S&P Dow Jones Indices has rejected calls to loosen its eligibility rules for the S&P 500, effectively shutting out SpaceX and other mega-cap IPO candidates from immediate inclusion. Despite a $1.75 trillion valuation and a planned $75 billion IPO, SpaceX cannot enter the benchmark index because it fails the profitability requirement. The decision, announced after a public consultation that began on April 30, keeps a lid on passive flows that would have flooded in from index-tracking funds.
The rules in question are a 12-month seasoning requirement, a 10% public float threshold, and the need for four consecutive quarters of positive GAAP earnings. S&P DJI concluded that exceptions should not be granted “solely based on market capitalization,” even as companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI contemplate public listings. SpaceX itself reported a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025 on revenues of $18.67 billion, a 33% jump from the prior year, making it ineligible until it strings together profitable quarters. “Making exceptions because companies are so large and have been private so long yet are still not profitable didn’t make a great deal of sense,” commented Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth.
Simultaneously, SpaceX underscored its growth narrative by securing a blockbuster compute agreement with Google. A regulatory filing shows Google will pay $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to about 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs and related hardware. The deal, which comes just a week before SpaceX’s expected Nasdaq debut, is designed to supply bridge capacity for Google’s surging AI demand, particularly for the Gemini Enterprise platform. It follows a similar $1.25 billion monthly contract with Anthropic for capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center. Nevertheless, these high-profile AI partnerships do not change the fundamental conflict: SpaceX remains unprofitable under GAAP, and S&P DJI will not bend its rules, leaving benchmark-tracking capital on hold for now.
