Based on a private sale of stock in July, Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved a valuation of around $150 billion, making it among the highest-valued private corporations in the country. Since then, SpaceX, beyond working to get Starship off the launchpad, has worked to continue expanding the presence of its Starlink internet constellation, making deals with airlines and testing direct-to-cellular connections.
Starlink, according to a September report, earned $1.4 billion in revenue in 2022, up from the $222 million the internet service earned in 2021. Though this is significantly less than SpaceX's 2015 projection that Starlink would earn $12 billion by 2022, it still marks the beginning of potentially massive growth.
Ron Baron, the billionaire mutual fund manager and a prominent Tesla TSLA bull, has taken notice.
Related: Elon Musk shares exciting updates about the future of interplanetary travel
Speaking to MarketWatch Wednesday, Baron said that "SpaceX has a chance to be even bigger than Tesla in the 2030s."
Baron's firm Baron Funds has been purchasing stock in SpaceX since 2017. He said in September that he owned more than $1 billion worth of shares in SpaceX, making Baron Funds "one of the largest investors" in the company.
Baron thinks that by 2030, SpaceX will be worth between $500 billion and $600 billion. But the next decade, he said, will see the value of the company skyrocket.
"So we can make over the next 15 or 20 years, we can make 30 to 50 times our money in SpaceX," Baron said.
A key marker on the path to that lofty valuation involves Starlink, an arm of the business that Rainmaker Securities told TheStreet in July has "a lot of potential."
Related: Investor Says $150 Billion SpaceX Valuation Seems Too Good to Be True
Baron said that Starlink will likely go public within the next three years. When Starlink does go public, "we think we're going to make double in the company," Baron said, indicating that the company would be worth around $300 billion when Starlink goes public.
SpaceX did not return TheStreet's request for comment regarding Starlink's potential as a public corporation.
Baron expects to make "ten times our money" in the 2030s, riding SpaceX's exponential growth curve.
Baron, who has made billions on his investments in Tesla, additionally thinks that Tesla will be trading at $500 by 2025.
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