Elon Musk's SpaceX has soared into rarefied territory, becoming the world's sixth-most valuable company with a valuation exceeding $2.4 trillion — even as it continues to lose billions while pursuing some of the most ambitious goals in modern business history.

The company's meteoric rise has been fueled less by current profits than by investor confidence in Musk's vision for the future, including massive AI-powered data centers in orbit and eventually building a million-person colony on Mars.

Not everyone is convinced, however.

"[If] anyone else said it, they would probably have him institutionalized," Greg Martin, managing director of private markets at Rainmaker Securities, told The Washington Post.

But Martin did acknowledge Musk's track record of accomplishing goals that many once considered impossible.

A key driver behind SpaceX's sky-high valuation is its plan to put artificial intelligence computing infrastructure in space, where solar power is abundant and cooling comes naturally in the vacuum beyond Earth.

Musk argued Thursday that orbital data centers were "always going to be" the answer because "you can scale a trillion times more than you could on Earth."

While SpaceX has not yet demonstrated the technology, supporters believe the concept could help solve the growing power and capacity shortages driven by the AI boom.

"Orbital data centers obviously would be a complete game changer," Martin said. "It solves three problems: the real estate problem, the power problem and the cooling problem."

Ben Wild, chief technology officer of Hubble Network, told the Post, "From a technical standpoint, the fundamentals of orbital data centers are sound."

"In the right orbit, you can generate continuous solar power and reject heat directly into space, removing two major constraints on terrestrial AI infrastructure," he said, adding that orbital systems could help as "permitting delays, power constraints, and AI demand make new terrestrial capacity harder to build."

SpaceX laid out its vision in documents released before its blockbuster IPO and stock market debut last week.

The company said, "[We] believe SpaceX's reusable rockets, scaled satellite manufacturing, and operational expertise can enable the cost-effective and rapid deployment of massive AI compute satellite constellations — with potentially millions of satellites — for orbital data centers."

"We believe these AI compute satellites in Sun-synchronous orbit will be able to handle energy-intensive AI workloads," it added.

At the same time, the company acknowledged the challenges ahead, warning: "Space is inherently hostile."

"In particular, we have not, and no one else has, previously operated or attempted to operate orbital AI compute," the documents said.

Despite losing about $13 billion since early 2023, SpaceX has become one of Wall Street's hottest stories.

Musk added to investor enthusiasm on Sunday by predicting the company "might be able to reach approximately $1T revenue in 2030," before suggesting revenue would likely surpass that mark the following year.

Still, questions remain about whether investors are betting on proven performance or future promises.

"The details of actually getting a million satellites into space and managing, monitoring [them] ... seem pretty nontrivial to me. ... There's a lot of question marks around that," Martin said. "They certainly are ascribing a ton of market cap to things that they have not yet demonstrated."