The Plus Is the Business: Understanding Launch+

The SpaceX IPO has triggered an identity crisis in the space community. The S-1 doesn't describe a rocket company. It describes "the only company building the integrated hardware and software infrastructure of the future across space, connectivity, and AI." The market priced it that way: the largest IPO in history, up 19% on day one. And the question everyone keeps asking — is SpaceX even a space company anymore? — is the wrong question.

The right question is what business SpaceX is actually in. Our framework — Infrastructure, Distribution, Applications — answers it the same way it has for over a decade. That durability is the point: the framework was built to hold up as market dynamics shift, and it has. What the Q2 Space IQ adds is a segmentation within it: Launch+, an industry combination for companies operating across launch plus at least one other space industry.

Launch was never the end market

We've said for years that launch alone doesn't make a great business. The data backs it up: pure launch has attracted $18.3 billion since 2009, roughly 4% of all capital invested in the space economy. Satellites took 81%.

But access to orbit is a strategic advantage. Launch exists to serve the plus side of the equation — orbital compute, communications, lunar markets — and the companies that understand this are expanding into those markets as they reach orbit. Q2 delivered the proof: Launch+ led all Infrastructure investment at $14.6 billion year to date and drove 71% of the quarter's top Infrastructure deals, anchoring the largest Infrastructure quarter on record.

What qualifies

Launch+ comes down to whether a company's business is integrated across launch and other space industries, not merely adjacent to launch. It's an industry combination in our taxonomy, spanning all three technology layers. By definition, every Launch+ company is anchored in Infrastructure — that's the launch. The plus is expansion into more lucrative, higher-margin businesses that cut across all three technology layers. Today, these companies take two forms. 

Integrated operators combine launch with at least one other space industry. SpaceX is the fullest expression: launch and satellites, plus stations with Dragon's crew and cargo services to the ISS, logistics with Stargaze, its Starlink-based space situational awareness system, and industrials with Starfall, its cargo return capsule for in-space manufacturing — with lunar ahead. Blue Origin combines launch, satellites, and lunar. Rocket Lab combines launch, satellite manufacturing, and SatCom with the pending $8 billion Iridium deal. Firefly pairs launch with lunar landers and orbital vehicles. Relativity pairs launch with its Mars orbiter program.

Digital engineering companies build the foundation those operators stand on. Prometheus, Nominal, Sift, and Revel provide the engineering infrastructure — from design and simulation through telemetry, testing, and operations — applied across launch vehicles and satellites alike.

Neither form can be meaningfully assigned to a single industry. That's why the category exists.

The Prometheus test

If the category has a stress test, it's Prometheus. Why does an AI company belong in a launch category?

Because we classify companies by the infrastructure they're building and the markets it serves, not by whether the product is hardware or software. Prometheus raised the largest deep tech round ever for physical industrial engineering to build an AI system that designs, manufactures, and operates physical assets, with aerospace a stated target market. The integration with launch isn't hypothetical: Bezos has pointed to Blue Origin as the case-study customer, said its tools will "help companies like Blue immensely," and Blue Origin's CEO, David Limp, sits on Prometheus's board. The company's entire thesis is that the scarce input for physical AI is proprietary industrial data that's "very hard to access" — and the Bezos launch-to-orbit stack is exactly where it has privileged access. Prometheus is a bet on the industrial engine that designs and builds launch vehicles and space assets. That's Infrastructure, and specifically the plus side of Launch+.

What doesn't qualify

The boundaries are just as concrete. In Distribution, companies like Skild AI and Physical Intelligence build models that help physical systems perform in the real world — intelligence layers that extract and distribute value from those systems, not tools for building the infrastructure itself. In Applications, companies face a direct use case in a vertical market, the way Saronic does in maritime autonomy. Within Infrastructure, ICEYE builds satellites without launch and Stoke builds launch without other space businesses yet, so both remain in their respective industries. Where a company touches multiple sectors, we classify by where its value primarily accrues.

Where this goes

If an Applications company like Anduril acquired or built its own launch capability to vertically integrate its defense platform, it would become a Launch+ company at the Applications layer. That's the evolution the category is designed to capture.

Standalone launch will atrophy. The value of reaching orbit is what you own once you're there — expect more high-value M&A, more teaming agreements, and more launch companies expanding into services. Our Infrastructure, Distribution, Applications framework is the only one that explains why a rocket company is valued like an AI company, and what comes next.

The full breakdown is in the Q2 2026 Space IQ.