Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.97%), otherwise known as SpaceX, is joining the Nasdaq-100 index today. This means that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking the index, including the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ +1.43%), will soon own the stock indirectly.
J.P. Morgan, part of JPMorgan Chase, expects this index inclusion to trigger about $4.3 billion in passive buying from index-tracking funds. Although this will serve as a clear near-term demand catalyst for SpaceX, Invesco QQQ Trust investors are also getting exposure to a founder-controlled company with a limited number of publicly traded shares (float) and an unprofitable business.
Image source: Getty Images.
Why SpaceX's Nasdaq-100 entry matters for QQQ investors Invesco QQQ Trust tracks the Nasdaq-100, which includes the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq.
Invesco QQQ Trust
Today's Change
(
1.43
%) $
10.22
Current Price
$
722.82
SpaceX's quick entry became possible because the Nasdaq-100 changed its inclusion rules in 2026. Starting May 1, large newly public companies like SpaceX can be added after just 15 trading days if they rank among the top 40 eligible Nasdaq-listed companies. However, if only a limited number of shares are publicly traded, Nasdaq can limit how much weight the stock gets in the index. The change reflects today's market, where some very large companies stay private for longer and list with only a limited number of shares available for public investors.
SpaceX's Nasdaq-100 inclusion will give Invesco QQQ Trust investors exposure to the space, satellite broadband, and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company before S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.72%) index fund investors get it automatically. Reuters reported that SpaceX would need at least 12 months of public trading history, generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) profitability, and a public float of at least 10% before it can be considered for inclusion in the S&P 500. However, according to Reuters' estimates, SpaceX's public float is only 3% to 4%. The company also posted a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025.
Since only a small portion of SpaceX shares is available for public trading, buying by funds that track the Nasdaq-100 can have a bigger effect on the stock price. But once that buying is complete, the same limited supply of tradable shares can also make the stock move more sharply if investors start selling. So, Invesco QQQ Trust investors should ask whether SpaceX's Nasdaq-100 inclusion has already lifted the stock enough to limit its near-term gains.
Starlink is the key business to watch The best reason for Invesco QQQ Trust investors to take SpaceX seriously is its Starlink satellite internet business. SpaceX generated $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, with the Starlink-powered connectivity business accounting for about 60% of total sales. The business had about 10.3 million users across roughly 9,600 satellites at the end of the first quarter.
Today's Change
(
-0.97
%) $
-1.58
Current Price
$
160.42
Starlink is SpaceX's clearest profit engine and is helping offset losses from the company's other growth initiatives. In the first quarter, the connectivity segment generated $1.2 billion of operating profit. But SpaceX still reported a total operating loss of $1.9 billion on $4.7 billion of revenue.
SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket has helped make the company a leading launch provider for NASA, the Pentagon, and commercial customers. According to Reuters, SpaceX has gone from one launch in 2006 to more than two launches per week, giving it a much faster launch pace than its rivals.
The Federal Communications Commission has approved SpaceX to deploy another 7,500 second-generation Starlink satellites, bringing the approved Gen2 satellite count to 15,000. More satellites should give Starlink more network capacity, which can support faster broadband and mobile connectivity service, as well as growth in aviation, maritime, enterprise, and government markets.
Additionally, if the next-generation reusable rocket system, Starship, works at commercial scale, it could lower launch costs and help SpaceX deploy larger, higher-capacity satellites faster.
Investors are getting growth, but also uncertainty The biggest risk is that Invesco QQQ Trust is being required to buy an expensive story. SpaceX currently trades at nearly 81 times trailing-12-month sales, even though it is a money-losing business.
SpaceX's AI business could become a major long-term growth engine, especially after Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for compute capacity. But investors should not treat that as guaranteed revenue. Reuters reported that either company can terminate the agreement with 90 days' notice, and that fees are lower during the ramp-up period. The company is also spending heavily on an AI infrastructure business that is not yet profitable. In the first quarter, the AI segment reported an operating loss of nearly $2.5 billion on $818 million of revenue.
Additionally, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk accounts for 82.3% of SpaceX's voting power. Hence, although public investors may own the stock, they will have little control over major company decisions. So, Invesco QQQ Trust investors are getting automatic exposure to a company where major decisions will remain heavily shaped by Musk, not by public shareholders.
NASA's inspector general said SpaceX's Artemis III Starship work has faced delays, while refueling the vehicle in space remains one of the biggest technical challenges. With Starship being crucial to SpaceX's plan to launch more satellites at lower cost and support NASA's moon missions, it also adds to the company's execution risk.
Invesco QQQ Trust investors should not panic over one index addition. SpaceX will likely be a modest initial QQQ position because of its limited float. But investors should recognize that QQQ is becoming a slightly more aggressive fund, with higher valuation risk, more execution risk, and more Musk-specific governance risk.
While SpaceX's addition is not a reason to abandon the ETF, it should also remind investors that the Invesco QQQ Trust is not a broad-market fund. Investors should watch Starlink profits, AI losses, Starship progress, and future earnings reports before assuming this index addition is automatically good news.
HomeIndustriesThe Ratings GameThe Ratings GameMorgan Stanley sets $300 price target on Space as Goldman Sachs arrives at $205July 7, 2026, 4:20 a.m. ET
What's SpaceX worth? Analysts at underwriters now have their say. Photo: MarketWatch/Getty ImagesThe two lead underwriters on SpaceX’s initial public offering, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have a valuation gap of more than $1 trillion as they both initiated coverage at the equivalent of buy.
Goldman Sachs analysts led by Eric Sheridan set a price target of $205 on the rocket-launching company, while Morgan Stanley analysts led by Adam Jonas set a $300 target, as the 25-day quiet period expired for SpaceX’s underwriters.
About the Author
Steven Goldstein is based in London and responsible for MarketWatch's coverage of financial markets in Europe, with a particular focus on global macro and commodities. Previously, he was Washington bureau chief, directing MarketWatch's economic, political and regulatory coverage. Follow Steve on Twitter: @MKTWgoldstein.
SpaceX stock NASDAQ:SPCX is all set to enter the Nasdaq-100 on Tuesday, less than a month after its June 12 market debut, giving one of 2026’s biggest IPO trades a powerful new technical catalyst.
Nasdaq confirmed the fast-track inclusion late last month, opening the door for index-tracking funds to buy the stock.
J.P. Morgan estimates the move could draw about $4.3 billion in passive inflows.
The question for investors is whether that mechanical demand can extend the rally, or whether the good news is already priced in.
The Nasdaq-100 entry matters because it creates forced demand.
Funds that track the benchmark, including products such as Invesco QQQ and QQQM, do not buy SpaceX because they have suddenly become more bullish on rockets, Starlink or AI infrastructure.
They buy because their rules require them to mirror the index.
That makes Tuesday’s inclusion a clean near-term trading event. Passive flows can be powerful, especially when a stock has a limited public float and heavy retail interest.
SpaceX’s addition follows recent rule changes that allow very large IPOs to enter major benchmarks faster than before, reflecting the market’s rush to make room for new mega-cap technology names.
For traders, the Nasdaq-100 entry is less about SpaceX’s rockets and more about mechanical demand.
The question is whether that demand is still strong enough to lift a stock that has already traded like a market event in itself.
SpaceX has been volatile since listing.
The stock surged as much as 67% after its debut before sliding sharply in the following days, a move analysts tied more to IPO dynamics and positioning than to a major shift in fundamentals.
Bulls say the story is bigger than rocketsThe bullish case is that SpaceX is being misread as a rocket company when Wall Street should be valuing it as a space, broadband and AI infrastructure platform.
Morgan Stanley has initiated coverage with an Overweight rating and a $300 price target.
The firm argues that SpaceX’s next leg of growth could come from a vertically integrated terrestrial-and-orbital compute stack, not only launch services and Starlink broadband.
That is a much bigger story than index inclusion alone. If investors accept the AI infrastructure thesis, SpaceX could command a valuation closer to fast-growing technology platforms than traditional aerospace peers.
Wedbush is also constructive, though with a more measured target as the firm initiated SpaceX with an Outperform rating and a $190 price target, citing Starlink, Starship, AI infrastructure and space-based connectivity as multiple growth drivers.
That gives bulls a simple argument: Nasdaq-100 buying may help the stock today, but the longer-term case rests on whether SpaceX can become a platform company across launch, broadband and AI-linked infrastructure.
The bear case is just as clear. SpaceX may be an exceptional company, but the stock already carries exceptional expectations.
Morningstar’s Michael Field told Reuters that the fast-track index entry shows strong demand for SpaceX shares, but he also said Morningstar views the stock as overvalued.
That warning matters because index buying can support a stock temporarily, but it does not settle the valuation debate.
Options markets are also signalling caution.
Susquehanna Financial Group strategist Christopher Jacobson saw traders assigning about a 40% probability that SpaceX would trade below $130 by mid-September.
Short interest adds another layer of volatility as it has climbed to 196 million shares, or about 31% of SpaceX’s tradable float.
Short sellers were sitting on about $760 million in mark-to-market losses since the IPO.
Ortex co-founder Peter Hillerberg called the rise in short bets “extraordinary” for a stock public for less than a month, and said continued strength could provide “potential fuel” for a squeeze.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.97%) held its historic initial public offering (IPO) on June 12. The rocket company went public with a record market value of $1.7 trillion at its IPO price of $135 per share.
SpaceX will be added to the Nasdaq-100 before the market opens on July 7. Its inclusion is unprecedented because the index has traditionally considered only stocks that have been public for at least three months. But the seasoning period was reduced to 15 days earlier this year to fast-track the entry of large IPOs.
Historically, stocks have delivered strong gains during the 12-month period post-inclusion in the Nasdaq-100. Here's what investors should know.
Image source: Getty Images.
History says SpaceX stock will increase 18% in the next year The Nasdaq-100 tracks 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. The index excludes financial companies to focus on more innovative market sectors with higher growth potential, particularly technology. For that reason, the Nasdaq-100 is widely regarded as a benchmark for growth stocks.
During the last decade, 92 stocks were added to the Nasdaq-100. Those stocks returned an average of 10% during the six-month period post-inclusion and 18% during the 12-month period post-inclusion. Put differently, history says SpaceX stock will increase 10% by January 2027 and 18% by July 2027.
Why do stocks go up after joining a major market index? Funds that track that index must purchase the stock to accurately reflect the benchmark. That influx of capital can push the share price higher, at least temporarily. Of course, how SpaceX actually performs in the months ahead depends primarily on the company's financial results and investor sentiment.
Today's Change
(
-0.97
%) $
-1.58
Current Price
$
160.42
SpaceX stock trades at an extremely expensive valuation SpaceX has revolutionized space travel by developing reusable rockets that dramatically reduce per-launch costs by spreading manufacturing expenses across multiple missions. "The company's core strength is its ability to deliver payloads to orbit at unmatched scale, frequency, reliability, and cost efficiency," writes Nicolas Owens at Morningstar.
SpaceX has leaned on that advantage to deploy communications satellites at an unprecedented pace. Its Starlink constellation comprises about 10,000 satellites that serve more than 10 million subscribers, making it the largest satellite internet service by a wide margin. And adoption is happening quickly; subscribers doubled in the past year.
SpaceX currently earns the vast majority of its revenue from Starlink, but artificial intelligence infrastructure could become an even larger source of revenue in the future. SpaceX recently agreed to rent data center capacity to Anthropic and Alphabet for monthly fees of $1.25 billion and $920 million, respectively.
Beyond that, SpaceX plans to deploy orbital AI compute satellites (i.e., space-based data centers) as early as 2028. "We believe these AI compute satellites in sun-synchronous orbit will be able to handle energy-intensive AI workloads, such as inference demand, at far greater scale and efficiency than terrestrial alternatives," the company wrote in its Form S-1.
In total, SpaceX values its addressable market at an astronomical $28.5 trillion, with $26.5 trillion of that figure attributed to AI products. However, future revenue streams tied to AI products (such as orbital data centers) are highly uncertain, which makes the current valuation of 110 times sales very difficult to justify.
For context, Rocket Lab is currently the second most richly valued stock in the Nasdaq-100, with a price-to-sales multiple of 88. SpaceX is 25% more expensive. The premium is unsustainable, in my opinion. I think investors should either avoid SpaceX or, at the very least, keep positions in the stock small.
Dan Ives initiated a new price target for SpaceX (SPCX 0.97%) stock that is telling.
*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of July 2, 2026. The video was published on July 4, 2026.
Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.
Space Exploration Technologies' (SPCX 0.97%) (SpaceX) initial public offering (IPO) was undoubtedly the most hyped IPO in recent stock market memory. It didn't disappoint, either, setting the record for the largest IPO in stock market history, with an initial valuation of around $1.77 trillion. Now, it's valued at over $2.1 trillion as of market close on July 2.
In the short time since its June 12 IPO, SpaceX's stock is relatively flat (from the price the average investor could have paid), experiencing roller coaster ups and downs. Still, there's a lot of hype surrounding both the company and the stock -- but is it overhyped? It depends on how you define it.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
SpaceX is going just beyond rockets SpaceX is transforming from a rocket launch company into a respectable conglomerate with thriving subsidiaries under its wing. It has its core launch business, which is the largest in the world; Starlink is growing impressively and providing internet to some of the most remote places globally; and X's (formerly Twitter) parent company, xAI, has artificial intelligence infrastructure that many tech companies would give their right arm for.
Much of the appeal of SpaceX's business, however, is its ambitious plan for the future. Moonshot plans (no pun intended) like data centers in space and everyday human space travel spark the interest of investors and Elon Musk fans who see SpaceX's trajectory mirroring that of Musk's other company, Tesla. Tesla's returns have been just above the S&P 500's over the past five years, but it's up over 30,600% since its July 2010 IPO.
We can't predict how SpaceX's stock will perform, but it has businesses worth being excited about.
Today's Change
(
-0.97
%) $
-1.58
Current Price
$
160.42
If by overhyped, you mean that SpaceX is all promise and nothing to show, then I would say no, it's not. If by overhyped you mean extremely expensive for a business that is currently operating at a loss and built on (very) long-term promises, then I would say yes.
Taking SpaceX's $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 and its $2.1 trillion valuation, it's currently trading at 112 times its sales (P/S ratio). For comparison, here are the P/S ratios for some notable companies and their year-over-year revenue growth last quarter:
CompanyP/S RatioLatest Revenue GrowthBroadcom23.348%Nvidia18.885%Alphabet10.422%Apple10.117%Amazon3.517% Source: YCharts. P/S ratios as of market close on July 2.
These aren't apples-to-apples comparisons, but the larger point is how much of a premium you'd be paying for SpaceX's stock right now, even before seeing one quarterly earnings report as a public company.
This isn't a knock on SpaceX as a company by any means, but a great company doesn't always make a great investment. If you already own shares, I would hold onto them (you should be focused on the long term either way), but if you're thinking about making your first investment, I would wait it out a bit.
Stefon Walters has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Smart investors know to watch out for bear markets. Wise investors, however, know the signs of such setbacks aren't always obvious. Sometimes you need to keep your eyes peeled for subtle hints of trouble.
Harvard University economist Xavier Gabaix thinks we may be seeing one of those hints right now. He's observed that investors often buy into initial public offerings -- like the recent one from Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.97%) (aka SpaceX) and the impending ones from OpenAI and Anthropic -- with money from the sale of other stocks. His number-crunching shows that historically, for every $1 removed from the market, the total market cap of the stock market falls by $5. Investment advisory outfit GMO performed a similar analysis and got a similar (but slightly worse) outcome.
And there's no denying that public offerings are flowing in earnest now. J.P. Morgan Private Bank, the wealth management division for JPMorgan, predicts a total of $260 billion will be raised this year through the issuance of newly minted stocks. That nearly eclipses the post-pandemic fundraising surge of 2021, when companies rushed to capitalize on the rapid economic recovery then underway as well as on a market that was receptive to new publicly traded companies at any price. The last time we got anywhere close to these inflation-adjusted levels was back in 1999-2000, right before the dot-com crash. Before that, you have to go back to 1929 to see anything quite like what's happening now. Of course, that's the year Black Tuesday kicked off a miserable bear market and the Great Depression.
Connect the dots. Exuberance seems to be at its highest right before everything unravels.
More to the point for investors right now, the current flood of new fundraising implies that corporate confidence -- in businesses as well as the economy -- is dangerously high, portending a fall. Indeed, some analysis suggests a tumble of about 40% within a year could be in the cards.
There's something to it The concern stemming from the correlation makes sense, and not just because of what happened a couple of times in the past. There was a pretty good swell of IPO activity in 2014, too. Although it didn't lead to a recession or a bear market, it did precede an economic headwind and a measurable setback in the S&P 500's (^GSPC +0.72%) earnings as well as in domestic corporate profits the following year. And when Black Monday unfurled back in October of 1987, a whopping 229 companies were planning public offerings (versus about 200 so far this year), according to numbers gathered by research company EBSCO, looking to capitalize on the steep valuations the bull market of the time was supporting.
Just understand that correlation isn't causation. If the market is set for a sizable setback, it's not specifically because too many companies are raising too much money by going public. That's a symptom, not the cause.
Image source: Getty Images.
Rather, if a pullback occurs, it will be because most investors decide that stocks as a whole aren't justifying their current valuations with actual earnings -- current or projected.
That's a distinction worth highlighting because bear markets can happen with or without an explosion in the number of IPOs or the amount of money they're raising. For instance, we didn't see a bunch more public offerings in 2007 before 2008's subprime mortgage meltdown, which also ended a nice bull market. Conversely, while IPOs peaked in 1999 right before 2000's tumble, public offerings were unusually high -- in terms of total count and money raised -- for most of the 1990s. The market rallied most of that time anyway.
The point is, when you're picking stocks or deciding to be in or out of the market, you should evaluate each situation individually.
So what's the answer? The recent swell of IPO fundraising is an important nuance to consider since it could be an indicator of what former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan labeled "irrational exuberance" back in 1996, when the dot-com mania first started heating up. It's just one of many details to consider, though, and it certainly shouldn't scare you. Scared investors make rash decisions that end up hurting them in the long run. Informed investors make well-reasoned decisions that accurately weigh risks against rewards, and they make measured changes to their portfolios as that information evolves.
In other words, don't panic here. If a bear market is brewing, it won't unfurl in a single day. Use the time you've got to think your decisions through. And never say never. Again, public offerings were unusually elevated for the better part of the 1990s, but the market logged gains for most of this stretch. Something similar could happen now, in defiance of the historical odds.
It's also possible that investors' selling existing positions to fund participation in this year's IPOs won't actually send the shares of those existing holdings lower this time around. This is a very unusual market environment, after all, one in which small-time retail traders are more active and have more impact than they ever have before. If nothing else, small investors are more likely than their bigger institutional counterparts to buy stocks on a dip, buoying the market.
Still, don't ignore the sudden swell of IPOs. There's no denying that when you see something this rare, something unusual is happening. The trick is figuring out what that thing really is.
The question of who owns the most stock means more when you're asking about Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.97%) than when you're asking about a typical public company. The June 2026 IPO floated a thin slice of the business -- nearly 4.3% of the equity -- which means the people and firms who held shares before the debut own the rest. The ownership structure that developed across two private decades when SpaceX was a private company is the one that governs it now that it's public, and it puts a small number of names in charge of a $2 trillion enterprise.
Today's Change
(
-0.97
%) $
-1.58
Current Price
$
160.42
Elon Musk owns the most SpaceX stock There is no contest at the top. Elon Musk holds close to 42% of the equity, a stake worth more than $1 trillion at the IPO valuation. Musk's block sits under a lockup that lasts until June 2027, with no early release provision, so the largest holder is a seller of nothing for the first year on the market.
Image source: Getty Images.
The outside investors who own the most SpaceX stock Behind Musk, the biggest holder is a name many investors miss. Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (GOOGL +1.87%), the parent of Google, owns close to 7% of SpaceX, a position that can be traced to a $1 billion investment it made alongside Fidelity in January 2015 (Alphabet invested $900 million, with Fidelity contributing the remaining $100 million). That single check turned Google into the largest outside shareholder in the company, a bet on rockets from a search and advertising business.
The early venture backers hold the most striking returns rather than the largest slices. Founders Fund, a firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, wrote a $20 million check in SpaceX's 2008 Series C round, and that stake is now worth $50 billion. Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Valor Equity Partners each hold positions of around 2% or below. The February 2026 merger with xAI added new faces to the list, including Nvidia and the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund.
The employees and the public shareholders One large block hides in plain sight. SpaceX pays its workforce with restricted stock units and options, so employees hold a collective stake that the company does not break out in its filings. That group has waited years for the tender offers, and the staggered lockup schedule that lets them sell, and the size of their holdings is one of the least visible parts of the ownership story.
You don't have much power if you buy SpaceX Beyond them sit everyone who bought at the IPO or after. Public shareholders own the small float, and more shares will reach the market as insider lockups expire throughout late 2026.
The ownership map delivers one clear message: Buying SpaceX stock makes you an owner of the economics, but it doesn't give you a voice in the company's direction. SpaceX uses a dual-class structure: Musk's Class B shares carry 10 votes each, giving him 82.4% of the voting power. A public shareholder who buys Class A stock gains economic exposure to the rocket and satellite business without a real say in how it is run.
Put plainly, the float exists so the public can fund the vision while the people who already own it decide what that vision costs and who profits from it. You get a ticker, a price that moves, and the privilege of watching Musk run a $2 trillion company on your money. If the board ever faces a hard call between what serves Class A holders and what serves the man holding 82.4% of the votes, the math has been settled since before you showed up.
You are along for the ride, not steering it, and the ride is being priced at a valuation that assumes almost everything goes right. Whether that's a risk you want to take is up to you.
VivoPower PLC (NASDAQ:VIVO, FRA:51J) announced on Monday that it is conducting a technical and commercial feasibility study to evaluate the integration of a battery energy storage system at its 41.5-megawatt Mo i Rana data center in Northern Norway, targeting up to approximately $4 million in incremental annualized EBITDA.
The company said the projected earnings would come from enabling participation in additional Nordic grid reserve markets, including Frequency Containment Reserve for Normal operation, expanded Frequency Containment Reserve for Disturbances, and Fast Frequency Response.
According to VivoPower, the estimate is based on internal analysis using prevailing 2025-2026 Nordic reserve market clearing prices and remains subject to external feasibility validation, prequalification, capital availability, market conditions, and other approvals.
The company said a co-located battery system would allow the site to access reserve products that are not economically available through its compute load alone because of endurance, symmetry, and response-speed requirements. Capacity payments would be earned on a pay-for-availability basis, with additional activation payments available separately.
VivoPower said the Mo i Rana facility is located in Norway's NO4 bidding zone, where it cited average day-ahead power prices of approximately $0.009 per kilowatt-hour in 2025. The company noted that the combination of low power costs and participation in the Nordic Balancing Model positions the site as an attractive location for industrial demand response and battery storage.
If implemented, the battery system would also be designed to preserve the data center's full 41.5 MW leasable capacity for artificial intelligence compute tenants while improving power quality, ride-through capability, and operational flexibility, according to the company.
VivoPower said the feasibility study will assess factors including electrical headroom, transformer and switchgear capacity, protection systems, metering and settlement architecture, the prequalification process with Statnett, and the interaction between battery operations and tenant service level agreements.
Any final investment decision will be subject to completion of the feasibility study, board approval, tenant consultation, and applicable Norwegian regulatory and grid-connection approvals.
The company said it will provide updates as the project reaches future milestones.
SpaceX Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) is scheduled to join the Nasdaq-100 index before US markets open on Tuesday, marking one of the fastest additions to the benchmark following its recent initial public offering.
The inclusion follows a change to Nasdaq's eligibility rules that allows certain large-cap IPOs to enter the index after 15 trading days, rather than waiting for the next annual reconstitution.
The move is expected to trigger billions of dollars in passive buying as exchange-traded funds and mutual funds that track the Nasdaq-100 rebalance their portfolios. JPMorgan has estimated that approximately $4.3 billion of SpaceX shares could be purchased by index-tracking funds, including the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) and Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (NASDAQ: QQQM).
Despite SpaceX's roughly $2.1 trillion market valuation, the company is expected to receive an index weighting of around 1%. The Nasdaq-100 is weighted by free-float market capitalization, meaning only shares available for public trading are included in the calculation. With less than 5% of SpaceX's outstanding shares publicly available following its IPO, the company's weighting is expected to remain relatively modest.
The addition also comes as SpaceX's post-IPO quiet period expires, allowing investment banks and research firms involved in the offering to begin publishing analyst coverage and price targets.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, wrote that investors will continue debating whether technology stock valuations are justified as SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100.
"Remember, Nasdaq changed the inclusion rules to include SpaceX, which would normally not make its way so quickly into such a broadly watched and traded index, given its extremely low free float, its governance – Elon Musk has more than 80% of voting rights – and its fundamentals, as the company went public at a valuation of more than 100 times last year's sales," Ozkardeskaya wrote.
She added that "SpaceX's inclusion will increase the Nasdaq 100's volatility, challenge its capacity to represent underlying economic and financial fundamentals, and potentially hurt its credibility."
Ozkardeskaya also noted that the end of the quiet period will bring the first wave of Wall Street research on the stock, while "the early enthusiasm faded fast, with the price coming close to its IPO level after a more than 50% surge in the early days."
SpaceX shares have experienced volatile trading since their market debut. The stock closed at $162 late last week, above its IPO opening price of $150 but more than 20% below its post-listing high. Shares fell another almost 4% to about $156.
Unlike the S&P 500, which generally requires companies to trade publicly for at least a year before becoming eligible for inclusion, the Nasdaq-100's revised fast-track rules were designed to accommodate large IPOs more quickly. SpaceX will be added to the index in a single rebalancing event rather than in phased installments.
Space Exploration Technologies' (SPCX 0.99%) first few weeks as a public company have already reminded investors that even great businesses can become volatile stocks. SpaceX shares surged in the days after the company went public in early June 2026, hitting an intraday high of $225.64.
Image source: Getty Images.
Since then, the stock has pulled back and is down to around $162. The stock remains above its $135 IPO price and is still far from cheap. But the sell-off has made the risk-reward question more interesting.
Here are a few factors for investors to consider before buying a stake in this dominant space, satellite internet, and AI infrastructure company.
Starlink is a profitable business The clearest reason supporting the contrarian case for SpaceX is its Starlink satellite internet business. Starlink-powered connectivity business contributed about 60% of SpaceX's $18.7 billion in revenue and generated $4.4 billion in operating income in 2025. Starlink also had 10.3 million users at the end of the first quarter of 2026. Although SpaceX posted a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025, Starlink gives the company a profitable business that can help fund its broader growth ambitions.
Today's Change
(
-0.99
%) $
-1.60
Current Price
$
160.40
Additionally, the Federal Communications Commission approved SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional second-generation Starlink satellites, bringing the authorized Gen2 satellite count to 15,000. This approval should help the company increase broadband capacity, expand mobile connectivity services, and improve global coverage over time.
AI-powered demand and index addition SpaceX's AI infrastructure business is already securing major customer commitments. Alphabet agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for compute capacity, including access to about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs. Anthropic has also agreed to use the full computing power of SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility, which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will provide the Claude maker with 300 megawatts of new capacity. According to Reuters, the two compute deals are worth about $26 billion annually if contracts are not terminated before their scheduled end dates.
SpaceX is also set to join the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, giving it a place in an index of major nonfinancial companies listed on the Nasdaq. According to estimates from J.P. Morgan cited by Reuters, funds tracking the index may need to buy about $4.3 billion of SpaceX shares to reflect the company's addition.
Short interest has also climbed to 196 million shares, or about 31% of the shares available for public trading. While these investors are betting against SpaceX, if the stock starts rising again, some of those short sellers may have to buy shares to close their positions. This could further fuel the stock's rebound.
Certain risks cannot be ignored SpaceX is trading at nearly 81 times trailing-12-month sales. This is a demanding multiple for a company that is still loss-making and spending heavily on several growth initiatives.
The next-generation reusable rocket system, Starship, could become a major long-term growth driver for SpaceX. But NASA's inspector general has warned that delays and the challenge of refueling the vehicle in space still make it a major execution risk.
SpaceX may be worth considering for investors comfortable with a premium valuation and significant execution risk.
Elon Musk is leading a group of investors making a bid for OpenAI. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images xAI is no more.
The AI company founded by Elon Musk and acquired by his rocket company earlier this year has officially rebranded to SpaceXAI, debuting a new logo and an update to its username on X.
SpaceX acquired xAI — including its flagship chatbot, Grok, as well as X — in February, putting the billionaire's space, AI, and social media products all under one roof.
The handle for the xAI account changed to SpaceXAI on Monday. The account also shared a video of the xAI logo getting folded into a new SpaceXAI logo.
Musk said in May that xAI would be dissolved as a separate company and folded into SpaceX, with the company's AI products branded as SpaceXAI.
The rebrand comes after SpaceX's blockbuster IPO in June. SpaceX made history as the largest public offering ever, raising $75 billion with a valuation of around $1.77 trillion, briefly making Musk the world's first trillionaire.
While SpaceX is best known for its rockets and extraterrestrial ambitions, its IPO filings revealed just how much it was investing in AI.
The company's capital expenditures on AI were $12.7 billion in 2025, or more than three times what it spent on its space and connectivity segments, which include Starlink, its satellite internet service.
Its AI segment has been a net loss for the company, but SpaceX believes it has the most potential, saying the total addressable market is the largest "in human history." SpaceX said it plans to deploy "AI compute satellites," or data centers in space, as early as 2028.
The company has also landed some big AI infrastructure deals, with Anthropic agreeing to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month for access to compute power at its Colossus data centers and Google agreeing to pay $920 million a month.
Read next
Kelsey Vlamis You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Kelsey is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news as well as stories about travel, luxury, and consulting.Her feature story "Disaster at 18,200 feet" received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. It was also included on Longreads' and Pocket's best of 2022 lists. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She's appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her work. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.She can be reached by email at [email protected] or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.Popular storiesDisaster on Denali: Inside a 1,000-foot fall on America's highest peakThrifting is more popular than ever. It's also never been worse.Rolex wouldn't service the vintage watch my mom inherited. Watchmakers say it happens all the time.A tiny, invasive bug and the climate crisis are changing how guitars are made, and shifting the course of music historyThe tourism free-for-all is overGovernment-run boarding schools were founded to 'civilize' Native Americans. Hundreds of dead children remain buried in the schoolyard graves.Meet the Texas minister who helps fly dozens of women to New Mexico every month to get abortionsPeople are flocking to Colorado for the great outdoors, but the air pollution is so bad, it's forcing many to stay insideInside Kabul: An aid worker reveals the devastating chaos that erupted during the US exit from Afghanistan
The trading activity of members of Congress continues to be closely followed by retail traders, especially when stocks related to committee assignments are traded.
• SpaceX stock is showing downward pressure. What’s ahead for SPCX stock?
Congressman Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.) is no stranger to buying up stocks, with thousands of trades made over the past two years. A recent disclosure, reported by the Benzinga Government Trades page, could spark conflict of interest complaints.
The latest disclosure includes hundreds of trades made in June, mostly purchases, but some sales as well. The transactions are in the $1,000 to $15,000 and $15,000 to $50,000 range.
Out of the numerous trades, the one that stands out in the latest round is the congressman buying shares of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX).
Cisneros disclosed buying $1,000 to $15,000 in SpaceX stock on June 18. The purchase came when shares traded between $172.11 and $190, higher than the current $160.42 price.
The congressman serves on the Armed Services Committee, which makes the purchase of SpaceX stock a questionable one.
SpaceX has multiple federal government contracts, including those with the Pentagon, NASA and Space Force.
As a member of the committee, Cisneros may know of government contracts ahead of time. Cisneros may also vote on contracts directly related to the company he owns stock in.
Cisneros’ Trading HistoryCisnero is an active trader among members of Congress.
The congressman has made over 2,500 stock transactions according to data from Quiver Quantitative.
Benzinga previously flagged that Cisneros owning stocks such as Palantir and Lockheed Martin had attracted attention due to his committee assignment for the House Armed Services.
Being a member of the committee that knows about government contracts and helps with the budgets and awards of contracts could lead to members of Congress having inside information on which defense stocks will benefit in the future.
In 2025, Cisneros made $22.26 million in trades. So far in 2026, the congressman’s trading volume is $11.38 million.
Photo: Thrive Studios ID / Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
"The U.S. outperformance story remains resilient," says Jayme Colosimo, who talks about tech broadening beyond the Mag 7 as a sign of strength. A signal of weakness she sees: the jobs market, highlighted by recent data.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.99%) was an IPO of superlatives. From its unparalleled $75 billion raise to its enormous day-one trading volume, it broke so many records that it probably even broke the record for breaking the most records. With a heady mix of space travel, artificial intelligence (AI), and proposals to take tourists to the moon, it's natural to wonder if SpaceX has a place in your portfolio.
The trouble is that it is hard to justify a valuation of over $2 trillion for a firm that reported a net loss of $4.9 billion last year and had total 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion. Plus, many of the claims in its prospectus -- including the potential total addressable market of $28.5 trillion -- don't stand up to scrutiny. If you're thinking of buying SpaceX today, here are three things to know.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. You may already own it Several major indexes fast-tracked SpaceX's entry, causing index funds to automatically add the stock. The Russell 1000 added SpaceX on June 27, and the Nasdaq-100 followed on July 7, so investors who hold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that mirror those indexes, such as the iShares Russell 1000 ETF or the Invesco QQQ Trust, already own a small stake in SpaceX.
Other technology- and space-themed ETFs also give exposure to SpaceX. These include Ark Space & Defense Innovation ETF and iShares AI Innovation and Tech Active ETF. Think about what percentage of your portfolio you want to allocate to SpaceX and what you'll get through your existing investments.
2. SpaceX is burning through a lot of cash Last year, SpaceX's capital expenditure (capex) totaled $21 billion for its space, connectivity, and AI segments. This year, it is spending money even faster: It burned through over $10 billion in Q1 alone. SpaceX is different from the AI hyperscalers racing for dominance because big tech firms like Alphabet have pretty solid financial cushions and are generating significant revenue to justify some of the costs.
Today's Change
(
-0.99
%) $
-1.60
Current Price
$
160.40
In fairness, SpaceX has already landed three major AI deals, and its Starlink internet arm does generate cash. Even so, it is borrowing heavily to fund its expansion into two high-risk areas -- space and AI -- and it isn't clear when they will start to pay off. In fact, some of its forays into unproven technologies may never generate revenue.
3. Elon Musk is part of SpaceX's DNA SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is part of why the company's IPO broke so many records. Some invested in SpaceX purely because they believed Musk could deliver, regardless of the risks. But his reputation is not the only reason Musk and SpaceX are tied; the firm is structured around his leadership.
Musk's Class B shares have 10 times the voting power of the Class A shares investors bought in its IPO, giving him control of around 80% of SpaceX's votes. Among other things, if shareholders lose faith in his leadership, they can't force his dismissal. That raises some interesting governance questions that will likely play out in the coming years.
It also raises a practical issue because Musk has other commitments, and any distractions could delay SpaceX's ambitious timelines. Moreover, without a clear succession plan, SpaceX may not survive if ill health or other issues remove Musk from the helm.
The period after high-profile IPOs is always volatile. Throw in the high risks, heavy spending, debt, and structural challenges, and it makes sense for long-term investors to wait and reevaluate SpaceX once the frenzy has passed.
For years, the only investors who owned a slice of Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.99%) were employees, venture funds, and a small circle of the wealthy. That barrier is breaking apart. Over the next 18 months, exposure to Elon Musk's rocket and satellite maker will reach everyday 401(k) and IRA balances through three distinct channels. Each arrives on its own schedule, and each carries a different set of trade-offs worth understanding before you chase the story.
To better understand the company's path to the public markets, it's worth reviewing the SpaceX IPO prospectus and important things investors should know.
Today's Change
(
-0.99
%) $
-1.60
Current Price
$
160.40
Wave 1: The funds that hold SpaceX shares The first wave has been in motion for a while, and most people missed it. A cluster of funds hold private SpaceX stock and sit inside common retirement menus. Destiny Tech100, a closed-end fund, counts SpaceX as its largest position. The ARK Venture Fund holds a comparable weight, and large mutual funds such as Fidelity Contrafund and the Baron Partners Fund carry meaningful stakes. Millions of savers own a sliver of SpaceX and have no idea, because these funds appear as options in workplace plans and brokerage IRAs.
The catch is that private shares are hard to value between funding rounds, and a vehicle like Destiny Tech100 has at times traded at a steep premium to the worth of what it holds. You could pay more than a dollar for a dollar of assets.
Wave 2: Private assets move into 401(k) plans The second wave is a rule change. In August 2025, an executive order directed the Department of Labor to open 401(k) plans to alternative assets -- private equity, private credit, real estate, and digital assets. That decision opens a door for target-date funds, the default choice for most workers, to add private-market sleeves that could include names like SpaceX.
Image source: Getty Images.
The promise is access to growth that used to sit off-limits to regular savers. The concern is cost and structure. Private-equity vehicles charge a 2% management fee plus 20% of profits, lock money up for years, and price holdings on a schedule rather than by the minute. Those features fit a pension better than they fit a saver who might need to move money on short notice. If a private sleeve appears in your plan menu, read the fine print before it becomes your default fund.
Wave 3: The 2026 SpaceX IPO puts shares in your hands The third wave has arrived. On June 12, SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, and the debut broke records. The company priced its shares at $135 and raised about $86 billion, the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. The stock opened at $150, touched $176 during the session, and closed near $161 for a first-day gain of about 19%. By the closing bell, SpaceX carried a market value close to $2.1 trillion, which placed it among the most valuable companies listed in the United States and turned Musk into the world's first trillionaire on paper.
For retirement savers, the mechanics have changed in a real way. Before June, owning a piece of SpaceX meant buying a fund that held private shares and trusting its markup. Now the stock trades on an exchange, so any brokerage account, IRA, or self-directed 401(k) can buy a single share just as it would any listed stock. No fund wrapper, no premium-to-net asset value, no multiyear lockup between you and the position.
That access is the good news. The price is the hard part. A market cap above $2 trillion bakes in a future of moon bases, a high Starship flight rate, and the orbital data centers the company keeps describing -- outcomes that could take a decade to prove. SpaceX funds much of that vision with losses, Musk holds voting control that limits what outside shareholders can influence, and the first-day pop means anyone who bought after the open paid more than the institutions that received the $135 allocation.
A stock that jumps 19% on day one can drift for months while the business grows into the story. The wrapper risk from the first wave is gone, but valuation risk has taken its place.
The takeaway for retirement savers Three waves, one company, and a different job for each. Wave 1, the funds that hold SpaceX, remains an option for anyone who wants a small position, though the premium fades once the stock trades on its own. Wave 2 will reach your plan menu as private-asset sleeves land in target-date funds, so weigh the fees against the promise of private growth. Wave 3 is complete: You can own SpaceX shares inside a retirement account for the first time.
I would treat the opening weeks as noise rather than signal, size any position to match a bet that needs years to play out, and let the valuation cool before deciding what a trillion-dollar rocket company is worth to you.
HomeMarketsU.S. & CanadaMarket ExtraMarket ExtraWhile SpaceX is due to join the Nasdaq-100 on Tuesday, it isn’t eligible to become part of the S&P 500 for at least another year — likely furthering the volatility spread between those two indexesJuly 6, 2026, 6:39 p.m. ET
The Nasdaq-100 has already been unusually volatile relative to the S&P 500 — and now it’s about to gain exposure to a stock known for making dramatic moves.
The Cboe Nasdaq-100 Volatility Index XX:VXN, which trades under the ticker symbol “VXN,” has surged around 43% this year through Thursday, as U.S. investors headed into the three-day holiday weekend, according to FactSet data. That’s a far bigger jump than the 8% one seen for the Cboe Volatility Index VIX, a measure of options activity linked to the S&P 500, which indicates volatility expected over the next month.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.97%) officially went public on June 12. In the process, it became the largest initial public offering (IPO) ever and currently has a total market cap of more than $2 trillion.
On July 7, the company and the stock will make history again. Not only will SpaceX officially join the Nasdaq-100 index, but it'll also be the first to do so under the newly created "fast-track entry" rules for mega-IPOs.
Image source: Getty Images.
What is the Nasdaq's new fast-track entry process for IPOs? Nasdaq announced these new rules in May:
For the very largest new listings, those that rank within the top 40 of current Nasdaq‑100 constituents by Full Market Capitalization, there is also a Fast Entry pathway. These companies are evaluated on their seventh trading day and, if eligible, added shortly thereafter, with all existing liquidity requirements still applying.
This means that new listings meeting both size and liquidity requirements can be added to the index as soon as the 15th trading day following the IPO. The biggest reason for the policy change is SpaceX, but it's also due to the likely imminent IPOs on Anthropic and OpenAI. Both of those companies could be debuting with multitrillion-dollar market caps as well.
This will impact shareholders of the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ +1.43%) and the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM +1.43%), which are both tied to the index, the most. Because weightings in the index are based on free-float market capitalization and not total market cap, SpaceX will likely see a weighting of around 1% when it joins.
Most stocks used to go public when they were much smaller and grow over time. Lately, companies have been remaining private longer until they decide to go public when they're much larger. SpaceX is the first example of the major market indices adjusting to reflect that. And there's likely more to come.
David Dierking has positions in Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Following its IPO and subsequent bond offering, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.99%) now has more than $100 billion in new capital at its disposal. Expect SpaceX to go on a massive spending spree to spur growth and justify its $2 trillion valuation.
What will SpaceX's spending focus on? Artificial intelligence will likely be the biggest beneficiary. More than 90% of SpaceX's claimed total addressable market is AI-focused. That means investors should expect the company to dramatically scale terrestrial data center construction. But SpaceX will also now aggressively pursue putting AI data centers into space -- so-called orbital data centers (ODCs).
ODCs will need many things to happen before they become a reality, one of which is successful commercialization of SpaceX's Starship megarocket. This megarocket -- which is significantly larger than the company's Falcon Heavy rocket -- would meaningfully improve SpaceX's ability to get larger payloads to space more affordably. ODCs, for example, could be launched at scale using Starship rockets.
One of SpaceX's biggest constraints on growth in this opportunity set, however, is access to rocket fuel. To solve that problem, SpaceX is reportedly looking to build its own natural gas pipeline. SpaceX may even look to produce its own natural gas over the long term.
How will this impact energy markets, and in particular, pipeline stocks? There are two factors to consider.
Today's Change
(
-0.99
%) $
-1.60
Current Price
$
160.40
1. SpaceX's natural gas pipeline won't endanger pipeline stocks According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas pipelines deliver roughly 30 trillion cubic feet to nearly 80 million consumers each year. A single Starship launch, for comparison, uses around 630,000 gallons of liquid methane, which equates to around 0.0000521 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Even if SpaceX launched 1,000 Starship rockets every year, it would still amount to less than 0.2% of U.S. natural gas demand transported by pipelines.
In short, SpaceX's actions aren't about to disintermediate conventional pipeline networks. In fact, SpaceX's actions could benefit certain pipeline networks in the long term.
Image source: Getty Images.
2. Pipeline stocks could actually benefit from SpaceX's actions long term According to reporting from Reuters, SpaceX "plans to begin next month building an eight‑mile natural gas pipeline called 'Starpipe' to its Texas launch facilities." Construction is expected to conclude in January 2027.
Reuters observes:
Designed to be fully reusable, Starship uses about 630,000 gallons of liquid methane per launch, currently delivered by hundreds of tanker trucks in an hours-long process incompatible with Musk's expansion plans. Starship has completed 12 test launches since 2023, but Musk aims to ramp up to dozens, hundreds, and eventually thousands of launches a year.
Where will Starpipe's natural gas come from? SpaceX apparently wants to explore drilling for its own natural gas in the long term. But for now, it seems likely that supply will come from Enbridge's Valley Crossing Pipeline.
Pipeline stocks, therefore, won't be affected by SpaceX's foray into pipeline construction. Enbridge may even benefit directly, with other natural gas pipeline stocks benefiting from a new source of demand that could support prices over the long term, even if it remains a fraction of total U.S. demand.
SpaceX Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) is scheduled to join the Nasdaq-100 index before US markets open on Tuesday, marking one of the fastest additions to the benchmark following its recent initial public offering.
The inclusion follows a change to Nasdaq's eligibility rules that allows certain large-cap IPOs to enter the index after 15 trading days, rather than waiting for the next annual reconstitution.
The move is expected to trigger billions of dollars in passive buying as exchange-traded funds and mutual funds that track the Nasdaq-100 rebalance their portfolios. JPMorgan has estimated that approximately $4.3 billion of SpaceX shares could be purchased by index-tracking funds, including the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) and Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (NASDAQ: QQQM).
Despite SpaceX's roughly $2.1 trillion market valuation, the company is expected to receive an index weighting of around 1%. The Nasdaq-100 is weighted by free-float market capitalization, meaning only shares available for public trading are included in the calculation. With less than 5% of SpaceX's outstanding shares publicly available following its IPO, the company's weighting is expected to remain relatively modest.
The addition also comes as SpaceX's post-IPO quiet period expires, allowing investment banks and research firms involved in the offering to begin publishing analyst coverage and price targets.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, wrote that investors will continue debating whether technology stock valuations are justified as SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100.
"Remember, Nasdaq changed the inclusion rules to include SpaceX, which would normally not make its way so quickly into such a broadly watched and traded index, given its extremely low free float, its governance – Elon Musk has more than 80% of voting rights – and its fundamentals, as the company went public at a valuation of more than 100 times last year's sales," Ozkardeskaya wrote.
She added that "SpaceX's inclusion will increase the Nasdaq 100's volatility, challenge its capacity to represent underlying economic and financial fundamentals, and potentially hurt its credibility."
Ozkardeskaya also noted that the end of the quiet period will bring the first wave of Wall Street research on the stock, while "the early enthusiasm faded fast, with the price coming close to its IPO level after a more than 50% surge in the early days."
SpaceX shares have experienced volatile trading since their market debut. The stock closed at $162 late last week, above its IPO opening price of $150 but more than 20% below its post-listing high. Shares fell another almost 4% to about $156.
Unlike the S&P 500, which generally requires companies to trade publicly for at least a year before becoming eligible for inclusion, the Nasdaq-100's revised fast-track rules were designed to accommodate large IPOs more quickly. SpaceX will be added to the index in a single rebalancing event rather than in phased installments.
Predicting any company's next three years is an impossible task, but doing so for Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 3.70%) is perhaps especially so.
SpaceX's rocket launches, Starlink satellite internet service, and artificial intelligence (AI) data center business are distinct businesses that could define the company in the coming years. And all will take an immense amount of resources to continue growing.
Still, it's worth considering how each might look three years from now. Here's where SpaceX could be.
Image source: Getty Images.
Increased emphasis on SpaceX's data center business SpaceX is quickly morphing into an artificial intelligence company, most recently through its $60 billion acquisition of Anysphere, the parent company of AI software and coding specialist Cursor, to better compete with Anthropic's Claude Code. And it's already inking huge deals as it builds out a growing neocloud business.
Neocloud companies sell their data center capacity to other tech companies, and SpaceX has already made some large deals. For example, Alphabet's Google signed a three-year deal with SpaceX to supply some of its data center capacity for its Gemini AI model, generating about $30 billion for SpaceX by 2029. And Anthropic is already paying SpaceX about $15 billion annually over the next three years to rent out all of its Colossus 1 data center capacity.
What this means for SpaceX is that over the next three years or so, it could become a very important player in AI data centers. Gartner estimates neocloud players could capture 20% of the AI cloud market by 2030. With its current moves, SpaceX is already in a very strong position to take a leading role in space.
Starlink will continue expanding Starlink is arguably SpaceX's most important business right now, accounting for about 61% of the company's total sales. It's also SpaceX's only profitable business.
Starlink has an impressive 12 million subscribers already, brought in $11.4 billion in sales in 2025, and had $4.4 billion in operating income last year. And SpaceX aims to expand Starlink in the coming years. It's already in the midst of getting ready for a 1,200 satellite launch in mid-2027 using its Starship rocket.
Today's Change
(
-3.70
%) $
-6.00
Current Price
$
156.00
What's more, a handful of analysts believe SpaceX might bid to acquire a mobile carrier in the next few years to expand its internet business. Most recently, a TD Cowen analyst suggested T-Mobile would be a likely acquisition target.
While that's just speculation right now, even conservative estimates for Starlink's global total addressable market (TAM) are large. Morningstar estimates Starlink already has a $129 billion TAM. And some analysts estimate Starlink's U.S.-based subscribers will reach 15 million by 2030 -- up from just 3 million currently.
The Starship rockets reach mass efficiency Last but not least, SpaceX's rocket business is expected to expand significantly in the coming years. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that SpaceX's core rocket launches could bring in $8.3 billion in revenue by 2030 -- up from $4.1 billion in 2025.
More importantly, SpaceX's Starship rockets are expected to reach an operational efficiency over the next few years that could be unmatched by SpaceX's competitors. If it lowers its marginal cost of launching payloads into orbit by 90%, which it's expected to do with future Starship launches compared to its Falcon rockets, it could achieve a competitive moat that other rocket companies would have a very hard time overcoming.
There's still a lot of uncertainty with SpaceX, and even if the company executes on its goals, there's no guarantee of success in the coming years. Investors are likely better off waiting to see how SpaceX delivers on some of its ambitions over the next year or so before considering buying the stock.
If SpaceX shares close above that level— 30% above the company’s $135 IPO price—on five of the 10 trading days leading up to earnings, an overlooked provision in the company’s IPO lock-up agreement will kick in, unlocking 456 million additional shares just two days after the first scheduled insider share release.
It’s a little-known clause that could quietly make SpaceX’s first major lock-up expiration significantly larger than many investors expect.
Most investors are already watching Aug. 5, when approximately 912 million shares, representing about 20% of eligible non-affiliate holdings, become eligible for sale on the second trading day after SpaceX reports second-quarter results.
But that’s only the first wave.
The IPO prospectus includes a performance-based provision allowing another 456 million shares—or an additional 10% of eligible holdings—to be released on Aug. 7 if the stock closes at least 30% above its IPO price on five of the 10 trading days preceding the first earnings release.
In other words, strong stock performance—not weak performance—could accelerate the amount of stock eligible to enter the market.
Why It MattersLock-up expirations don’t automatically result in insider selling. Employees, executives and early investors can choose to continue holding their shares, particularly if they remain confident in the company’s long-term prospects.
But traders closely monitor lock-up events because they increase the supply of shares that can be sold, sometimes creating additional volatility around earnings or other major catalysts.
The conditional Aug. 7 release makes SpaceX’s lock-up schedule particularly unusual. Rather than tying insider liquidity to the passage of time alone, the company linked part of the release to the stock’s own performance—a mechanism that rewards strength by allowing more shares to become eligible for trading sooner.
Beyond August, SpaceX’s lock-up schedule remains staggered through the rest of 2026 and into 2027, including a 1.3 billion-share release following third-quarter earnings. Elon Musk‘s 6.4 billion shares remain subject to a separate one-year lock-up that is not eligible for early release.
What Investors Should WatchSpaceX’s first earnings report is already shaping up to be one of the company’s biggest post-IPO events. But the results may not be the only catalyst.
If the stock can hold above roughly $175.50 often enough before earnings, investors could see more than 1.3 billion shares become eligible for sale within just two trading days—912 million on Aug. 5 and another 456 million on Aug. 7. That doesn’t guarantee a wave of insider selling, but it does make one little-known IPO clause worth watching just as closely as the earnings report itself.
Image via Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX), doing business as SpaceX, were last seen down 0.5% at $161.13. Over its last few weeks as a publicly traded stock, SPCX opened at $150, hit a June 16 peak of $225.64, and tumbled to a June 23 low of $147.11.
The stock is becoming increasingly popular amongst options traders, landing on Schaeffer's Quantitative Analyst Rocky White's list of stocks sporting the most active options over the past two weeks. This marks our first coverage of SpaceX since it made its way onto the list, with the stock seeing over 5.4 million calls and more than 3.9 million puts exchanged during this time frame. The most activity during the past 10 days were at the weekly 6/26 150-strike put and weekly 6/26 160-strike call.
Analysts are split on SPCX, with five carrying a "strong buy" rating, five a "hold," and one "sell." Meanwhile, the 12-month consensus price target of $239.25 is a 48.1% premium to current levels.
$2.13 trillion. That is what public markets say SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) is worth as of this morning, a valuation the company reached less than a month after its June IPO and just ahead of confirmed entry into the Nasdaq-100.
Shares of space stocks are selling off across the board midday Monday, with the group’s leaders giving back a chunk of last week’s sharp gains. Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB | RKLB Price Prediction) stock is leading the pullback, down 7% to $93.28.
AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) shares are down 5% to $80.61, while SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) stock is off 3% to $157.43. Meanwhile, Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) shares are also 3% lower at $18.93.
There’s no confirmed stock-specific catalyst behind today’s selloff. The move looks like broad profit-taking after a torrid stretch for the sector, and it lands squarely on the highest-beta names.
Profit-Taking After a Blistering Week Rocket Lab stock had climbed 25% in the week ending July 2, and AST SpaceMobile shares had surged 30% over the same stretch. When names run that hot, a reset is normal, especially without a fresh headline to justify holding through the volatility.
Reddit chatter reflects the mood shift. Retail engagement on Rocket Lab cooled sharply after a WallStreetBets post titled “RKLB 2900->29k” celebrated gains on July 2, a classic exit signal. Polymarket’s daily direction market currently prices a 95% probability that Rocket Lab stock closes down today.
These are largely pre-profit, speculative names with no meaningful trailing earnings multiples to anchor valuation. Their prices trade on backlog, sentiment, and news flow, which cuts both ways.
The Long-Term Space Story Is Still Intact The bull case has not changed. The commercial-space backlog recently crossed $500 billion, and SpaceX’s NASDAQ debut on June 29 gave public investors direct access to the sector’s dominant player.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Rocket Lab didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Government demand is the other pillar. The U.S. FY2027 space budget totals $59.7 billion and funds 31 launches, a step-change from prior years. Rocket Lab’s $2.2 billion backlog and Intuitive Machines’ 2026 revenue guide of $900 million to $1 billion both lean on that spending trajectory.
AST SpaceMobile has reaffirmed $150 million to $200 million in 2026 revenue and is targeting roughly 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit by year-end. Execution on constellation cadence remains the swing factor for the AST SpaceMobile story.
UFO Offers Diversified Sector Exposure For readers who want space exposure without single-name risk, the Procure Space ETF (NASDAQ:UFO) is a pure revenue-weighted vehicle for space stocks. Top holdings include Planet Labs at 6% as well as Rocket Lab at 5%.
The fund’s diversified basket smooths some of the single-stock volatility, but the ETF and its constituents remain high-beta plays. Position sizing in space names should stay modest given the group’s tendency to swing sharply in both directions.
What to Watch The key near-term question is whether today’s losses hold into the close. Polymarket’s week-of-July-6 market clusters at $88 to $92 for Rocket Lab stock, suggesting the crowd expects stabilization rather than a deeper flush.
Traders can watch for updates on Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket debut, AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird launch cadence, and NASA CLPS award decisions for Intuitive Machines. A single volatile session doesn’t change the long-term thesis, but it’s a fresh reminder that space stocks remain high-volatility positions.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Rocket Lab didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
SpaceX bulls are proving a devout lot, not unlike the Tesla traders that came before them.
Daily options flows still lean heavily bullish almost a month into trading and one day ahead of the stock's accelerated inclusion into the Nasdaq 100, the index behind the roughly $500-billion Invesco QQQ fund, of which Elon Musk's new giant will garner a roughly 1% weighting.
About half-a-million SpaceX options traded by midday Monday, a little below the average since inception, but still enough to be the fifth-most popular stock for options trading. More than 300,000 calls traded, compared to less than 130,000 puts, with almost five times as many calls bought versus puts, according to ThinkOrSwim data. Tesla, Musk's other trillion-dollar company, is consistently among the most active stocks for options traders.
Nasdaq's inclusion of SpaceX will in theory make the tech-heavy index marginally more volatile overnight given SpaceX's wild swings, but the Nasdaq's rules limit the weight of low float stocks, so the impact will likely be minimal. How SpaceX releases shares around its lockup timeline, how passive index buyers handle its inclusion, and overall demand for options, will determine if SpaceX stays as wild as it did when it came out to market.
SpaceX
SpaceX trades with an implied volatility of 92, almost 3.5 times that of QQQ, which itself is currently the most volatile in comparison to the S&P 500 in almost 20 years. Arguably that would mean over the long term, SpaceX volatility should come down, as long-term-minded investors buy and hold index funds and their constituents.
The counterpoint is that those index-holders may use SpaceX options to hedge its inclusion, which would keep demand elevated for puts. SpaceX's volatility also makes call-selling attractive as an income source, which would increase options volume. Add in the fact that high volatility has been a key characteristic of many of the bull market's biggest winners, keeping calls in strong demand despite expensive premiums, and there's a case to be made SpaceX volatility could stay – even if the stock keeps rallying.
Shares slipped to below $160 on Monday following a bounce Thursday, but a 8% sell-off last Wednesday.
All of the top 10 options contracts by volume Monday were calls. The most popular was the 450-strike call expiring July 17, a 15-cent trade contract that needs a 180% rally by the end of next week to break even. Bigger traders favored the 180-strike call expiring Friday.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.06%), also known as SpaceX, had the biggest initial public offering (IPO) ever last month, raising more than $86 billion. But the company is worth $2.1 trillion today, which means only 4% of the stock is currently trading on the market.
Let's check out what that means, why it's soon going to change, and how much SpaceX stock will be on the market before the year is up.
Image source: Getty Images.
Insiders and outsiders Any stock's total value includes shares available for trading on the open market as well as shares held by company insiders. When people talk about someone's "net worth," much of it is often tied up in company stock. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, for example, has a net worth of just under $1 trillion right now. That fluctuates depending on the price of SpaceX stock, since he owns a lot of it and, with class B shares, has more than 80% voting rights. Under the company's lockup rules, he can't sell any stock for 366 days after the IPO, so even if he does sell, it won't be until next June.
The remaining stock after the 4% on the market and Musk's shares is locked up with SpaceX insiders, and there's a staggered lockup period before they can sell their stock.
The first period ends the day after the second-quarter earnings release, which is likely to be sometime at the end of July or early August for the period ended June 30. Up to 20% of shares can be sold at that point, or 911 million shares. Another unusual rule is that if the stock is trading at a 30% premium to the IPO for five out of 10 trading days after the release, 458 million shares can be sold.
After that, there are various lockup periods from the 70th day post-IPO through the 366th day, and by December, about 180 days in, most of the lockup shares can be sold. What's left are Musk's shares and those of other insiders, who are subject to an "extended lockup."
The total insider shares that can be sold by day 180 are about 4.7 billion, which, at today's prices, accounts for about 36% of the total company value.
The purpose of any lockup period is to stabilize the stock after its IPO. The reason, presumably, for the staggered lockup periods here is the high volatility associated with the massive IPO and valuation. If it went from 4% to 40% in a day, it could wreak havoc on the market.
Today's Change
(
-0.06
%) $
-0.09
Current Price
$
161.91
The 36% of shares eligible for sale by day 180 won't all be sold, so it's unlikely to zoom from 4% to 40% in six months. However, the increase in shares could still send the price down as the law of supply and demand still holds true.
In any IPO, it's prudent to wait until after the lockup period to invest, and with SpaceX, it might be even more important.
AI bubble fears keep resurfacing, and depending on who you ask, the story is either just getting started or already cracking at the edges. Doug Casey, founder of International Man and a self-described technophile who has invested across more than 50 years and 155 countries, falls firmly in the second camp. He thinks the AI trade isn't just a bubble. He thinks it's a historic mania, and he's putting his money in three places most investors aren't looking: energy, mining, and farm commodities.
Casey doesn't dispute that artificial intelligence will reshape the world. What he disputes is whether the companies building it out right now have any real path to earning money from it. That's the tension running through his entire pitch.
Get Ecopetrol alerts:
A Super Bubble, Not Just a BubbleCasey's read on the market is blunt. He believes today's AI spending could eventually be compared to historical manias like the Mississippi Bubble or the South Sea Bubble, and possibly dwarf the 1929 stock market crash. Margin debt has surged roughly 50% over the past year, by his estimate, and he sees retail investors pouring money into companies with little revenue and no earnings.
He uses SpaceX NASDAQ: SPCX as his case study. Casey's concern—that most of the capital Elon Musk has raised is flowing into data centers and AI rather than the core rocket business—is now playing out in public markets. SpaceX completed its IPO in June and carries a market cap above $2 trillion, even as it posts steep GAAP losses tied to its AI and infrastructure buildout.
His broader point: a company can be technologically dazzling and still be a poor investment if the price already assumes a future that hasn't arrived.
That skepticism extends to the picks-and-shovels trade as well. Memory chips, cooling systems, and power suppliers feeding the data center boom do generate real earnings today. But Casey calls the whole setup a daisy chain. If the data center buildout gets recognized as a massive misallocation of capital, he expects the suppliers to get pulled down with it.
Why Energy Still Looks CheapThe first place he'd put money has nothing to do with AI: Old-fashioned energy—and not just oil and gas. He's also positioned in uranium and coal, which he considers the unglamorous fuel sources that will keep the lights on regardless of what happens to the AI trade.
Energy stocks made up about 20% of the S&P 500 back in 1980. Today, that figure has shrunk to roughly 4%, even as oil and gas remain just as critical to the global economy. With West Texas Intermediate crude trading around $70 a barrel, Casey sees a sector the market has simply stopped paying attention to.
Ecopetrol Today
EC
Ecopetrol
$14.59 -0.11 (-0.75%)
As of 12:37 PM Eastern
This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.
52-Week Range$8.27▼
$17.75Dividend Yield4.46%
P/E Ratio11.40
Price Target$13.14
He's looking outside the U.S. for the best entry points. He favors Ecopetrol NYSE: EC, Colombia's national oil company, and Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. - Petrobras NYSE: PBR, Brazil's equivalent, both of which offer high single-digit dividend yields.
He also likes Meren Energy TSE: MER, a smaller offshore African oil producer with a roughly $1 billion market cap and a similar payout, plus unexplored concessions he believes give it real upside beyond current oil prices. For investors wary of emerging-market exposure, he notes Alberta, Canada, is home to small oil and gas names yielding 5% to 7%.
On power, Casey is unambiguous. Nuclear, in his view, is the safest, cheapest, and cleanest form of mass power generation, and coal works in the near term as well. His core argument: even if the AI trade collapses, the demand for electricity that AI created isn't going away.
Nuclear stocks were the hottest trade in the market as recently as late 2024. The fact that nearly every name in the sector has since sold off is precisely what makes the entry point interesting to him.
The Case for Small-Cap Gold MinersMining is an industry he calls a terrible business, but one he's owned stocks in for most of his investing life. With gold trading near $4,000 an ounce, he isn't buying the metal itself as a speculation. What he sees as undervalued are the companies that mine it.
The math is what excites him. Industry-wide, the all-in sustaining cost of producing an ounce of gold runs around $1,700. With gold prices roughly double that figure, miners are generating real margin for the first time in years, yet mining stocks represent only about 2% of the S&P 500. Casey expects that gap to close and sees potential for tenfold returns across the sector, with some smaller names capable of going much further.
These are mostly nanocap companies, often run by founding entrepreneurs, and they're prone to volatility, fraud, and outright failure—Casey references Mark Twain's famous line about a gold mine being a hole in the ground with a liar at the entrance.
He won't name specific stocks publicly, given how thinly traded they are. What he will share is his screening framework: a set of nine criteria he calls the Nine Ps, covering factors like management track record, geological quality, access to capital, and jurisdictional stability. His point is that volatility and risk aren't the same thing, and at current prices, he believes the odds tilt toward investors who do their homework.
Corn, Soybeans, and a Fertilizer ShortageThe third area doesn't involve stocks at all. Agricultural commodities—specifically corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice—supply roughly 60% of the calories consumed worldwide, and right now, prices for all of them are sitting at or below breakeven for farmers. A cyclical commodity bull market, in his view, is setting up from those depressed levels.
Teucrium Corn Fund Today
CORN
Teucrium Corn Fund
$17.35 +0.49 (+2.91%)
As of 12:36 PM Eastern
This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.
52-Week Range$16.36▼
$19.13Dividend Yield0.00%
Assets Under Management$173.43 million
A looming fertilizer shortage adds urgency to his case. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have cut off significant flows of sulfur and urea, both byproducts of natural gas and critical inputs for crop production.
He expects food prices to rise over the next several years regardless of what happens to AI stocks.
For most investors, he recommends commodity ETFs over futures contracts. He specifically points to the Teucrium Corn Fund NYSEARCA: CORN, noting that similar vehicles exist for wheat and soybeans.
The reasoning circles back to his opening: dollars are losing value, bonds carry interest rate, credit, and currency risk all at once, and tech stocks are priced for a future that may not arrive on schedule. Raw materials, in his view, are where safety and upside happen to overlap right now.
The Contrarian CaseThe AI story isn't going away—Casey freely acknowledges that. But he'd argue that's different from saying the stocks are worth owning at any price. Keep an eye on energy dividends and grain prices. Those are the signals he's watching.
Should You Invest $1,000 in Ecopetrol Right Now?Before you consider Ecopetrol, you'll want to hear this.
MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis. MarketBeat has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and Ecopetrol wasn't on the list.
While Ecopetrol currently has a Reduce rating among analysts, top-rated analysts believe these five stocks are better buys.
View The Five Stocks Here
The AI wave will soon hit public markets with Anthropic and OpenAI set to go public later this year. However, you don't have to wait to invest. This report shows seven AI stocks that you can buy today while the big model providers get ready to go public.
Membership has its privileges. Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.02%) investors are hoping that's the case regarding the stock's July 7 inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 Index.
A quick refresher: Before what was the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, Nasdaq and several other index providers embraced "fast track" rules, paving the way for SpaceX to join various gauges more quickly than usual. In the case of the Nasdaq-100, the index opened the door for SpaceX (and potentially other large IPOs in the future) to join the benchmark after 15 trading days. For Elon Musk's company, that day is July 7.
SpaceX is joining the Nasdaq-100 Index on July 7, but that may not translate into huge gains for the stock. Image source: Getty Images.
That's a big deal because the Nasdaq-100 usually adds and removes stocks only once a year, on the third Friday of December. Now, SpaceX isn't just joining a widely followed index; it will be added to funds tracking that gauge, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs) such as the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ +1.32%) and the Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF (QQQM +1.44%). That's no small feat because, as measured by assets under management, the Invesco QQQ Trust is the fifth-largest ETF trading in the U.S., while its stablemate is in the top 25.
But does it matter to investors directly holding SpaceX today? The answer is "maybe."
Nasdaq-100 inclusion could spark SpaceX Market history isn't guaranteed to repeat, but it's worth noting that the typical Nasdaq-100 addition gains about 1% over the five days spanning the announcement and its eventual inclusion in the index. That doesn't include unusual circumstances, such as the additions of Moderna and Zoom Communications during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
It was widely known that SpaceX would be added to the Nasdaq-100, but the stock still rallied 2.7% over the five days ending July 2. Another historical footnote worth observing: From 2010 through 2024, the average Nasdaq-100 addition gained 3.8% over the following 90 days. A year out, stocks joining the Nasdaq-100 averaged an upside of 12%.
SpaceX isn't beholden to that history. It could outperform or lag the 90-day and 12-month averages. Fundamentals, including earnings and revenue growth, launch data, and investor sentiment, will determine SpaceX's performance following its addition to the famed tech-heavy index.
Today's Change
(
1.32
%) $
9.42
Current Price
$
722.02
Something else for investors to consider -- Nasdaq-100 fast-track inclusion doesn't guarantee permanent membership. Moderna and Zoom learned that the hard way, as neither is in the index today. Nor does joining outside the usual rebalancing window ensure prominence. Arm Holdings and Shopify received that treatment, but those stocks together account for less than 1.3% of the index.
Speaking of prominence... Even if an investor assumes that SpaceX will trade higher upon joining the Nasdaq-100, it pays to be more inquisitive. No one has a crystal ball, so projecting precise gains is a fool's errand, but it is safe to say post-inclusion gains for this space stock will be small.
That's the result of a scant percentage of SpaceX shares freely floating. As a result, the stock's initial weight in the Nasdaq-100 is likely to be around 0.7%. Back-of-the-envelope math indicates that forced buying of the aforementioned pair of Invesco ETFs would exceed $5 billion.
That's something, but it's not much in the context of a stock with a market capitalization of nearly $2.1 trillion.
Todd Shriber has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Arm Holdings, Moderna, Shopify, and Zoom Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
If you're bullish on the future of the space economy and artificial intelligence (AI), then you are likely incredibly excited about Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX +2.83%), which recently went public and has already become one of the largest stocks in the market, trading at a roughly $2.13 trillion market cap (as of July 3).
While most believe SpaceX is bound to do great things, the high valuation has made it a battleground stock, with some analysts and institutional traders claiming this is just the beginning, and others suggesting SpaceX has gotten ahead of its skis.
Recently, veteran Wall Street analyst Dan Ives, typically quite bullish on tech and artificial intelligence, weighed in on the stock. Here's what he thinks a $17,000 investment in SpaceX could be worth over the next 12 months.
Image source: Getty Images.
Ives offered less hype than expected on SpaceX Ives, formerly with Wedbush Securities, recently initiated coverage of SpaceX with an outperform rating and a $190 price target, implying about 17.3% upside from current levels. Assuming this comes to fruition, a $16,500 investment could be worth close to $20,000 in one year's time, the typical time horizon used by Wall Street analysts.
In his initiation note, Ives wrote that SpaceX is "one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market" and "well-positioned to become a major hyperscaler with its vertically integrated platform across connectivity, launch, and AI infrastructure."
Ives views SpaceX's low-Earth-orbit satellite internet service, Starlink, as the profit engine with a long runway ahead, given that the service still controls less than 1% of the global telecom and broadband market.
Thus far, Starlink has been the best financial performer of SpaceX's three divisions, generating an operating profit of $4.4 billion and adjusted EBITDA of nearly $7.2 billion in 2025.
Today's Change
(
2.83
%) $
4.46
Current Price
$
162.00
Ives views the launch business as the engine that makes pretty much everything at the company possible, and is most excited about the AI division, which comprises the social media platform X, the digital AI intelligence platform Grok, multiple data centers, and a future potential terafab facility.
SpaceX has already signed massive data center deals with large AI players like Anthropic and Alphabet, which are expected to dramatically ramp revenue this year.
While the deals can be canceled with just three months' notice, Ives still believes SpaceX has an advantage over other data center players because it can build data centers faster and more cheaply than competitors.
Ives' upside on SpaceX is lacking In his initiation note, Ives acknowledged that the bull case for SpaceX largely depends on Starship, SpaceX's fully reusable heavy-lift launch rocket that is not yet operational.
SpaceX needs Starship if it wants to build orbital data centers, which is likely already partly baked into the company's valuation. Starship has conducted 12 test flights but has not yet worked as designed, according to Ives, and could also face regulatory pressure.
While Ives has issued a solid price target on SpaceX and a 17% return in one year is nothing to sniff at, I find his upside case lacking compared to his previous calls on other hyperscalers.
If you are a bull, it is a bit concerning that Ives doesn't have a higher price target, given that he is considered one of the most bullish analysts on the Street for AI and tech.
Ives also points out how crucial Starship is to SpaceX's thesis, and I agree. In its registration statement, the company said it could begin deploying orbital AI compute satellites as early as 2028.
But this seems like an incredibly fast timeline, especially given where Starship is. Obviously, what SpaceX and Founder Elon Musk are trying to accomplish is extraordinary, so long-term investors may not mind the longer timeline.
However, the fact that the company already trades at such a high valuation suggests that Starship's success and orbital data centers are all but guaranteed, when they aren't, making the risk-reward proposition on the stock unfavorable right now, in my opinion.
By You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, announced the donation on X. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty Images SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell says she's donating company stock to Trump Accounts, days after President Donald Trump predicted the rocket maker's shares would find their way into the children's savings program.
On Monday, Shotwell announced in an X post that she and her husband are "honored and thrilled" to gift a share of their SpaceX stock to the Trump Accounts of more than 2 million American children.
My husband and I are honored and thrilled to participate in the Invest America program and gift a share of our SpaceX stock to a Trump Account for each of more than two million children across our great nation.
Every American child under 18 can benefit from having a Trump… https://t.co/M6UJQ26Y6N
— Gwynne Shotwell (@Gwynne_Shotwell) July 6, 2026 The couple's donation is targeted at children aged 11 to 17 living in areas with lower average household incomes, Shotwell said, "with a bit more emphasis" on those near the couple's central Texas home.
"We have been fortunate in our careers and hope this gift encourages the next generation to continue the journey of enabling humanity to live and fly amongst the stars," she wrote.
SpaceX's stock has fluctuated since the company went public in June, but at the time of writing, it was trading at around $160 a share, meaning a gift of 2 million shares would be worth around $320 million at current prices.
The announcement comes days after Trump said in an interview with CNBC that he expects Elon Musk to donate SpaceX stock to the program. "Well, I think that he will do that," the president said, though Musk, who briefly became the world's first trillionaire following SpaceX's record-breaking IPO, has yet to make any public comment.
Trump told CNBC that his relationship with Musk remains strong, describing their past falling-out as a "little dispute" rooted in his decision to remove subsidies and mandates for electric vehicles. Prior to that, Musk had backed Trump's presidential campaign and later spearheaded an initiative to cut government spending.
Shotwell, SpaceX's longtime chief operating officer and Musk's second-in-command, joins a growing list of executives and companies backing the accounts. Michael and Susan Dell have pledged $6.25 billion, Micron has committed $250 million, and employers including BlackRock, Intel, and JPMorgan Chase have said they will match the government's $1,000 deposit.
Trump Accounts, created under last year's Republican tax and spending law, are seeded with $1,000 from the Treasury for every American child born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, and convert into retirement-style accounts when the child turns 18.
Read next
Georgia Hennessy You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Georgia is a fellow at Business Insider's London office.Before joining Business Insider, she worked at Japan's largest newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, and interned at the Financial Times. She is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with a degree in Philosophy from the University of Birmingham. You can contact her via email at [email protected]
U.S. Politicans wasted little time when it comes to investing in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock and, as it turned out by early July, it also did not take them long to begin losing money on their investments.
The most recent example of the phenomenon came in the form of Representative Dan Meuser’s market activity as he purchased up to $50,000 worth of SPCX shares on June 16.
Receive Signals on US Congress Members' Stock Trades
Stocks
Stay up-to-date on the trading activity of US Congress members. The signal triggers based on updates from the House disclosure reports, notifying you of their latest stock transactions.
Furthermore, the trade – revealed in a July 2 filing – was especially ill-timed considering SpaceX hit its all-time high (ATH) of $225.64 on the day and retraced significantly since.
Indeed, at press time on July 6, 2026, shares of SPCX are changing hands at $163.58 after rising 0.98% in the extended session from their latest close at $162.
SpaceX stock price one-week chart. Source: Google If Meuser invested at the June 16 high, he might have lost up to $13,752, given his investment could have retraced by 27.5% to $36,248.
Additionally, he would have fared only slightly better if his timing coincided with the day’s low of $199.98. Specifically, had he purchased at that price, his position – assuming the initial purchase was the top of the reported range of $50,000 – diminished by $9,100.91 to $40,899.09 for an 18.2% loss.
Is Representative Meuser’s SpaceX stock investment about to turn green in July? Still, Representative Meuser’s losses appear relatively unlikely to persist through the rest of July. SpaceX stock will benefit from substantial tailwinds starting on July 7, as the equity will be joining the Nasdaq-100 index on the day.
Though the benefits of increased visibility will arguably largely be lost on the company – Elon Musk’s newer public firm has been famous for years and had the largest IPO on record – it will, nonetheless, enjoy substantial buying pressure as index funds get compelled to include it.
Receive Signals on US Congress Members' Stock Trades
Stocks
Stay up-to-date on the trading activity of US Congress members. The signal triggers based on updates from the House disclosure reports, notifying you of their latest stock transactions.
The bull case was, additionally, probably not lost on Representative Dan Meuser since his investment in SpaceX stock was simultaneously his first stock buy in approximately six years – once bond purchases are excluded, his most recent equity purchase took place on March 30, 2020
Featured image via Shutterstock
Best Crypto Exchange for Intermediate Traders and Investors
Invest in cryptocurrencies and 3,000+ other assets including stocks and precious metals.
0% commission on stocks - buy in bulk or just a fraction from as little as $10. Other fees apply. For more information, visit etoro.com/trading/fees.
Copy top-performing traders in real time, automatically.
eToro USA is registered with FINRA for securities trading.
30+ million Users worldwide
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.
Join Finbold's newsroom, become a Sales Executive today! Apply now to join Finbold as a crypto/finance news writer!
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.00%) is finally a publicly traded company. Now the process begins for stock indexes to add SpaceX shares to their holdings. Each index has its own rules for inclusion. Some require that a stock only be publicly traded for several days. Others, like the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.40%), require a full year of trading before adding.
The Nasdaq-100 index -- which tracks 100 large non-financial stocks -- recently announced new "fast track" eligibility criteria designed to address mega initial public offerings (IPOs), such as the SpaceX IPO. Under those criteria, new stocks can be added on their 15th trading day. The exchange announced on June 26 that SpaceX will be added before markets open on July 7.
For investors in the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ +1.57%) and Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM +1.49%), which track the Nasdaq-100 index, that means they will soon own a piece of SpaceX. If you're one of them, here's what you should know ahead of its addition.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX's addition will be a one-time event There was speculation at one time that, due to its size, SpaceX stock might be added to the Nasdaq-100 in phases. That won't be the case. The Nasdaq-100 construction methodology indicates that stocks are added as a single event, and no provision is made to add large IPO shares in pieces.
SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 could result in $4 billion of passive fund buys The Invesco QQQ ETF and its twin, the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM +1.49%), manage a combined $570 billion in assets. These funds are going to need to buy a significant amount of SpaceX stock in order to track the index properly.
JPMorgan estimates that SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 could result in $4.3 billion of buying. With fund buying of this magnitude, expect SpaceX stock to be volatile.
SpaceX's weight in the Nasdaq-100 will likely be around 1% You might be asking how SpaceX will likely have only about a 1% weighting in the Nasdaq-100, even though its $2.3 trillion market cap is comparable to Amazon's, which has a 4% weighting.
The answer is that the index's weighting is based on free float market capitalization, which excludes shares held by insiders or restricted from the market. Only a relatively small percentage of SpaceX shares are publicly traded, which reduces the potential weight the stock can carry. If more shares become publicly available, the stock's weight will likely rise.
Anthropic and OpenAI are probably next The Nasdaq-100's new fast-track inclusion policy paves the way for the next big IPOs to be added quickly. In all likelihood, that's likely Anthropic and OpenAI, which pundits think will probably go public either in 2026 or 2027. Once that happens, index-tracking ETF shareholders will begin owning those stocks, too.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.02%) is making a bold move into AI with its $60 billion deal with Cursor. The upside case is that rockets, Starlink, Grok, Cursor, and future orbital compute could form a new infrastructure ecosystem. But with expectations already sky-high, investors need to ask whether the stock is pricing in too much too soon.
*Stock prices used were the market prices of June 18, 2026. The video was published on July 3, 2026.
Rick Orford has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Rick Orford is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through their link, they will earn some extra money that supports their channel. Their opinions remain their own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.
The InclusionSpaceX will become a component of the Nasdaq-100 Index prior to market open on Tuesday, July 7, 2026. The Nasdaq-100 is tracked by more than 200 investment products with over $800 billion in assets under management globally, meaning every index fund and ETF tracking the benchmark will be required to own SpaceX shares as of Tuesday’s open.
Estimates suggest passive investors could purchase up to $4.3 billion in shares from the QQQ ETF alone, with total Nasdaq-100 and Russell index tracking fund buying potentially reaching $27 billion.
SpaceX Shares Edge HigherSPCX Price Action: At the time of publication, SpaceX shares are trading 2.44% higher at $165.96, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Image via Shutterstock
This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced she would donate to the Trump Accounts program on Monday, joining a growing list of companies and billionaires pledging to support the investment accounts for American children under 18.
The gift, which includes shares of Shotwell's and her husband's SpaceX stock, will go to around 2 million Trump accounts, with a "bit more emphasis" on children who live close to their home in central Texas, Shotwell wrote in a post on X.
"We have been fortunate in our careers and hope this gift encourages the next generation to continue the journey of enabling humanity to live and fly amongst the stars," Shotwell wrote.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump told CNBC's Joe Kernen that he thought SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would donate company stock to the program.
Read more CNBC tech newsMeta's push into cloud computing means Wall Street has to prepare for lower marginsChip stocks that notched record rallies in second quarter start Q3 with a dudPlayStation will end physical disc production for new games in 2028Employers who laid off workers citing AI are already starting to regret it
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell pledged SpaceX stock to more than two million children through Trump Accounts after President Donald Trump floated the idea, while Elon Musk has yet to respond.
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 2: A SpaceX logo on a space suit is displayed at an exhibit at The Great American State Fair on July 2, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
Getty Images
This article was written by Doug Nathman, with research by his team at Trefis.
SpaceX (SPCX) shares perform as if they are part of a monopoly, boasting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and over 100 times its trailing revenue. Such figures only make sense if investors believe that SpaceX will face little to no serious competition for an extended period. Nevertheless, stakeholders should not assume that this situation will endure indefinitely. SpaceX is fundamentally a long-term investment, which presents a double-edged sword: it indicates that smaller, emerging rivals warrant more regard than their current market presence implies. At present, there are few credible competitors to SpaceX. Among them, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin stands out as the most significant contender. Although still lagging, it is making substantial strides, especially in technical and regulatory developments.
See how SpaceX’s financial performance compares with other publicly traded space stocks like Redwire (RDW) and Rocket Lab (RKLB).
Regulatory Support Is The Core NarrativeFederal contracts are crucial for the space sector, and securing them is heavily reliant on establishing connections with government entities.
Blue Origin's recent advancements illustrate this reality. Its average yearly federal contracts under the current Trump administration surged by 177% compared to the Biden administration's rate. The Space Force has authorized the firm for seven military and intelligence launches valued at up to $2.4 billion. NASA granted it $188 million for lunar cargo deliveries associated with the Artemis initiative. Blue Origin is now qualified to compete for portions of the Pentagon’s $151 billion Golden Dome missile defense initiative.
During this term, Bezos has cultivated a notably closer relationship with Trump, gaining presumably greater access to the White House. This association has aligned with NASA and Space Force leaders publicly positioned Blue Origin as a critical counterweight to SpaceX, indicating sustained agency interest for a second major launch service provider.
MORE FOR YOU
SpaceX has also profited from Elon Musk's rapport with President Trump. However, the situation has shifted, as Blue Origin is now nurturing similar access, making it less probable for government support to continue being a one-company advantage over an extended period.
Although launch operations and Starlink remain fundamental to SpaceX, wireless services also seem to be coming into focus for the company.
Operational Disparity Remains SignificantThe difference in operational capabilities is substantial. SpaceX conducts rocket launches approximately every two to three days, providing it with significantly more opportunities to enhance its technology, reduce costs, and attract customers. It has successfully landed reusable boosters hundreds of times, whereas Blue Origin's heavy-lift New Glenn completed its inaugural launch this year and is still navigating early landing trials. Furthermore, SpaceX operates over 8,000 Starlink satellites, generating billions in ongoing revenue—an area Blue Origin has not yet ventured into. This disparity is evident in government contracts as well: since 2008, SpaceX has secured approximately $24.9 billion in federal commitments, in contrast to about $2.6 billion for Blue Origin.
Starship introduces another level of distinction. SpaceX is already engaging in flight tests of a fully reusable super-heavy launch system aimed at considerably lowering the cost to access orbit and supporting missions to the Moon and Mars. Blue Origin currently lacks a comparable vehicle in its plans.
Nonetheless, Blue Origin possesses genuine advantages beyond its increasing regulatory support. Its BE-4 engine powers both New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur, establishing Blue Origin as an essential supplier for the U.S. launch market. Jeff Bezos also financially backs the company with billions, providing a level of financial support that few aerospace startups can rival. Unlike most space startups, Blue Origin is not under intense pressure to raise funds or focus on short-term profitability, allowing it to invest steadily in long-term projects. Moreover, unlike many competitors, New Glenn was architected for reusability from the beginning, positioning it well to compete in a market that increasingly hinges on repeatedly utilizing the same hardware to reduce launch costs.
Is Catching Up Necessary?Closing the gap with Starlink or Starship within this decade appears unlikely given SpaceX's advantages in financial flow and flight data.
Blue Origin does not require operational equivalence to be of significance to investors. It must establish sufficient credibility and government endorsement to remain the funded alternative in major projects, and the contracting trends over the last year indicate that this is precisely what is occurring. For SpaceX investors, the concern is that federal agencies might intentionally allocate funds to sustain a second supplier, thereby limiting how much pricing influence and contract share SpaceX can ultimately command, despite its operational supremacy.
While the space sector continues to be a high-interest field, valuations stay elevated. It becomes essential to balance investments like this against validated cash-generating platforms. A disciplined investment strategy aids in maintaining your position while limiting the repercussions of market fluctuations. While consistently outperforming the market can be difficult, the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio aims to make this an attainable objective. The HQ approach has consistently surpassed its market benchmark since inception, yielding cumulative returns exceeding 105 percent.
Although earnings season is right around the corner, all eyes are on Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) (SPCX +2.69%) this week -- and with good reason.
A little over three weeks ago, SpaceX rewrote Wall Street's record books by raising $85.7 billion with its initial public offering (IPO), including the underwriters' option. Tomorrow, July 7, it'll once again alter history by joining one of Wall Street's most prestigious indexes, the Nasdaq-100. But what if I told you that SpaceX's entry into the Nasdaq-100 isn't tomorrow's biggest catalyst for the stock?
Image source: Getty Images.
In a presumed effort to attract Musk's company to list its shares on the Nasdaq (NDAQ +2.50%) stock exchange, Nasdaq Global Indexes amended several rules concerning Nasdaq-100 inclusion. These updated criteria, effective as of May 1, removed the low-float requirement and significantly shortened the timeline to Nasdaq-100 inclusion from around three months to only 15 trading days. Today, July 6, marks SpaceX's 15th trading session as a public company.
Nasdaq Global Indexes wasn't the only committee that made changes ahead of SpaceX's debut. The U.S. Russell Indexes also reduced the wait period for large-cap inclusion in the Russell 1000 and Russell 3000 to just five trading days, down from once per quarter.
To be clear, this means only the S&P 500 will exclude SpaceX shortly after its IPO.
FTSE Russell adds eligible megacap IPOs after the close of the 5th trading day.
Nasdaq adds them about 15 trading days after listing.
The S&P 500 kept its rules, so SpaceX waits the full...
-- Hedgeye (@Hedgeye) June 4, 2026 What makes these adjustments so impactful is that fast entry inclusion will force index funds tracking the Nasdaq-100 (as well as Russell 1000 and Russell 3000) to purchase shares of SpaceX. This represents tens of billions of dollars in passive buying that may provide a solid lift to SpaceX's shares.
But while SpaceX's addition to the Nasdaq-100 has been well-telegraphed, tomorrow's premier catalyst has flown completely under the radar.
Image source: Getty Images.
Most of Wall Street can now legally chime in on SpaceX If there's one thing you can always count on from Wall Street's leading investment banks and financial institutions, it's their willingness to weigh in on the stock market's largest companies. However, you may have noticed that chatter about SpaceX has been relatively quiet -- and there's a legal reason why.
When SpaceX went public, it had 21 separate underwriters. For context, you can count the number of underwriters for most IPOs on one hand. SpaceX's lead underwriter was Goldman Sachs, with most of the remaining 20 functioning as participating underwriters.
According to Securities and Exchange Commission rules, participating underwriters must abide by a 25-calendar-day quiet period following an IPO. During this time, participating underwriters aren't allowed to issue research reports, make buy/sell recommendations, or set price targets on the company they helped take public.
🚨 SpaceX has officially priced its IPO at $135 per share and is set to begin trading tomorrow under the ticker $SPCX 🚀
The company is offering 555.6 million shares, raising approximately $75 billion in what is expected to be the largest IPO in history.@SpaceX also granted... https://t.co/1madtRs7pi pic.twitter.com/OZdixY7knl
-- Herbert Ong (@herbertong) June 12, 2026 July 6 will be the 25th calendar day since SpaceX started trading, meaning July 7 can open the proverbial floodgates for Wall Street coverage. Given that the company's underwriters were allotted shares, investors can practically count on a majority of these participating underwriters initiating coverage of SpaceX with a buy-equivalent rating and a generous price target.
But investors would be wise not to take the bait. While a perfect storm of catalysts is set up for July 7, SpaceX's staggered and accelerated share lockup period is rapidly approaching, and it has the potential to decimate retail investors.
Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Goldman Sachs Group. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.69%), better known as SpaceX, has been receiving a lot of attention for its deals to sell compute capacity to artificial intelligence (AI) companies, including Anthropic and Alphabet. So far, it holds contracts worth about $28 billion in annual revenue.
In its in initial public offering (IPO) registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX said the total addressable market for its AI businesses is $26.5 trillion. That includes a $2.4 trillion infrastructure market, where SpaceX eventually plans to extend from terrestrial data centers to solar-powered orbital data centers, and a huge opportunity to sell enterprise AI applications.
But things change quickly at SpaceX, and it's reportedly pursuing an opportunity in a $1.6 trillion market that could prove even more valuable than its AI operations. Here's what investors need to know.
Image source: Getty Images.
The most promising business inside SpaceX could be getting bigger SpaceX had a net loss of $5 billion on $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, but a look under the hood reveals several different stories. The company's launch services and AI segments generated significant operating losses last year, but its Starlink connectivity business generated $4.4 billion in operating income. Both subscribers and profits more than doubled from the prior year, even as it lowered its average pricing.
The next move for Starlink could be an expansion into wireless phone service. The company is reportedly planning to launch a mobile service for U.S. consumers in the near future, taking on telecom giants AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
SpaceX has held talks with Charter Communications for a potential mobile phone partnership, according to reports. Doing so could give it access to Charter's internet infrastructure and its mobile virtual network agreement with Verizon.
Today's Change
(
2.69
%) $
4.24
Current Price
$
161.78
Ultimately, SpaceX sees the potential for the internet and wireless phone service market to reach $1.6 trillion, according to its IPO filing. And it has the potential to offer the service at a relatively high margin. Starlink's operating margin is about 40%, and that could climb higher as it scales operations and reduces launch costs. Athough the operating margin on wireless communication businesses is considerably lower (about 20% for the three big U.S. carriers), SpaceX could find that supplementing its network, or partner network, with its satellite connectivity could allow it to generate higher margins.
Meanwhile, it's unclear how profitable the AI segment can be. Although management boasts a tremendous return on its invested capital from its infrastructure-as-a-service deals, it might not have a long-term competitive advantage. The cost and viability of orbital data centers will determine if SpaceX can scale its operations and how profitable it will be.
At the same time, SpaceX's own AI development efforts appear to be taking a back seat, as it has fallen behind leading AI labs and has seen limited consumer traction. It will likely remain a niche player in the sector, weighing on operating margins. Despite the vast addressable market, SpaceX doesn't appear well-positioned to capture a significant share.
As such, I see much more potential for profit in the connectivity business than in AI.
How big could the business get? There's little doubt SpaceX has a very compelling product with its satellite internet business. However, leveraging that into a full-on wireless business is more difficult. It needs to build out a terrestrial wireless network to offer a competitive service. That takes both time, money, and access to limited, government-controlled spectrum licenses.
To that end, SpaceX acquired 65 MHz from EchoStar and participated in the recent Federal Communication Commission (FCC) auction for some of EchoStar's forfeited licenses. However, its participation was limited to filling in just a few key gaps, not indicative of plans to build an entire network.
To put SpaceX's spectrum position into perspective, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon have 375 MHz, 314 MHz, and 279 MHz in population-weighted spectrum licenses, respectively. The next significant FCC auction is next year, so it will take a long time for SpaceX to catch up and build out a network.
But SpaceX does offer a key supplementary service to wireless carriers: satellite connectivity in remote areas. In fact, SpaceX's posturing may simply be a negotiating tactic to secure better terms or longer-term partnerships. SpaceX currently partners with T-Mobile in the U.S.
In that case, it could continue to expand the profitable Starlink business and receive a nice profit boost from carrier deals before pursuing the wireless space directly. New York University professor Aswath Damodaran projects it could generate $120 billion at a 60% operating margin by 2036. That's a 10-fold increase in 10 years, and it seems like a reasonable estimate based on the strength of the satellite connectivity business.
Unfortunately, investors are currently paying a premium price for the rest of the company, including its AI operations. If you expect an investment in SpaceX to produce reasonable returns at its current price, you must also expect the AI business to prove more profitable in the long run than its connectivity business. Right now, the connectivity business holds more promise.
Have you considered buying shares of Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.69%)? Even if you haven't, you could soon own a stake in the high-profile company. On Tuesday, July 7, 2026, millions of Americans will become SpaceX investors -- whether they wanted to or not.
SpaceX will be included in the Nasdaq-100 index only 15 trading days after its initial public offering on June 12 -- the largest IPO in stock market history. Could the space stock surge when it joins the technology-heavy index? Maybe. Even if it does, history suggests the bounce won't last long.
Image source: Getty Images.
The law of supply and demand is at work. The logic is straightforward about why SpaceX's share price could enjoy a nice bump once the company is added to the Nasdaq-100. It's basically the law of supply and demand at work. This law states that if a product has high demand and low supply, its price will increase -- and vice versa.
SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 will definitely boost demand for the stock. Every exchange-traded fund (ETF) and mutual fund that seeks to track the index will have to buy shares of SpaceX. The biggest of these funds is the Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 (QQQ 1.73%). This fund has roughly $481 billion in assets under management. It's also the second most-traded ETF in the U.S.
Overall, funds representing more than $800 billion in assets track the Nasdaq-100. SpaceX's initial weight in the index is estimated to be between 0.47% and 0.7%. The high end of that range means that around $7 billion of the company's shares must be bought by funds.
Now, for the supply side of the law of supply and demand. SpaceX has a remarkably low float (the number of shares available for public trading on the open market) of around 281.2 million shares. The forced buying resulting from the stock's inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 will increase demand for those shares quite a bit.
High demand. Low supply. Those are the textbook ingredients for a price increase.
More to the story So will SpaceX's share price surge on July 7? Not necessarily. Although the law of supply and demand is ironclad, there's more to the story.
ETFs and mutual funds that track the Nasdaq-100 won't buy SpaceX stock until it's part of the index, but that doesn't mean other investors can't. Some institutional investors and arbitrageurs can buy a stock in the days and weeks between Nasdaq's (NDAQ +2.50%) official announcement of a new addition to the Nasdaq-100 and the change's effective date. This drives the share price up before the stock is added to the index. On the actual day the stock joins the Nasdaq-100, these early buyers sell their shares at a profit -- but the transaction price could be lower than the prior-day share price.
We don't have to look back very far to see examples of this phenomenon. On June 11, 2026, Nasdaq announced that five companies would be added to the Nasdaq-100 effective June 22, 2026: Astera Labs (ALAB 5.87%), CoreWeave (CRWV 4.58%), Nebius Group (NBIS 6.09%), Rocket Lab (RKLB +0.32%), and Teradyne (TER 13.75%). Four of the five stocks increased by a double-digit percentage between the two dates.
However, on the actual date the companies were added to the Nasdaq-100, three of the five stocks fell. Over the next few days, all of them declined. Shares of three of the new index members dropped significantly.
ALAB data by YCharts
If history is any guide, any SpaceX bump following its addition to the Nasdaq-100 will be short-lived. There's also another factor that could cause history to repeat itself with gusto. SpaceX's staggered lockup expiration schedule begins allowing insiders and pre-IPO investors to sell some of their shares after the company's second-quarter earnings are announced. The Q2 update could come as early as mid-July.
Is SpaceX stock a buy? Investors hoping to score a quick gain from SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 are rolling the dice. That will also be true when the stock is eventually added to the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.00%) index.
But could buying SpaceX now be a smart move for long-term investors? Again, the answer is "maybe." The company appears to have tremendous growth prospects in the satellite internet services, launch, and artificial intelligence (AI) markets. However, with the stock trading at more than 31 times projected 2027 sales, expectations of sizzling growth are already baked into the share price. Other Nasdaq-100 stocks could offer more attractive risk-reward propositions.
Following the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.69%) stock is starting to pop up in a variety of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The number seems to increase by the day.
To be precise, the stock in Elon Musk's reusable rockets company is a constituent of 148 ETFs as of July 3. The stock is a top-15 holding in 35 of those funds. Market participants looking to leverage ETFs as proxies on SpaceX stock have plenty of options to consider. There are actively managed funds with the flexibility to feature large exposure to SpaceX. Likewise, there's a growing population of dedicated space ETFs holding the stock.
Investors may be surprised by which ETFs and index funds now hold SpaceX stock. Image source: Getty Images.
But unbeknownst to some market participants, SpaceX is popping up in some basic index funds. Let's look at why that's the case and which well-known index funds are already SpaceX holders.
Points of order Due to the size of the SpaceX IPO, some index providers altered their inclusion rules, setting the stage for this stock to join select benchmarks in short order.
On that note, S&P Dow Jones Indices didn't follow suit, meaning that investors holding the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO 0.09%) or another basic S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.00%) ETF or index fund won't see SpaceX on those funds' roster until June 2027 at the earliest.
Among the big-name ETFs and index funds that are now SpaceX holders are products tracking FTSE Russell indexes, such as the Russell 1000 Index. Following the annual Russell reconstitution, SpaceX is now a member of that index and thus included in popular ETFs such as the iShares Russell 1000 ETF (IWB 0.03%) and the Vanguard Russell 1000 ETF (VONE 0.09%). Those ETFs have about $59 billion in combined assets under management.
Today's Change
(
2.69
%) $
4.24
Current Price
$
161.78
The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI 0.14%), one of the largest ETFs trading in the U.S., also holds SpaceX because its underlying index, the CRSP US Total Market Index, added the stock on June 18. However, this fund and the aforementioned Russell 1000 trackers aren't "SpaceX ETFs." Because only a small percentage of SpaceX's shares (3% to 5%, by some estimates) are publicly traded, the stock doesn't command prominent positioning in these ETFs. The Russell 1000 ETFs allocate just 0.13% to SpaceX, while the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF allocates less than 0.2% of invested funds to SpaceX.
MSCI indexes, too MSCI is one of the world's largest providers of benchmarks used by passive funds, and it too fast-tracked SpaceX. So the stock is now part of well-known indexes such as the MSCI USA Index and the MSCI All Country World Index. Among U.S.-traded ETFs, the latter gauge is more prominent. For example, it's tracked by the $33 billion iShares MSCI ACWI ETF (ACWI +0.02%), but that ETF's SpaceX weight is just 0.08%.
Investors engaging with sector ETFs should note that MSCI is one of the dominant providers of benchmarks for those products. As such, SpaceX is already included in some sector ETFs tracking MSCI indexes. For example, the stock accounts for 2.2% of the $1.8 billion Fidelity MSCI Communication Services Index ETF (FCOM 0.71%).
It's a trend to monitor because, as more of SpaceX's float is released, the stock could eventually command massive percentages of communication services ETFs tracking MSCI benchmarks.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.83%), commonly known as SpaceX, opened at $150 on its first day of trading following its IPO. Had you invested $1,000 then, you'd have approximately $1,080 right now. No, that's not very impressive.
But have some perspective! That's an 8% gain in a few weeks. Plus, SpaceX stock rocketed to a high of $225 before pulling back, so you'd have made a much larger profit if you sold closer to the top.
But the real question moving forward is whether the stock will recapture that upward momentum anytime soon. Nobody can know for sure, but investors are probably best to consider SpaceX a long-term investment rather than a get-rich-quick trade. Here's why the stock could take time to deliver the returns investors hope for.
Image source: Getty Images.
The AI space race will take years As much as investors associate SpaceX with rockets, the company believes the bulk of its value will come from its growth opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI). AI accounted for all but $2 trillion of the $28.5 trillion addressable market outlined in SpaceX's S-1 filing. SpaceX merged with xAI in February 2026 and plans to build out AI infrastructure in space, including satellites and data centers.
But that will take time. According to a Reuters report, SpaceX could begin launching orbital AI infrastructure test demonstrations by the end of next year. Aside from CEO Elon Musk's long track record of pushing back ambitious timelines, it will likely take years to launch, build, and monetize enough infrastructure to move the needle for SpaceX's financials.
That's not to say it won't happen. But it's important that investors set the proper expectations. SpaceX is a tantalizing growth story over the next five, 10, even 20 years, not the next 12 months.
SpaceX's current valuation will likely drag on the stock
Today's Change
(
2.83
%) $
4.46
Current Price
$
162.00
In that light, SpaceX's valuation becomes a major factor in the stock's near-term performance. As you've probably heard, SpaceX was the largest and arguably most anticipated IPO in history. That means that SpaceX stock went public at a price that reflects all that excitement.
The stock currently has a market cap of $2.1 trillion. It's already one of the world's most valuable companies.
SpaceX's total revenue was $18.6 billion in 2025. That's a price-to-sales ratio of 112. In other words, you're getting less than a penny of SpaceX's revenue for each dollar you invest. It's extremely difficult for stocks to sustain such high valuations, and history offers many examples of stocks that burst onto the scene and then struggled once the business inevitably failed to meet the unrealistically high expectations that come with those valuations.
Unfortunately, it could take years for SpaceX's early buyers to get the returns they hope for. I don't mean that as a knock on a genuinely remarkable company. The reality is that the price you pay always matters.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.69%) is testing how much investors are willing to pay for a company that controls valuable space infrastructure.
SpaceX currently trades at a very rich valuation of nearly 82 times trailing 12-month sales. The stock's sharp rise after the IPO, followed by a pullback, suggests investors are still trying to decide how much of SpaceX's long-term opportunity is already reflected in its valuation.
Image source: Getty Images.
Starlink and Starship are the key growth catalysts Starlink satellite internet is the clearest reason for SpaceX's premium valuation. The company's connectivity business, driven mainly by Starlink, generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income in 2025. Starlink also had about 10.3 million users across 9,600 satellites at the end of the first quarter of 2026. Unlike launch sales, which can be lumpy, Starlink gives SpaceX a profitable recurring revenue engine, global reach, and a direct customer relationship.
Today's Change
(
2.69
%) $
4.24
Current Price
$
161.78
SpaceX's next-generation reusable rocket system, Starship, is expected to carry 100 metric tons to orbit. This will give the company far greater capacity to launch larger Starlink satellites, expanding the network faster and at lower cost. The larger next-generation Starlink satellites are designed to support more than 10 times the internet download capacity of the smaller V2 satellites SpaceX currently launches on its Falcon 9 rocket system.
What could $1,000 become by 2031? SpaceX is also spending heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The company's AI business posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion, accounting for nearly 61% of its $20.7 billion in capital spending in 2025.
So, for SpaceX to justify its premium valuation, Starlink must keep growing, Starship must make satellite deployment cheaper, and AI infrastructure must eventually become profitable.
Since 2023, Nvidia's price-to-sales ratio has stayed mostly above 20 times. SpaceX is not Nvidia, but if investors keep viewing it as a leader in low-Earth-orbit connectivity and launch infrastructure, 18 to 25 times sales multiple could be a defensible five-year estimate.
Analysts expect SpaceX to generate about $224.8 billion of revenue in 2031. This may prove conservative, considering that CEO Elon Musk expects revenue to reach $1 trillion by 2031. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley expect SpaceX's revenue to be $470 billion and $330 billion, respectively, in 2030.
If SpaceX reaches the 2031 revenue estimate and trades at around 11 times sales, its market capitalization would be around $2.47 trillion. This cautious valuation is close to Rocket Lab's sales multiple at the end of 2023, before investor enthusiasm for vertically integrated space platforms pushed the stock much higher.
Based on roughly 13.1 billion shares outstanding, that would imply a share price near $188, turning a $1,000 investment at about $170.80 per share (as of June 30, 2026) into roughly $1,100. At 18 times sales, SpaceX would be valued at about $4.05 trillion, implying a share price near $307 and a $1,000 investment value of roughly $1,797. At 25 times sales, SpaceX would be worth about $5.62 trillion, implying a share price near $427 and a $1,000 investment value of roughly $2,499.
Hence, $1,000 invested in SpaceX today could grow to about $1,100 to $2,499, depending on whether investors apply a cautious premium valuation or a category-leader multiple.
Listen below or on the go via Apple Podcasts and Spotify
SpaceX exits quiet period and enters Nasdaq 100. (0:17) PepsiCo headlines light earnings calendar. (1:16) ‘Ghost ticketing’ investigation. (2:23)
SpaceX (SPCX) gets two major catalysts this week, and the options market suggests traders are expecting a solid—and possibly spectacular—move.
On Tuesday, the IPO quiet period ends, freeing analysts to publish ratings and price targets. The stock will also join the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ).
The July 10 options chain shows traders positioned for those twin catalysts, with the $180 and $190 calls attracting the strongest bullish interest.
SPCX closed at $162 on Thursday, with weekly options implying a move of about ±9% by Friday's expiration. The $180 and $190 calls represent gains of roughly 11% and 17%, respectively.
Downside positioning is relatively light, with little in the options chain pointing to strong bearish conviction.
Then there's the $330 call. On a stock trading at $162, 106,038 contracts changed hands despite carrying just 36,131 contracts of open interest. At about $0.20 each, they represent retail lottery tickets in their purest form—a wager that SpaceX more than doubles by Friday.
PepsiCo (PEP) headlines the earnings calendar on Thursday, with analysts expecting EPS of $2.21 on revenue of about $24B.
SA analyst Motti Sapir, who rates the stock a Hold, says PepsiCo needs to show "clear growth in North America for both drinks and snacks, real positive free cash flow, and proof it can control costs without losing ground to rivals" for the bulls to return.
But Kody's Dividends, which rates the stock a Buy, argues PepsiCo remains an attractive value and income play and "also looks like it can sustain respectable constant-currency core EPS growth in the years ahead."
Also on the earnings calendarm, Levi Strauss (LEVI) reports on Wednesday, while Delta Air Lines (DAL) reports on Friday.
Looking to the economy, the FOMC will release the minutes from its first meeting under Chairman Kevin Warsh on Wednesday.
Wells Fargo economists say they will be watching for "any signs of what could shift a divided Committee from a hold toward rate hikes."
"We will be looking at whether a majority of participants view the recent pickup in inflation as persistent enough to warrant additional tightening or as primarily a temporary supply shock," they said.
"We will also be interested in the extent to which Committee members view the labor market and the demand side of the economy as an inflationary problem."
In the news this weekend, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into allegations that StubHub (STUB) canceled or failed to deliver World Cup tickets in a practice known as "ghost ticketing."
Soccer fans across the country complained that their tickets were canceled days, or sometimes hours, before matches.
StubHub blamed the issue on "transfer problems" with FIFA's ticketing platform. But Paxton said consumers instead attribute the cancellations to "ghost ticketing," in which sellers collect payment for tickets they don't possess and later cancel the sale.
And starting Monday, Tesla (TSLA) will cap employees' spending on AI products at $200 a week.
The Information reported that the limit will not apply to xAI.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk said output per Tesla employee "is going to get nutty high" thanks to the company's internal use of AI and its Optimus humanoid robot program.
And it's a busy week for dividend investors.
On Monday, AI bellwether Micron (MU), GE Aerospace (GE), JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) all go ex-dividend.
Micron pays on July 21, GE on July 27, JPMorgan on July 31 and Cisco on July 22.
On Tuesday, Dollar General (DG) goes ex-dividend, with a July 21 payout.
The New York Times (NYT) goes ex-dividend on Wednesday and will pay shareholders on July 23.
Accenture (ACN) and Mastercard (MA) both go ex-dividend on Thursday.
Accenture pays on August 14, while Mastercard's payout is August 7.
On Friday, AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), Marvell Technology (MRVL), Toll Brothers (TOL), Oracle (ORCL) and Lennar (LEN) all go ex-dividend.
AT&T pays out on August 3. Verizon pays out on August 3, with Marvell on July 30 and Toll Brothers, Lennar and Oracle on July 24.
