Must not write about Nokia, must not write about Nokia… ah, too late. But we are going to talk in this section instead about the biggest news – everywhere – that SpaceX has a potential $1.75 trillion IPO on the cards and Amazon has a $9 billion chase of Globalstar to run. And so we have what looks like a decisive shift in how the tech sector defines scale. Space is no longer speculative; it is infrastructure. In case there was any question.

SpaceX’s potential listing is not just a liquidity event but a validation of satellite networks – particularly Starlink – as essential new digital plumbing. Amazon’s Globalstar talks show rivals are no longer content to build slowly; they are buying their way into orbit to compress timelines and compete with an already dominant constellation. It means we have, or will have, a vertically integrated space stack – where connectivity, compute and capital markets converge. 

The space race is not about rockets, or the dark side of the moon; it is about controlling the pipes of the digital economy. Yet there is a dissonance. Even as valuations stretch into the trillions, the industry beneath is shedding labour at a crazy rate. More than 78,000 tech layoffs have already been recorded in 2026, heavily concentrated in the US and among major platforms – Oracle (25,000), Amazon (16,000), Meta (2,200), Ericsson (1,900).

So right there’s the paradox: frontier growth paired with workforce contraction. The AI story in the cloud and in space is not very pretty on the ground. As capital floods into orbital networks, the terrestrial workforce is being discarded. But that is ruthless efficiency for you.