Some numbers just make you raise an eyebrow. One company’s annual revenue is barely a fraction of another giant’s, yet its valuation dares to approach half of the bigger player’s—by normal business logic, that doesn’t really make sense. But now, Musk's rocket company has pulled it off.

Recently, word in the market is that the space business company is selling shares to investors on the secondary market at a valuation of about $800 billion. What does that number mean? It’s already more than half the market cap of the electric car company, and it might even outpace the superstar AI company, making it the most valuable privately held company in the US. The problem is, the space company is expected to bring in only around $15.5 billion in revenue this year, while the electric car side is projected to hit $95.2 billion—a sixfold difference in revenue, yet the space company is asking for half the valuation. No matter how you do the math, that’s got “Musk premium” written all over it.

This round of share sales was personally communicated to investors by the company’s CFO, Bret Johnsen, as part of the company’s twice-yearly internal buyback program, allowing early shareholders and employees to cash out some of their gains ahead of time. But this time, the pricing is really eye-popping: the last secondary market valuation was still around $400 billion—not long ago, and it’s already doubled. Go back further, in March 2020 the valuation was just $36 billion. In less than five years, it’s ballooned more than twentyfold. For a company that hasn’t even gone public and whose revenue is far behind traditional players, this capital story is nothing short of outrageous.