Elon Musk ‘s SpaceX is planning the largest stock debut in history. One likely winner from the deal: an overlooked industrial company founded decades before the Wright brothers ever took to the skies. Industrial gases giant Linde has a small but fast-growing business supplying critical gases to the space industry, enabling the propulsion systems of rocket engines and satellites to get them where they need to go. Before leaving Earth, Linde’s gases also play a key role in making and testing components on spacecraft. Linde has been in the space game for more than six decades, from NASA’s Apollo program to today’s Artemis II moon mission. With the advent of the commercial space race, the government is no longer the only game in town. There are many other space companies popping up, but none is bigger than SpaceX. Linde is building a sprawling $100 million plant in Texas near SpaceX to ease delivery. Linde’s presence in the space industry is indicative of its behind-the-scenes role in the broader economy. It may not be a household name. But this U.K.-based, nearly $230 billion market capitalization company has been for more than a century supplying gases such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen to many industries. Among their uses, Linde’s gases create the fizz in sparkling waters, provide respiratory support to hospital patients, and help lasers etch billions of tiny transistors onto artificial intelligence chips. Soon, the low-profile Club name, which we like for its consistent growth and pricing power, may get a jolt from one of the splashiest Wall Street debuts in recent memory. SpaceX confidentially filed initial public offering (IPO) paperwork last month. The Musk venture is seeking to raise as much as $75 billion, at a target valuation of around $1.75 trillion, according to Reuters. That’s just massive. For comparison, Meta Platforms has a market cap of $1.55 trillion. The rocket and satellite maker is targeting a late June listing . Launching rockets isn’t cheap. But with an influx of IPO cash, SpaceX will have plenty of money to advance Musk’s grand ambitions in outer space, from bolstering existing Starlink satellite internet service to building orbital data centers , and taking humans to Mars. The connection is simple: More launches from SpaceX mean more gas needed from Linde, which is one of the few suppliers. Linde is “essentially the Exxon for space,” Deutsche Bank analyst David Begleiter said in an interview. He estimated that SpaceX’s IPO can help double the size of Linde’s commercial aerospace business, taking it to “well over” $1 billion in the “not too distant future.” He added, “If you look at the SpaceX launch schedule, this business has potential to increase multiple times.” Begleiter has a buy rating on Linde’s stock. Musk himself has said SpaceX will significantly increase its launch numbers in the coming years, particularly for Starships, its fully reusable rocket still in the test-flight stage. “In about six or seven years, there will be days where Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours,” Musk predicted in August . The Starship is designed to carry people and cargo to the Moon and eventually Mars . SpaceX has conducted 11 test flights for Starlink since 2023 , including five last year . The company’s current workhorse rocket is the Falcon 9, which has completed over 50 missions so far in 2026. The most recent came on May 5, with a Falcon 9 rocket bringing 24 Starlink satellites into low-earth Orbit. Another mission is scheduled for Monday. SpaceX has not publicly confirmed its IPO submission. The company did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment on its plans. “Rocket launches are becoming more commonplace, fueled by the buildout of low Earth orbit satellite networks and reusable rockets,” said Jeff Marks, the Investing Club’s director of portfolio analysis. “This should be a positive long-term tailwind to Linde’s volumes.” Linde has positioned itself to meet the demand from SpaceX and the industry overall. Last year, Linde announced two new long-term supply contracts with space customers and investments to boost production capacity. The company broke ground on that air separation plant in Brownsville, Texas, to produce gases for an unnamed customer. SpaceX’s Starbase operations are less than 30 miles away on the Gulf Coast. The city of Brownsville has confirmed the plant is to service SpaceX. Linde is also expanding its industrial gas plant in Mims, Florida, for similar reasons. This facility is located on Florida’s Space Coast, home NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral. SpaceX leases a launch pad there. Think of Linde like a gas station for SpaceX and the broader industry. Just as gas stations cluster near interstate exits, Linde locates its plants close to NASA and SpaceX’s operations to cut down on delivery times and ensure a reliable supply. “This is a secular growth opportunity,” Linde CEO Sanjiv Lamba said about the space industry earlier this year. “We are excited about it. We are really well-positioned to be able to serve this. The two major investment hubs that we see … are in Texas and Florida. We have extremely strong positions in supporting launches here.” He estimated Linde supplies gases to between 65% to 75% of launches on average. Linde had a huge hand in NASA’s Artemis II mission that just took humans the farthest distance from Earth in history, traveling 252,756 miles from home. It used some 200,000 gallons of Linde’s propellants for launch. Linde also supplied propellants for the first Artemis mission in 2022. Linde’s long history Linde is no stranger to the space industry. The company was founded in 1879 by Carl von Linde, a pioneer in the invention of artificial refrigeration systems. But it was von Linde’s work on air separation technology that helped give rise to the modern industrial gas industry and the company that Linde resembles today. In 1902, von Linde built the first industrial-scale air separation plant to produce liquid oxygen, a year before the Wright brothers’ historic powered flight and a decade before the first commercial flight . The dawn of the Space Age wouldn’t arrive for another half-century, but von Linde’s breakthrough positioned the company to play a major role. Linde supplied liquid oxygen to NASA’s Apollo program, which landed the first humans on the moon in 1969. There is no air in space; it’s a near-perfect vacuum. This means rockets need to bring their own oxygen to mix with a fuel to create combustion inside their engines. Gases take up more space than a liquid, which is why liquid oxygen is a good solution for rockets. Cars on Earth don’t need to solve for this problem because oxygen is abundant in the air around us and enters the engine with fuel through an intake valve. Fast forward to this century, and the space industry is seeing arguably its greatest period of investment since the Apollo era. Linde has been benefiting from it for some time. To be sure, it’s still a small part of Linde’s total revenues, which are projected to be roughly $36 billion this year, according to FactSet. But it’s growing at an impressive clip and becoming more meaningful. ” This end use continues to see strong double-digit percent growth,” CFO Matthew White said on Linde’s first-quarter earnings call last week. Linde currently houses its space business within its manufacturing end market, which increased 5% in the first quarter. Half of that growth came from aerospace activity, primarily tied to space vehicle production, testing and launches, reflecting Linde’s deep involvement in the industry. It’s not just launches. Nitrogen and argon are important gases used in the making of specialized components for rocket engines. From there, Linde also supplies liquid nitrogen and liquid helium, used to create vacuum conditions to run quality checks on spacecraft components. For launches, in addition to liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen helps keep engines cool, while liquid hydrogen can be used as a fuel for certain rockets. Linde also offers rare gases such as xenon and krypton that some satellites use as propellants to get into the right orbit once they’re released from the rocket. For its part, SpaceX developed a satellite for Starlink that uses argon as a propellant. Argon is one of the gases that Linde’s Brownsville plant will supply to SpaceX. When commercial space consistently accounts for at least 5% of Linde’s overall revenue, White said the company will break out those sales as its own end market. Getting there will be “a function of the frequencies, size, and propellant type of future space launch,” White said. LIN 1Y mountain Linde’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Jim Cramer described Linde’s earnings , which beat on the top and bottom line, as a “fantastic set of numbers.” The Club increased its price target to $550 from $540 following the release. The stock is up almost 16% year to date, ahead of the S & P 500’s 8% advance. Linde is a dominant player in industrial gases, which helps support their relationships with space customers. France’s Air Liquide and Pennsylvania-based Air Products and Chemicals are two of Linde’s publicly traded peers in the industrial gas industry. Both also supply gases to the space industry. “Due to consolidation of the industry, you’re looking at only three to four really global players in this business of supplying industrial gases, of quality, of size and reliability. Linde’s arguably the best of the bunch, the highest quality supplier,” Deutsche Bank’s Begleiter said. A new era of investment The growth of Linde’s space business has been supported by a wave of investment into the industry. The money is flowing into both public and private markets. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is another emerging player developing rockets, spacecraft, and a satellite network. Amazon itself is also investing heavily in building out its Leo satellite internet service to rival SpaceX’s Starlink. Some smaller players who have gone public in recent years include Rocket Lab in 2021 and Firefly Aerospace in August 2025 . Rocket Labs on Thursday night announced its largest launch deal on record, sending shares up 34% in Friday’s session. “The floodgates have already been open for a number of years,” said Alexander MacDonald, NASA’s former chief economist, in an interview. “If you go back to 2008, there was maybe only around half a billion dollars of private investment in space. For the last few years, it’s been well over $10 billion a year.” Investment into space companies hit a record $8 billion in the first quarter, according to data from Seraphim Space , more than double the previous record set in the final three months of 2025. Excitement around SpaceX’s IPO helped fuel the inflows. This influx of cash into the industry has led to a massive increase in the cadence of launches. Last year, a record 4,510 objects — a broad term encompassing satellites, uncrewed spacecraft such as probes and lunar landers , and crewed spacecraft — were sent into space. That’s according to United Nations data compiled by researchers at Our World in Data , an organization affiliated with the University of Oxford. The 2025 total is well ahead of the previous record of 2,903, set in 2023. One factor behind the growth: Organizations like NASA and the U.S. Space Force have moved to relying on commercial partners for a much larger share of their missions. “That has resulted in a bit of an investment boom because it has created the potential for startups to become basically significant government contractors,” MacDonald added. The upside for Linde? The startups with these government-issued contracts need the company’s gases to support the various phases of their operations. The SpaceX deal could drum up more public debuts from the industry. Renaissance Capital’s Matt Kennedy said a successful stock debut will “create a positive feedback loop” that can encourage more of its kind. Plus, it’s easier to “market and sell a deal when they can pin a valuation on a company that has a good sense of what it can get in the market,” Kennedy, a senior IPO strategist, told CNBC. Bottom line Linde has a winner on its hands with its space business. While other industries remain far more important to its quarterly financials, this is an exciting long-term opportunity for a company that’s been in our portfolio for years. And for good reason. The company’s disciplined capital management and a stellar executive team have been a recipe for steady success regardless of the economic backdrop. Over the past decade, Linde’s stock has outperformed the S & P 500, up about 336% versus a 259% gain for the index. Linde is a subtle force across the economy, with exposure to a diverse range of industries, even if its logo isn’t on the finished products we see. “They have helium. They have oxygen. They do a lot of the gases for semiconductors,” Jim said last week. “So, it’s like this secret, quiet semiconductor, data center play. I love them.” (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO is coming. This overlooked industrial company will be a big winner
May 9, 2026
