Ron Baron has already earned billions from Elon Musk.
Now the billionaire investor feels the largest portion of that gamble may still be in front of him.
The founder of Baron Capital made a very positive case for SpaceX on a CNBC “Squawk Box” appearance, suggesting that reducing launch costs, on top of Starlink growth, and accelerating artificial-intelligence demand may drastically raise the company’s long-term worth.
Baron said Baron Capital has invested roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and more than $5 billion in Tesla (TSLA). Of the approximately $71 billion in profits he said the firm has generated for clients over its history, roughly $30 billion came from investments associated with Musk.
His newest prediction about SpaceX is far broader.
Ultimately, Starlink could be producing something like $1 trillion per year in sales and $700 billion to $800 billion in EBITDA, Baron said. Based on his assumptions, he said the satellite business itself could eventually be worth something like $14 trillion to $15 trillion.
Those statistics are estimates from Baron, not financial forecasts from SpaceX.
But advancements at both SpaceX and Tesla are providing investors with much more real data points to judge the Musk enterprises.
Ron Baron sees a massive opportunity beyond SpaceX rockets
Baron’s thesis for SpaceX starts out with one critical variable: the cost of reaching orbit.
Reusable rockets have dramatically cut launch costs compared to the economics of traditional, expendable launch vehicles, he said. He expects Starship will drive those costs down even further, potentially making space accessible to businesses for which that wasn’t economical before.
Starship is a fully reusable transportation system designed by SpaceX to carry more than 100 metric tons to orbit in a reusable configuration.
That’s significant because Baron isn’t just predicting more rockets to launch.
It is based on what cheaper launches allow.
The most established example is Starlink. Baron said he had modeled the satellite network growing dramatically over the next decade, with consumer broadband accounting for only part of the potential revenue opportunity.
Government customers, businesses, and mobile connectivity could contribute substantially more, he argued. And increasingly, Baron believes, AI agents could create another wave of communications demand as autonomous software performs more tasks around the clock.
SpaceX’s own current plans illustrate how aggressively it is trying to expand network capacity.
Starship will allow much more network capacity to be deployed per launch, and the company said its next-generation V3 Starlink satellites are expected to provide far more capacity than today’s generation.
SpaceX is also no longer restricted to private-market holdings.
The company priced its massive public offering in June at $135 per share, selling about 555.6 million Class A shares and raising roughly $75 billion. The stock began trading under the ticker SPCX.
That gives public-market investors a direct way to judge whether SpaceX can grow into anything resembling Baron’s enormous long-term expectations.
“We’re going to make hundreds of billions in the next 10 years from Elon,” Baron said.
Related: Elon Musk sends strong message to SpaceX and Tesla investors
The $15 trillion figure isn’t the most ambitious part of his thesis, either. Baron believes orbital computing could eventually create an even larger opportunity.
SpaceX’s AI data-center plan strengthens Baron’s thesis
One theme Baron kept returning to throughout the interview was space-based data centers .
AI companies are demanding larger and larger amounts of computing infrastructure, which requires electricity, cooling, land, and significant capital.
Some of those constraints could eventually be eased by moving computing infrastructure into orbit, says Baron.
He said he expects SpaceX to begin deploying data center capability into space as early as 2027, though he said the timeline could slip. As for the new business, he called it “Star Mind” and said it could one day be bigger than Starlink.
SpaceX has since publicly documented the underlying project, unlike some of Baron’s more aggressive financial assumptions.
SpaceX says StarMind is a system of satellites in orbit that carry AI-compute hardware powered by solar energy. Its initial AI1 satellite design calls for up to 250 kilowatts of peak computing power, and SpaceX says a planned manufacturing facility in Bastrop is meant to support production of thousands of AI satellites starting as soon as late 2027.
SpaceX also says Starship is key to that strategy because the company will need to launch large amounts of computing hardware at a reasonable cost.
Its current planning assumes that the gradual deployment of millions of tons of satellites could result in a huge amount of AI-compute capacity in orbit. These are company ambitions, not guaranteed outcomes, and building such infrastructure will require advances in launch cadence, satellite manufacturing, computing hardware and thermal management.
Heat management is one of the challenges Baron discussed in the CNBC interview
Hardware in space can’t use air-based cooling like ground-based data centers do. Instead, SpaceX’s StarMind design uses radiative cooling, solar power and laser links to tie the orbital compute network to Starlink.
There is an official SpaceX orbital-AI program, which gives Baron’s larger argument a more concrete grounding.
His valuation for Starlink is still very speculative at $14 trillion to $15 trillion.
But the notion that SpaceX wants to be more than a rocket-and-internet company is no longer theoretical.
Tesla’s latest autonomy push backs part of Baron’s argument
SpaceX may be Baron’s biggest bet on Musk, but Tesla is still a big part of his portfolio.
Baron said his firm has more than $5 billion in Tesla stock, and he personally owns about $1.5 billion worth of the EV maker.
And he also cleared his stance on the shares.
Baron said he believes “the time to buy the stock is now,” arguing that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology is gaining traction.
Some recent data from Tesla also backs up the specific autonomy trends Baron pointed to, but it doesn’t prove his investment conclusion will be right.
Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter of 2026, including 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The company produced 451,758 vehicles and delivered 13.5 gigawatt-hours of energy-storage products in the quarter.
Tesla’s financials included revenue of $28.24 billion for the second quarter, with net income attributable to common shareholders of $1.11 billion.
The company said its strategy increasingly centers on bringing AI into the physical world through FSD, Robotaxi and humanoid robots such as Optimus.
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Tesla’s Robotaxi operation has progressed further since that quarterly report.
The current Robotaxi website for the company lists autonomous ride service in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Tesla claims the Cybercab is designed for full autonomy with no steering wheel or pedals.
Tesla says Cybercab is now only available to take rides in limited areas of Austin, while Model Y vehicles support Robotaxi service in other markets.
On Sept. 22, Tesla published a specific Cybercab rider guide explaining how customers can hail and ride driverless Cybercab rides via its Robotaxi app.
Tesla is also making strides on FSD (full self-driving) outside of North America.
On its FSD safety page, the European version currently lists the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia and the Czech Republic as markets where FSD (Supervised) has been approved. The system still needs driver supervision and should not be confused with a fully autonomous product.
But Tesla’s push toward autonomy also faces regulatory scrutiny.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation Sept. 4 into Tesla’s self-certification of the Cybercab after it began commercial deployment in Austin. The agency said it is looking into whether the vehicle complies with applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.
This is a necessary counterweight to Baron’s enthusiasm.
FSD subscriptions and Robotaxi deployment are growing, but regulatory approval, technological reliability, and consumer adoption are key variables in how valuable those businesses ultimately become.
Baron is not focusing as much on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot business.
Musk believes robots could one day be bigger than Tesla’s other businesses, Baron said. But at the moment, Baron places more emphasis on autos, self-driving, batteries, and energy.
That makes his investment thesis somewhat narrower than Mr. Musk’s own vision for Tesla.
But it also connects directly to what Tesla is doing today: the rapid growth in adoption of FSD, the expansion of the Robotaxi service, and the move of Cybercab from development into the real world.
Baron’s Musk bet is becoming an AI infrastructure bet
Baron started wagering on Musk with electric cars and rockets.
It increasingly feels like a gamble on the AI infrastructure.
Tesla is trying to make AI into physical products with autonomous cars and robots.
SpaceX is bringing more satellite connectivity online and building up orbital computing infrastructure that could potentially provide AI models with lots of compute.
Baron believes those trends could come together.
AI agents require connectivity. You need to be connected to network capacity. The AI models need the computing power. And SpaceX has a launch platform that could deliver communications and compute infrastructure to orbit at an unprecedented scale.
There are big expectations.
Baron sees a path to a Starlink revenue run rate of about $1 trillion and a valuation of as much as $15 trillion. He thinks orbital AI computing could be even bigger in the future.
Neither is guaranteed.
To build that future, Starship launch rates, satellite production, customer adoption, and AI-compute demand will all have to increase steeply, and significant engineering and regulatory hurdles will have to be overcome.
Tesla’s own unknowns lie in its efforts to transform ever more capable autonomous-driving technology into a mass-scale transportation business.
Yet the latest twists make one aspect of Baron’s thesis easier to grasp.
His Musk bet is no longer primarily about cars or rockets.
More and more, it’s about controlling the infrastructure required to connect, move, and provide computing power for an AI-driven economy.
And the opportunity is just beginning, says Baron.
Related: The Robotaxi payday Tesla promised owners isn’t coming
