Top 3 SPAC Targets – Space Stations

After a quiet stretch in the SPAC market, we pressed pause on this column. But with deal flow picking up, targets getting more creative, and sponsors back in hunting mode, it’s the right time to bring back one of our favorites: the Top 3 SPAC Targets. Read on to see who we picked for targets developing commercial space stations!

While many of SPACs’ favorite industries have ebbed and flowed over the past year in the public market appetite, the commercial space sector appears to now be truly blasting off.

The top five space de-SPACs (all of which closed deals between 2021 and 2023) now trade at an average share price of $33.76. That is already a huge acceleration from the start of 2025 as this same group started the year at an average share price of $17.05 – just over half this point.

Although space de-SPACs only represent one part of the public market picture, Elon Musk has reportedly sensed that now is also the moment to maximize value for SpaceX. Its long-awaited IPO campaign reportedly aims to target a $1.5 trillion valuation in 2026.

The $30 billion that this move would seek to raise through the offering may be more than even the most ambitious and well-connected SPAC team could muster, but it should also get them thinking about how they find their own SpaceX at a smaller scale in this market.

Axiom Space

SpaceX and de-SPAC RocketLab bring the launch services piece of the puzzle to market, but there is much more work to do in orbit itself – none of this larger than a full-on space station.

Axiom is working to make the dream of a fully commercial space station come to life as early as 2027, when its first module is slated to launch. This piece, the Payload Power Thermal Module (AxPPTM), which will serve essentially as the future power plant for its long-term station, has been outfitted with solar array wings manufactured by de-SPAC Redwire (NYSE:RDW) and would initially attach itself to the existing International Space Station. It would then be followed by its first two habitat modules, AxH1 and AxH2, and its research and manufacturing facility, AxRMF.

As these join it in orbit, the space station itself expects to be flying on its own as a two-module craft in 2028 and as a fully assembled four-module system by 2030. It has already picked up contracts for this facility that range from biopharmaceutical research to orbital data center workflow.

That sets up a very attractive timeline for a SPAC deal with several major milestones to excite retail along the way and plenty of time to potentially get the firm listed ahead of its first big launch. One SPAC-backer has already engaged as 1789 Capital, sponsor of the Colombier series, was reportedly in talks in March to co-lead a funding round into the company that would have valued it at $2 billion.

While no formal announcement was since made, and 1789 is not currently listed among the company’s investors, the company has since made a series of governance changes that could indicate it is readying itself for a push to the public markets.

Vast

Axiom will not be alone up there, at least if Vast has anything to say about it.

Vast has plans for its own commercial space station, and it in fact just last month launched a demo module aboard a SpaceX rocket to provide it data and serve as proving ground for some of its core technologies.

It also projects to have a four-module configuration in orbit by 2030 and could have the first of these off the launchpad by May 2026. This first module, Haven-1, has been designed for a series of two-week manned missions but is expected to have only a three-year lifespan in total as the company’s larger-scale space station plans take shape.

Still, these next few years and particularly the 2030 target year for a functional space station are very important for the macro picture. NASA and other partners in the International Space Station (ISS) view that year as the end of the 25-year-old ISS’ own operational life and talks are already in progress on de-orbiting it.

That means that if Axiom and Vast hit their deadlines, they could be the only games in town, or, orbit, from roughly that point onward. SpaceX provides launch services for both, and so, having all three companies mount campaigns to the public markets at about the same time could pull in the kind of momentum that could float all three boats.

Vast picked up an investment from US government affiliated venture firm In-Q-Tel last month and it has long had the backing of crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, who has reportedly put $1 billion into the company over the years. That crypto crossover could stir additional retail interest, and also could make now a good time to let public investors to pick up the load from McCaleb in financing this capex-intensive mission.

Sierra Space

Axiom and Vast may be the private players that are the closest to putting together a full space station themselves, but there are also legacy space infrastructure players that have ideas of their own.

Sierra Space has been building systems for use in space for nearly 30 years and it has delivered about 4,000 products to about 500 missions over that time.

Its own concept of a space station is the Orbital Reef, which would use a permanent docking facility that could attach multiple inflatable room-sized modules for specific uses. These inflatable modules could be much lighter and cheaper to launch, and would therefore serve as a more flexible platform for clients with shorter-term missions in mind.

Sierra has already developed environmental control and life support systems for space station-use as well as thermal heat control and crew safety systems. It is now working on the platforms for the future work that humans will be doing in the next generation of space stations, including tools for extracting and processing materials captured from asteroids of lunar rocks for study of value-added use in orbit.

Serving this new form of “mixed-use business park in space” would be its own proprietary space plane: the six-ton Dream Chaser, which is being designed to transport its accompanying seven-ton Shooting Star cargo module. The first Dream Catcher is expected to cruise low orbit under a NASA contract in the fourth quarter of 2026.

One advantage Sierra Space may have over the long-term is its ability to self-fund a portion of its journey with its existing aerospace work rather than having all of its eggs in a few specific baskets. Nonetheless, it has supplemented that revenue through about $1.7 billion in private funding from its Series A and Series B.

This Series B closed in September 2023 with $290 million in proceeds and brought its valuation at the time to $5.3 billion. That presumably put it on a pace for a new raise in the near future and there are four new SPACs with a space focus that IPO’d in 2025 that could potentially match that or more.

These four – Perimeter I (NASDAQ:PMTR), Kochav Defense (NASDAQ:KCHV), GigCapital8 (NASDAQ:GIW), and Safeguard (NYSE:SAC.U) – each raised $200 million in more in trust capital at IPO, and in a world where SpaceX could marshal $30 billion in buy-ins for a traditional IPO, these SPACs could surely supplement these trust with willing PIPE capital.