030, that's aggressive. That's not going to happen. But I do think a trillion dollars in revenue is possible within the next 10 to 15 years. Again, anything Elon says, you got to back it out five to 10 years. Um, he always hits his targets, but never on time. So I think if we do get there in the next 10 to 15 years, I mean, this is a company that could trade at a 10 to 15x sales multiple uh, you know, into perpetuity at scale. So then you get a trillion dollars, you're looking at a 10, 15 trillion dollar company. We're at three now. That's how you get a multi-packer on the bottom.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Okay. Uh let's move on to the next company uh that we want to talk about uh ASTS Space Mobile.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the other four stocks we're talking about today are four space stocks. And we're talking about them because space stocks were really, really, really, really hot going into the SpaceX IPO and have gone really, really, really, really cold since the SpaceX IPO. And that's because investors were buying space stocks as a proxy for SpaceX. And then once SpaceX went public and the real thing was available, investors have ditched the proxy, so just bought the real thing. So space stocks are getting ditched on a mechanical flow basis there. I think there are a lot of attractive dip buying opportunities in the space as a result of that, because the fundamentals across the space sector are pretty attractive. Let's start with AST Space Mobile. So AST Space Mobile, uh, to me, the bull thesis is pretty simple, which is that the company has become the legacy telecom industry's best counterweight to Starlink in this emerging direct-to-device connectivity war. You see, Starlink is an existential threat to Verizon and to T-Mobile and to ATT, because if they do scale this network of satellites that can beam connectivity directly to your phone, why on earth do you need Verizon? Why on earth do you need T-Mobile? Why on earth do you need ATT? You don't really. Now, Starlink has the scale advantage, but ASTS is a competitor that obviously is doing direct-to-sell um satellite service as well. ASTS has something incredibly viable, which Starlink does not, which is deep alignment with the incumbent mobile network operators. Um, and I think that matters because we've been paying, whether you have Verizon or ATT or T-Mobile, wherever you are, you've been with that provider for a very long time. Smartphones are not new. There's a sense of comfort there. If they can integrate direct-to-cell connectivity globally and ubiquitously into their networks, then you're probably going to stick with them. Switching costs here don't feel super high, but they're high enough to where if you get good capabilities at good prices, you're not going to switch. And AST Space Mobile is trying to be the operator that enables these telecoms to do just that. Now, back in May, the three major telecoms in the United States uh announced this big joint venture to create a uh global direct-to-satellite uh service. And I think they're gonna do that on top of AST Space Mobile because Verizon's an investor, um, ATT is an investor and a partner. T-Mobile is not, but T-Mobile and and uh Starlink, which they had a partnership, uh, that is seems a bit fragile right now. It seems like it's fraying. And so now T-Mobile, I think, is gonna jump ship to AST Space Mobile. AST has partnerships all across the globe too, throughout South America, uh and Asia and Europe. And so I think that just globally AST kind of becomes, you know, the whole telecom industry invests a bunch of money into direct to sell, then AST becomes their pony to win the race. And I think that's a very valuable proposition because I don't think Starlink just walks away with this market. I think Starlink has a lot of success, but I think AST has a lot of success too. Now the dip here is very attractive. You kind of look at the stock chart. This is technically where you want to buy it, right? I mean, we've dropped down to the 200-day moving average, which has consistently been the line of support in the stock going all the way back to May of 2024. So we're talking a two-year uptrend here, dropped to the 200 day moving average here in January 25, great buying opportunity, dropped just below here in April 25, great buying opportunity, dropped just above here in uh September 25, great buying opportunity. Uh a little bit above here in November 25, great buying opportunity. Just below here, May of 26, great buying opportunity. Now we're just above here, around $80 in June of 26. I think it's a great buying opportunity. This uptrend is not broken, it will remain intact. This is a great time to get into AST space mobile stock, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Love it. Uh, let's blast through these next couple of stocks. Uh, the next up being Rocket Lab.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Rocket Lab, right? The bull thesis here is that every company competing with SpaceX in orbital compute, in satellite internet, and Earth observation, in defense, in space, in space infrastructure, they need a credible non-SpaceX launch partner. Okay. Just the same way that Walmart doesn't use AWS, and the same way that Target doesn't use AWS. These other companies are going to try to not use whether it's Amazon, whether it's Alphabet, whether it's Microsoft, whether it's Meta, they're going to try to not use SpaceX. And Rocket Lab is the only viable alternative outside of SpaceX, right? SpaceX is dominant, but that dominance is exactly why these companies, other companies, are going to want launch redundancy. Okay. And Rocket Lab, their rockets are smaller, they're not as big as SpaceX, but they're getting into the bigger rocket game. And I really do think that this is a very viable play on the orbital compute um uh trend. The chart here to me is really attractive as well. Like I said, the reason I wanted to highlight these stocks is because they've come to some pretty attractive technical levels. So this one's not as beaten up as ASTS, it's not all the way down to the 200 moving average, but it is down to the 50 day moving average. And I think this $100 level is a very attractive technical entry point. That was basically this major high back in January 26. The high technically was 96, but right around 100. That feels like a flip line. This feels like the level that the stock will bought him at. So I think we fall to 100, kind of consolidate there, good time to buy, and then we take off to the well, to the space, if you will, to the heavens, to the skies. Look at the growth profile here. I think it's really attractive. You looked at um SpaceX growing 83, 77, 55. Well, Rocket Lab is growing 52, 39, 30, 25, 25, and it's trading at you know 65 billion dollars right now, about a billion in sales next year. So call it 65 times 26 sales versus SpaceX at 83, 84 times 26 sales. That's an attractive valuation discount. I'd be a buyer on the dip here at $100.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Yeah, so it it appears that just the huge drop of the the SpaceX IPO is creating a wake that we can get into uh a lot of these uh compet competitors, would you say?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean competitors, partners uh in the same ecosystem, these stocks were SpaceX proxies that took off for pre-IPO exposure and are now falling, that people are ditching the proxies and buying the buying the real thing. I think the trade right now is to maybe get out of SpaceX and get into the get back into the proxies, get into Rocket Lab, get into AST, and then get into our next one, which is Planet Labs.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Planet Labs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Planet Labs, the thesis here is that they own one of the most valuable ingredients uh of the space AI era, which is a massive, frequently refreshed, kind of always-on-Earth observation data set. You see, AI models are only as good as the data they ingest. Data is the most valuable input to AI models, and Planet's Daily Satellite Imagery Archive is a uniquely valuable training and inference substrate for geospatial intelligence, for climate monitoring, uh, for uh defense. We saw it with the Iran war and Ukraine, obviously, uh for agriculture, for insurance, for logistics, uh, disaster response, and um eventually robo taxis and autonomous robots and things like that. And Planet has the biggest constellation up there for getting this data. Now, obviously, SpaceX is trying to build one too, and Rocket Lab not so much, but I think Planet Lab just they they have a first mover advantage here. I think they're gonna be a partner with SpaceX, if anything. They're not really going after the rocket launch game, they're more just going after the observation game. And the stock, again, like Rocket Lab, like AST, it's come down to some really, really, really attractive levels. If you look at the chart, we're down to basically the 200-day moving average, more or less. And we're at 28, the 200 at 24. Now, again, just like ASTS, the 200 is a line that's held for a long time back to May of 2025. So about a year ago. Now, the 100 days have been the big support, and we did lose that. So that's not all that bullish, but we're getting basically oversold. We're down here around 23. There was this major high around 28. Sorry, right around 28, major high around 28, pair of highs here at 27, 28. We're right at that level right now. I don't think we come down to the 200. I think this $28 level, I think it holds here, and I think we can bounce. You look at the growth profile for this one. This one is one of the more attractively valued assets in the space. Um, Planet Labs currently has a enterprise value of about $9.6 billion. Let's call it $10 billion. Meanwhile, growing at 42% this year, 31, 30, 30. So basically 30 plus revenue growth into 2030, 10 billion dollar market cap, 500 million, let's call it in sales over actually forward 12 months will be about 500 million dollars. Uh, so that's what is that 20x? That that's really attractive. Based, I mean you're talking 50x on Rocket Lab and 80x on on uh on SpaceX, you got 20x here. That's that's attractive. And so I think Planet Labs is maybe, maybe the best buy in the group right now.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. So now before we move on to our last talk, I do have to bring up a question that has started to circulate a little bit. Uh, it's a question on uh the the possibility of Kessler syndrome. So Kessler syndrome being the idea that the density of satellites and the orbit gets really high, and then we start seeing a uh uh cascade of collisions. Do you have any thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_01Uh once we get enough satellites up there to actually have Kessler syndrome, then we'll have some thoughts on it. But I mean, listen, that is something that could happen absolutely. It's not gonna happen in the next we don't have enough satellites up there. We won't have enough satellites up there for Kessel syndrome to be a thing for probably another 10 years or so. So we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Let's get these satellites up there. Let's get enough up there to where Kessler syndrome is a problem. Before we do, let's solve it logistically. Let's probably solve it with some regulation. Maybe you know the US and China have to work together on that. Um that will be difficult, but that's not a risk factor I'm implementing into my analysis today in 2026. This is a 2035 plus problem, and I'll integrate it when we start getting closer to 2035. But I'm not integrating a problem that's more than 10 years out into my analysis today and 2026.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. All right, and then on to our last stock with possibly the coolest name in the bunch, Black Sky Technologies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Black Sky is cool. I think the way to look at this is the high torque version of Planet Labs, right? They also do real-time uh geospatial intelligence, but it's like defense stuff, drone warfare, missile proliferation, contested borders, maritime surveillance, uh, rapid responses, astro monitoring. Uh, and that's that's black sky's niche. They're they're really good at that. They just reported uh really good results, uh revenue up to 100, no, 160 million in new contract wins, sorry. Uh big demand for their Gen 3 space-based intelligence and AI services. Um, they have contracts, uh multi-year contracts, a lot of defense agencies across the world. So I uh like nations. And so I think that these are very this is a very, very strong company that's like Planet Labs, more defense oriented, smaller in nature, and also higher torque. So if we do think, like I do, that the space trade is going to make a comeback, then Black Sky could be one of the biggest winners, higher risk, of course, but where there's higher risk, there is higher reward. This is another stock that, as you can see, had that big rally, came in quite a bit, now around the 100 day, in between the 100 and the 200, which historically has been the time to buy. If you kind of look at the stock going back a year, when it's between that 100 and 200, just below the 200, that that's a range to buy the stock. And so we're in that range now. RSI is pretty pretty beaten down. You look at the growth, uh, the growth profile, and it's it's very attractive. It's it's pretty big. Um, you're looking at 29 revenue growth expected this year, 33% expected the year after that, 31%, 26, 22. So basically, you know, where estimates are good, 30 plus compounded growth under 2028. It's a the margins here go from 11% EPITA this year to 37 EBITDA by 28 and 50 by 2030. So this is a rapidly scaling EPITA margin business. If we look at EPITA, goes from 15 million to 175 million by 2030. You talk about the revenue multiples on this 1.1 billion on only 140 million uh in revenues for this year. So that's about 10x. So we're we're we're getting cheaper as as we as we go on, right? We started at 82 times right on on the SpaceX. We got to about 50 on uh Rocket Lab. Uh and now we're down to basically 10x on Black Sky. So the cheapest of the bunch, smallest of the bunch, highest risk of the bunch. But if indeed the space trade comes back and SpaceX kind of gives a little air out and money comes back into these space stocks, Black Sky could be arguably the biggest winner of the group we talked about today.
SPEAKER_00Roger that. So it's almost safe to say that with the success of SpaceX, space is now we can consider it a utility, and all of these space stocks are this is probably our best opportunity to get into them going forward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I yeah, I think it's a great look at it. SpaceX, the SpaceX IPO validated the utility and the useful nature of uh these space stocks and the short-term mechanical flow dynamics which have weighed on these stocks, everyone bought the proxy, ditched the proxies once the real thing became public. That's gonna wash through. I feel like it has washed through a lot of these stocks and down to pretty attractive technical levels. The fundamentals are still strong, and I think they're gonna bounce back. I love SpaceX long-term. I think it's a great long-term play, but I expect volatility in the second half of the year once lockup expirations or once the lockups come on, once the new shares come onto the market. And amidst that volatility, I think money shifts back into these space stocks. And so, right now, if you're talking about the next six months, I think the trade is to fade the SpaceX rally, buy these other four or five. There's more space stocks out there, buy the dip in the space stocks, ride that higher. And then once that plays out, you know, by December of this year, let's say, then you want to rotate back into SpaceX and have a more balanced portfolio. And for that, I'd recommend something like NASA, the Team of Space Innovators ETF Ticker NASA.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. All right. I think that's a safe place to end it. We are gonna dig deeper into the SpaceX IPO later this week on Thursday. I hope you tune in. Uh other than that, we uh hope you've enjoyed watching. Take care.