Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Editorial Commentary — Commercial Space Series

SpaceX's listing drew investor attention to the broader space economy, including lunar infrastructure. Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR) has emerged as a leading public name in NASA's commercial Moon program, with record revenue and a US$1.1 billion backlog.

, /PRNewswire/ -- American News Group Market Commentary, The public listing of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) As the most valuable private enterprise in the world arrived on the public market, it reframed the entire space sector as an investable theme — and capital began searching for the listed names attached to each piece of the opportunity. Among the threads that drew fresh attention was one of the most evocative: the return to the Moon. Get our free Orbital Economy Signal Brief for plain-English intelligence on the commercial-space sector, delivered as it moves.

Key Takeaways

The SpaceX IPO reframed space as a public-market theme, and reporting noted a broad rally across space stocks tied to lunar and Moon-base initiatives. Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR) reported record Q1 2026 revenue of about US$186.7 million, nearly triple the prior year, with a backlog of about US$1.1 billion. Growth was driven by its US$800 million Lanteris Space Systems acquisition and NASA and U.S. Space Force contracts, including selection for the Andromeda IDIQ with a ceiling reported up to US$6.2 billion. Other listed names spanning lunar and space infrastructure include Voyager Technologies (NYSE: VOYG) and Boeing (NYSE: BA) — each distinct, and neither a proxy for the other. From One Mega-IPO to a Sector-Wide Re-Rating

Reporting around the period noted a rally across space stocks tied to NASA's lunar ambitions and Moon-base planning. SpaceX itself is central to that story — its Starship is integral to NASA's Artemis program — but the lunar economy is being built by a wider set of companies, several of them already public. The one that has moved most decisively into that role is Intuitive Machines.

Intuitive Machines: A Lunar Pioneer Turning Into a Space Prime

Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR), based in Houston, first drew headlines as a lunar-lander company — its Nova-C spacecraft became the first U.S. vehicle to soft-land on the Moon since Apollo. But its 2026 story is one of transformation from a single-mission lunar specialist into a vertically integrated, multi-domain space contractor. In the first quarter of 2026, the company reported record revenue of about US$186.7 million — nearly triple the prior-year period — alongside positive adjusted EBITDA of US$2.7 million and a contracted backlog of roughly US$1.1 billion.

The leap was powered by its roughly US$800 million acquisition of Lanteris Space Systems, which broadened the company well beyond landers, plus a run of government awards. Management described a revenue mix split across commercial, civil, and national-security customers, and pointed to milestones including a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order for its IM-5 mission and selection for the U.S. Space Force's Andromeda IDIQ, a space-domain-awareness program with a ceiling reported as high as US$6.2 billion. The company reaffirmed full-year 2026 revenue guidance of US$900 million to US$1 billion.

As ever, the counterweight matters. Intuitive Machines carries concentrated exposure to government contracts and their appropriations timing, integration risk from rapid acquisitions, and the simple reality that lunar missions are difficult — its earlier landing famously tipped on touchdown while still returning data. The backlog provides visibility; it does not eliminate execution risk.

Why the Lunar Economy Is Suddenly an Investment Category

The deeper shift the SpaceX IPO helped surface is that "going to the Moon" has become a procurement program, not just an exploration goal. NASA's Artemis effort and its associated Moon-base planning are designed to be executed substantially through commercial contracts — landers, terrain vehicles, communications relays, and surface infrastructure bought from private companies. That converts a national ambition into a recurring revenue opportunity for the firms positioned to win the work, and it is why a lunar-services company's backlog and contract wins now read like those of any other government-exposed growth business. Intuitive Machines has leaned directly into that, expanding from landers into space-to-Earth data relay through planned acquisitions of ground-station assets, building toward the kind of integrated infrastructure the program will need for years. Tracking how this sector is being repriced in real time? Join the free Orbital Economy Signal Brief to follow the shifts as they happen.

The Wider Lunar-and-Infrastructure Field

A couple of other listed companies frame the broader infrastructure landscape around the lunar and space-services theme — each distinct, and neither a proxy for the other. Voyager Technologies (NYSE: VOYG) is a space-and-defense technology company working across propulsion, precision systems, and space-infrastructure programs, and has been awarded a series of defense and space contracts as it builds out its platform. Boeing (NYSE: BA) anchors the large-cap, incumbent end: a diversified aerospace-and-defense prime with deep space heritage spanning human spaceflight, satellites, and major NASA programs. It is the steadier, established route into the same broad theme, with none of the pure-play torque — or the pure-play risk — of a smaller name. Together they show a lunar-and-space-infrastructure trade that runs from focused specialists to century-old primes, all drawn closer to the spotlight as SpaceX's listing re-rated the category — though each remains tied to its own contracts and execution.

Another Name in the Space-Access Field

Among the smaller, specialized names in the field is Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET), referenced here purely for context and not as a recommendation. Over recent months the company has announced a series of partnership and development steps, including engaging Integrated Launch Solutions (ILS) to support mission design and range integration for its STARLAUNCH pathway, joining the NSF-proposed C-STARS research consortium at the University of Florida, and expanding a partnership with Mu-g Technologies on microgravity research. The company has said it is targeting a STARLAUNCH II space-demonstration flight over a roughly 18-to-24-month window, subject to regulatory approvals and execution. These are the company's own publicly stated plans.

The Bottom Line

SpaceX's arrival on the public market turned the space economy into a theme investors feel they must understand — and the road back to the Moon is one of its most tangible pieces. Intuitive Machines has positioned itself as a leading public name in that build-out, with record revenue, a billion-dollar-plus backlog, and a deliberate pivot from lunar lander to multi-domain space prime. The opportunity is real and contract-backed; so are the risks of government timing and acquisition integration. For investors drawn to the lunar story the SpaceX IPO helped illuminate, the names are now public and the milestones are now scheduled — with the data, as always, still to be delivered. To keep a closer eye on the launch, satellite, lunar, and space-data economy as it develops, sign up for the free Orbital Economy Signal Brief.

SIGNAL OVER NOISE

Signal over noise. Space, lunar, and defense headlines move fast — and the crowd often moves first. Eagle Eye is a real-time investor signal-intelligence platform that surfaces sentiment shifts, news flow, and trending tickers as they happen, so you see the move forming instead of reading about it later. See it at eagle-eye.dev.

CONTACT

American News Group
[email protected]

SOURCES

[1] Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), Form S-1 registration statement (proposed Nasdaq symbol SPCX), May–June 2026, sec.gov; contemporaneous reporting on space-sector reaction.
[2] Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR), Q1 2026 financial results (record revenue, US$1.1B backlog, Lanteris, Andromeda IDIQ, IM-5), May 2026.
[3] Voyager Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: VOYG), corporate and contract disclosures, 2026.
[4] The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA), corporate and space-program disclosures, 2026.
[5] Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET), company press releases (Integrated Launch Solutions engagement; C-STARS; Mu-g partnership; STARLAUNCH II demonstration timeline), 2026.

DISCLAIMER

IMPORTANT — PLEASE READ: This article is editorial commentary and was NOT paid for, requested, commissioned, reviewed, or approved by any of the companies named in it, nor by Creative Direct Marketing Group ("CDMG"). No company mentioned in this article paid for or had any involvement in its preparation or publication. The disclosures that follow are provided in the interest of full transparency regarding our broader business relationships, even though they do not apply to this specific article.

Nothing in this publication should be considered as personalized financial advice. We are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular financial situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. Please consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision. This publication is neither an offer nor a recommendation to buy or sell any security. We hold no investment licenses and are thus neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice. The content in this report or email is not provided to any individual with a view toward their individual circumstances. American News Group is owned and operated by Market IQ Media Group Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of Ireland ("MIQL"). As part of its ongoing business, MIQL has been paid fees by CDMG for advertising and digital media for Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) in connection with separate, paid campaigns; those paid materials are distinct from this article, which is unpaid editorial. This relationship constitutes a potential conflict of interest as to our ability to remain objective in our commentary regarding Starfighters Space, Inc., and readers are strongly encouraged not to use this publication as the basis for any investment decision. MIQL and its owner/operators do not own shares of Starfighters Space, Inc. or of any other company named in this article in connection with this piece, but reserve the right to buy and sell securities of any company mentioned at any time without further notice. While all information is believed to be reliable, it is not guaranteed by us to be accurate. Individuals should assume that all information contained in our publication is not trustworthy unless verified by their own independent research. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making any investment decision. Be extremely careful, investing in securities carries a high degree of risk; you may likely lose some or all of the investment.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This publication contains forward-looking statements concerning the companies referenced and the commercial-space sector, including statements regarding the proposed initial public offering of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. ("SpaceX") and its reported terms, which are based on third-party reporting and SpaceX's own filings and remain subject to change until and unless finalized; product development, launch and mission timelines; contract awards and backlog; and broader market conditions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks and uncertainties — including execution, regulatory, financing, competitive and macroeconomic risks — that could cause actual results to differ materially, as detailed in each referenced company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. References to SpaceX are for thematic and contextual purposes only; SpaceX is a separate company with no affiliation to the publisher, and nothing herein is an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell, securities of SpaceX or any other company. Figures attributed to named companies are drawn from those companies' public disclosures. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made; the publisher undertakes no obligation to update or revise them except as required by applicable law.

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Copyright ©2026 Investor's Business Daily, LLC. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.13%) has plenty of supporters, including the billionaire investor Ron Baron -- and for good reason.

Baron founded the asset management firm Baron Capital in 1982 with just $10 million. Earlier this month, the fund had total assets nearing $56 billion. SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA +1.38%) founder Elon Musk have played a big role in Baron Capital's gains over the past 12 years, and Baron thinks SpaceX is poised to be something special.

Here's what a $50,000 investment in SpaceX stock today could be worth in a decade, according to Baron.

Image source: Getty Images.

Baron Capital has made a killing off Elon Musk Baron is widely considered one of the best growth investors ever, so it should come as no surprise that some of Musk's companies appealed to him. Baron first struck it rich off Musk by investing $400 million in Tesla between 2014 and 2016.

That turned out to be a good bet. Baron, on CNBC, said the fund has made about $8 billion in profit from its Tesla investment. This also served as a segue into SpaceX. Baron started investing in SpaceX when it was private in 2017, eventually building a $1.7 billion stake.

In a letter to investors earlier this year, Baron said the SpaceX position would be worth $24 billion if SpaceX proved successful in raising $70 billion. Including the greenshoe allocation -- additional shares that the underwriters have the right to purchase following a company's initial public offering -- SpaceX raised close to $86 billion.

SpaceX also trades at a market cap of roughly $2 trillion, and Baron bought an additional $1 billion worth of shares in the IPO.

Why Baron thinks SpaceX will moon Baron thinks Musk and SpaceX have a huge head start on the competition, at least a decade, when it comes to making satellites and rockets and building networks. Baron has also long been a believer in Elon and doesn't think there will ever be anyone like him again.

While SpaceX's artificial intelligence unit (which houses the Grok intelligence platform, data centers, and a potential future chip manufacturing facility) has grabbed most of the attention in discussions of SpaceX's growth potential, Baron is extremely excited about the company's low Earth orbit satellite internet service, Starlink.

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"It's going to be the internet for the entire planet," Baron said on CNBC on June 16, adding that the service is now planning to eventually have 100,000 satellites because the demand for data is so massive.

In a decade, Baron also expects Starlink to generate $1 trillion in annual revenue and about $700 billion to $800 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), which he believes would put the value of Starlink alone at $14 trillion.

Baron is also excited about the company's artificial intelligence unit, specifically the potential for orbital data centers, which he thinks SpaceX can launch as soon as 2027. In fact, in three years, Baron thinks it's possible that SpaceX will have 1 million satellites in space.

Finally, Baron is also extremely excited about the facility SpaceX is planning to build in partnership with Tesla and Intel, which will focus on building custom chips that are cheaper and specifically designed for the performance needs of these companies.

Baron's expectations for the stock Needless to say, Baron is as enthusiastic about SpaceX as anyone out there.

Retail investors should be careful not to blindly follow institutional investors and instead conduct their own due diligence.

While Baron is widely regarded as one of the best investors, institutional money can get it wrong just like anyone else. Furthermore, several things need to happen for Baron's predictions to come true.

For one, SpaceX needs to make its heavy-lift, fully reusable rocket, Starship, operational. It must also determine whether orbital data centers are feasible and how much they could cost.

That said, in a letter to shareholders in late April, Baron said he expects SpaceX to be worth 10, 20, or even 30 times its post-IPO value in 10 to 15 years. If he's correct, a $50,000 investment in SpaceX around the IPO price of $135 could be worth anywhere from $500,000 to $1.5 million.

I think it's difficult to make a call like this so early in the company's public life, but if you are looking for a bull on SpaceX, Baron is your guy.

When a company raises $86 billion in the largest IPO in history and then turns around five days later to borrow another $25 billion, one of two things is true: It has identified an opportunity so large that no amount of capital is enough, or it has taken on obligations it cannot fund from operations.

With Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SPCX +0.13%), both are true simultaneously, and that tension is exactly what the last 10 days of share transactions have been processing.

The anatomy of the SpaceX debt SpaceX's $25 billion bond offering, priced Tuesday in five tranches with maturities ranging from five to 30 years, is the company's first-ever investment-grade dollar bond issuance. The primary purpose of the raise is not to build new rockets. It is to refinance a $20 billion bridge loan that SpaceX took out in March, when it absorbed Elon Musk's X and xAI in an all-stock deal -- and those companies' combined $17.5 billion in existing debt came along with them.

Image source: Getty Images.

The sequencing matters. SpaceX went public, raised $86 billion, and the very next week turned to the bond market because the bridge loan needed to be repaid and the AI infrastructure build-out requires capital that the IPO proceeds don't fully cover. The offering attracted close to $85 billion in orders, a genuine sign of institutional demand. But bond investors required a premium over Treasuries -- described as "large" -- to get the deal done. That premium is what sophisticated fixed-income buyers charge when they're not certain a company's cash flows fully support its debt load.

Oppenheimer analysts, in initiating coverage, projected SpaceX will carry more than $400 billion in net debt by 2031. That number assumes the AI capital spending cycle continues at its current pace, which is precisely the assumption that deserves scrutiny.

What AI revenue looks like here SpaceX announced a $6.3 billion AI infrastructure deal with a start-up called Reflection AI on the same day it announced the bond sale, framing it as validation of the AI strategy. What the Bloomberg terminal data revealed: Reflection AI's records value the company at $3.6 million. SpaceX is lending $150 million per month in compute to a start-up worth less than one hour of SpaceX's IPO proceeds, under a contract it can terminate after three months. The deal didn't stabilize the stock. Shares fell for a third consecutive session on the news.

The deeper problem is that xAI -- the division that SpaceX absorbed and is now borrowing billions to expand -- generated $818 million in revenue against $2.47 billion in operating losses in Q1 2026 alone. Grok, xAI's large language model, has not demonstrated measurable market share against OpenAI or Alphabet's Google Gemini. SpaceX is taking on long-dated debt, payable over 30 years, to fund a bet on an AI product that is currently losing $3 for every $1 it earns.

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The broader AI valuation problem investors should look at This is where SpaceX's balance sheet decisions collide with a marketwide reckoning that the June sell-off has started to force. The entire premise of AI-driven valuations in 2024 and 2025 rested on a chain of assumptions: that infrastructure spend would translate to revenue, that revenue would compound fast enough to justify current multiples, and that the biggest spenders would capture the most value. That chain hasn't held.

Microsoft's Copilot, after two years of heavy marketing, is still a story about enterprise seat licenses -- not the mass-market productivity revolution that justified its valuation premium. Google announced $175 to 185 billion in capex this year, and its stock sold off before recovering. Amazon is deploying $200 billion on a timeline where returns are years away. The pattern is consistent: AI companies are spending as if demand will arrive faster and at higher margins than current economics support. 

SpaceX is now borrowing at scale to join that race in a market already asking whether the leaders can justify what they've already spent. The stock has erased $400 billion from its post-IPO peak and trades at $157.60, near its first-day close. That's not panic. It's a reassessment.

The bull case is real: cheap long-dated capital, and Grok training on Starlink data from 10 million subscribers is a genuine moat. But the bear case is also recognizable -- using one extraordinary business as collateral to fund AI bets at valuations that may never be recovered. That's what Softbank did. It lost $27 billion in fiscal 2022.

For investors holding SpaceX stock, you're not just owning a launch and satellite company anymore. You're owning an AI conglomerate with $29.1 billion in long-term debt and projections pointing toward $400 billion more. The IPO prospectus told you that was the plan. The question is whether you signed up for it.

Cory Johnson believes the SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is "pretty unique," saying that the stock holding above its IPO price with current valuations is "kind of a miracle." He attributes the price action to the rising demand for the IPO market that includes names like Anthropic, which Cory calls "the biggest company out there.

This has been a historic year for new listings. We're not done yet.

Editorial Commentary — Commercial Space Series

SpaceX's public listing cast Starlink Mobile as a future wireless challenger. AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS) is the most prominent publicly traded company pursuing the same direct-to-device satellite-broadband market.

Key Takeaways

The SpaceX IPO prospectus framed Starlink Mobile as a direct-to-smartphone service intended to compete with terrestrial mobile networks — spotlighting a market that public investors cannot access through SpaceX alone. AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS) is the most prominent listed company building a direct-to-device satellite-broadband network, connecting ordinary, unmodified smartphones from space. AST has reported securing over US$1.2 billion in aggregate contracted revenue commitments from partners, and is targeting 45 to 60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026. Other listed satellite-connectivity names include Globalstar (NASDAQ: GSAT) and Viasat (NASDAQ: VSAT) — each distinct, and neither a proxy for the other. The IPO That Made Satellite-to-Phone a Headline

, /PRNewswire/ -- Equity Insider Market Commentary, When Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the proposed ticker SPCX, the prospectus did more than reveal the financials of the world's most valuable private company. It laid out, in detail, how SpaceX intends to turn its Starlink constellation into a wireless competitor — casting Starlink Mobile as a direct-to-smartphone service designed to perform "on par with terrestrial mobile networks," with next-generation satellites slated to expand the offering beyond messaging toward full broadband and IoT connectivity. Get our free Orbital Economy Signal Brief for plain-English intelligence on the commercial-space sector, delivered as it moves.

That framing turned a once-niche idea — connecting an ordinary phone directly to a satellite, with no special hardware — into a front-page investment theme. But there is a catch for public investors: SpaceX's satellite-to-phone business is bundled inside an enormous company spanning launch, Starlink broadband, and an artificial-intelligence unit. For those seeking a focused, public-market way to play the direct-to-device race specifically, the most prominent name is not SpaceX at all. It is AST SpaceMobile.

AST SpaceMobile: The Public Pure-Play on Phones-From-Space

AST SpaceMobile (Nasdaq: ASTS), based in Midland, Texas, is building what it calls a space-based cellular broadband network designed to connect everyday, unmodified smartphones directly to its satellites — aiming to eliminate mobile "dead zones" worldwide. Where Starlink began as a fixed-broadband service using dedicated terminals, AST's entire thesis is the direct-to-device market that SpaceX's IPO filing has now thrust into the spotlight. That makes the two natural — if vastly differently sized — competitors in the same emerging category.

The company has been building both its constellation and its commercial foundation. AST reported full-year 2025 revenue of about US$70.9 million, driven by mobile-network-operator partners and the U.S. government, and said it had secured over US$1.2 billion in aggregate contracted revenue commitments from partners — a figure that speaks to the scale of carrier interest. It has also reported completing the in-orbit unfolding of BlueBird 6, which it described as the largest commercial communications array ever deployed in low Earth orbit, and has laid out a launch cadence intended to reach 45 to 60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026.

The risk profile is equally clear, and worth stating plainly: AST is a capital-intensive, still-largely-pre-revenue business whose value depends on executing a demanding manufacturing-and-launch campaign on schedule. A successful deployment validates the model; a stumble in cadence or array deployment would do the opposite. This is a build-it-first business, and the build is far from finished.

How AST and SpaceX Actually Differ

It would be a mistake to treat AST as a miniature Starlink. The two take different technical and commercial approaches: AST partners with terrestrial mobile-network operators to extend their existing networks from space, positioning itself as a complement that carriers integrate, rather than a stand-alone consumer ISP. SpaceX, by contrast, has the advantage of owning its own launch vehicles — it flies Starlink satellites on its own Falcon 9 and Starship rockets — plus enormous scale and a head start in subscribers. AST's counter is focus and carrier alignment: it is building specifically for the direct-to-device use case in partnership with the incumbents whose customers it would serve. Which model wins, or whether both coexist, is exactly the open question the SpaceX IPO has made unavoidable. Tracking how this sector is being repriced in real time? Join the free Orbital Economy Signal Brief to follow the shifts as they happen.

The Wider Satellite-Connectivity Field

Beyond AST, a couple of listed satellite-connectivity companies help frame the landscape — each with a distinct model and risk profile, and neither a proxy for the other. Globalstar (Nasdaq: GSAT) provides mobile satellite services and wholesale capacity, reporting first-quarter 2026 revenue of about US$70.1 million, up 17% year-over-year, and has been a long-running infrastructure partner in the satellite-to-phone space. Viasat (Nasdaq: VSAT) anchors the broadband-and-connectivity end as a diversified satellite-communications operator serving aviation, government, and consumer markets. Together with AST, these names show that "satellite connectivity" spans several business models — wholesale capacity and diversified broadband — all being re-rated as the direct-to-device opportunity SpaceX highlighted draws fresh capital and attention. Each, however, will live or die on its own constellation, balance sheet, and execution.

A Note on the Broader Space Trade

One smaller name investors scanning the sector may note is Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET), mentioned here for context only and not as a recommendation. The company has publicly described operating what it calls the world's only commercial fleet of flight-ready Mach 2+ supersonic F-104 aircraft from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and in May 2026 it announced a US$17.5 million strategic equity investment led by institutional investors, with proceeds earmarked to support operational expansion and continued advancement of its STARLAUNCH platform. These are the company's own announced figures; readers should verify them in its filings.

The Bottom Line

The SpaceX IPO did more than reveal Starlink's economics — it confirmed that connecting ordinary phones directly to satellites is a market the most sophisticated player in space intends to pursue aggressively. For public investors, that validation lands not on SpaceX's sprawling franchise but on the focused names building in the same direction. AST SpaceMobile is the most prominent of them, with carrier commitments and an ambitious deployment plan — and the considerable execution risk that comes with building a constellation from scratch. The question the IPO sharpened is no longer whether satellite-to-phone is real, but who builds the winning network. The answer will come from orbit, on a schedule, over the next several years. To keep a closer eye on the launch, satellite, lunar, and space-data economy as it develops, sign up for the free Orbital Economy Signal Brief.

SIGNAL OVER NOISE

Signal over noise. Space, satellite-connectivity, and telecom headlines move fast — and the crowd often moves first. Eagle Eye is a real-time investor signal-intelligence platform that surfaces sentiment shifts, news flow, and trending tickers as they happen, so you see the move forming instead of reading about it later. See it at eagle-eye.dev.

CONTACT

Equity Insider
[email protected]

SOURCES

[1] Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), Form S-1 registration statement and Starlink Mobile disclosures (proposed Nasdaq symbol SPCX), May–June 2026, sec.gov; contemporaneous news reporting.
[2] AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASTS), Q4 and full-year 2025 results and business update, March 2, 2026.
[3] Globalstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: GSAT), Q1 2026 financial results, May 7, 2026.
[4] Viasat, Inc. (Nasdaq: VSAT), corporate disclosures, 2026.
[5] Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET), company press releases ($17.5 million strategic investment; STARLAUNCH; Kennedy Space Center operations), 2026.

DISCLAIMER

IMPORTANT — PLEASE READ: This article is editorial commentary and was NOT paid for, requested, commissioned, reviewed, or approved by any of the companies named in it, nor by Creative Direct Marketing Group ("CDMG"). No company mentioned in this article paid for or had any involvement in its preparation or publication. The disclosures that follow are provided in the interest of full transparency regarding our broader business relationships, even though they do not apply to this specific article.

Nothing in this publication should be considered as personalized financial advice. We are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular financial situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. Please consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision. This publication is neither an offer nor a recommendation to buy or sell any security. We hold no investment licenses and are thus neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice. The content in this report or email is not provided to any individual with a view toward their individual circumstances. Equity Insider is owned and operated by Market IQ Media Group Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of Ireland ("MIQL"). As part of its ongoing business, MIQL has been paid fees by CDMG for advertising and digital media for Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) in connection with separate, paid campaigns; those paid materials are distinct from this article, which is unpaid editorial. This relationship constitutes a potential conflict of interest as to our ability to remain objective in our commentary regarding Starfighters Space, Inc., and readers are strongly encouraged not to use this publication as the basis for any investment decision. MIQL and its owner/operators do not own shares of Starfighters Space, Inc. or of any other company named in this article in connection with this piece, but reserve the right to buy and sell securities of any company mentioned at any time without further notice. While all information is believed to be reliable, it is not guaranteed by us to be accurate. Individuals should assume that all information contained in our publication is not trustworthy unless verified by their own independent research. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making any investment decision. Be extremely careful, investing in securities carries a high degree of risk; you may likely lose some or all of the investment.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This publication contains forward-looking statements concerning the companies referenced and the commercial-space sector, including statements regarding the proposed initial public offering of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. ("SpaceX") and its reported terms, which are based on third-party reporting and SpaceX's own filings and remain subject to change until and unless finalized; product development, launch and mission timelines; contract awards and backlog; and broader market conditions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks and uncertainties — including execution, regulatory, financing, competitive and macroeconomic risks — that could cause actual results to differ materially, as detailed in each referenced company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. References to SpaceX are for thematic and contextual purposes only; SpaceX is a separate company with no affiliation to the publisher, and nothing herein is an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell, securities of SpaceX or any other company. Figures attributed to named companies are drawn from those companies' public disclosures. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made; the publisher undertakes no obligation to update or revise them except as required by applicable law.

Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.13%), led by innovative founder Elon Musk, has wowed investors with its position in the exciting spaces of rocket launches, connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI). And thanks to SpaceX's recent initial public offering, investors have the opportunity to get in on this growth story.

The industrial and tech giant launched a record operation earlier this month, raising more than $85 billion after an overallotment option in what is now the world's biggest IPO. And the stock has climbed in the double digits from its IPO price of $135. Musk says the company has reached an important growth phase -- and he even completed a $25 billion bond sale in recent days to raise additional funds.

Now, whether you're a SpaceX shareholder or considering a position in the stock, you might be wondering what's next for the stock price after the recent positive debut. Where will SpaceX's price be in September? Let's check out what the options market says.

Image source: Getty Images.

Three game-changing growth areas First, let's catch up quickly on the SpaceX story so far and the details of the recent IPO. As mentioned, the company operates in three game-changing growth areas. And what's compelling is that SpaceX's advancements in one area may boost its other businesses. For example, its reusable rocket technology will make it cheaper for the satellite-based internet business to send satellites into space.

SpaceX has made important progress in certain areas, such as bringing down the cost of rocket launches by using its reusable technologies and bringing internet services to customers anywhere through its connectivity business. But many of SpaceX's goals are yet to be accomplished and still require significant investment. The AI business is particularly spending-intensive, with capital spending reaching $12 billion last year -- that drove the entire company to a loss of $4.9 billion.

Since SpaceX is so innovative and must develop its technology to realize many of its dreams -- like putting data centers into orbit -- this spending may be far from over. And this means lasting profitability probably isn't right around the corner. So, though SpaceX is an interesting and exciting company, it involves a certain amount of risk.

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SpaceX's record IPO Many growth investors, however, accepted this risk and rushed to get in on the stock -- during the IPO and after. The IPO, with about 20% of shares earmarked for retail investors, was heavily oversubscribed, and as mentioned above, the stock soared right out of the gate. Underwriters also exercised an overallotment option in the days following the operation, and that increased the funds raised from the initial IPO level of $75 billion.

So it's clear that there's been a lot of interest in this operation and in the stock in its early days on the market. Still, some analysts and investors have questioned the stock's valuation considering its current financial picture. Morningstar, for example, in a note right before the IPO, gave SpaceX a fair value estimate of $63, less than half the offer price.

And today, SpaceX trades for more than 100x sales, which seems considerably high.

SPCX PS Ratio (Annual) data by YCharts

Will SpaceX stock continue to rise? So, it's reasonable to wonder whether the stock's explosive gains will continue. Now, let's consider what the options market is showing. This is where investors buy contracts that allow them to bet on whether a particular stock will rise or fall during a given time frame. A call option, considered bullish, offers the holder the right to buy a certain stock at a set price, while a put option, considered bearish, offers the holder the right to sell at a set price.

Options activity shows a 40% probability of SpaceX stock falling below $130 by the middle of September, Reuters reported this week, citing Susquehanna Financial Group strategist Christopher Jacobson. If this happens, IPO investors may see a loss of at least 3.7%.

Though options still are leaning in a bullish direction, the 40% I mentioned above is high enough to suggest investors might want to proceed with caution. SpaceX is a fascinating company and may eventually reach its goals, but today, valuation and risk are both high -- and these elements could weigh on stock performance in the months to come.

Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.13%), also known as SpaceX, went public on June 12, and it has taken early investors on a roller-coaster ride. Depending on when you got in, you could be sitting on solid gains or a hefty loss.

Successful investing is a long-term endeavor, so it's important not to overreact to what happens over a week, month, or even a year. Ideally, you should plan to hold stocks you buy for at least five years. That said, SpaceX has become one of the largest public companies in the world, so now's a good time to see how it has done over its first few weeks on the market.

Image source: Getty Images.

An extremely volatile two weeks The SpaceX IPO was priced at $135. For anyone who didn't get IPO shares, it opened at $150 on June 12. It trades at $154 as of June 24. But that modest gain is the result of a wild round trip.

SpaceX lived up to the hype over its first three trading days, peaking at about $226 on June 16, a 50% increase from its first-day open. It was even the world's fourth-largest company at one point, ahead of Amazon and Microsoft.

However, SpaceX gradually declined over the rest of the week, closing at $185 on Friday, June 19. SpaceX stock then plummeted on Monday, June 22, closing at $155. Despite some ups and downs, it has mostly been flat since then.

SpaceX's stock was up 50% at its peak, then it fell 32%. You rarely see that kind of volatility in a megacap stock, but there's a simple explanation.

Why has SpaceX been so volatile? The biggest factor driving SpaceX's volatility is its tiny float. Only 4.2% of SpaceX shares are publicly traded after its IPO, while the remaining 95.8% are held by insiders who are in their lockup period and can't sell yet.

Publicly traded companies typically have much higher floats. Most stocks on the major indexes have floats of at least 80%. A small float magnifies price movements. Surges in interest shortly after the IPO can cause substantial price increases. Any negative news can stop the momentum and unleash a rapid drop instead.

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The news that seems to have driven SpaceX's recent decline is the June 22 announcement that it had raised $25 billion in debt through a bond offering. It's using the proceeds to pay off a $20 billion bridge loan for the acquisition of xAI, which is reasonable enough, but raising more money after it just made $75 billion from its IPO worried some investors.

SpaceX's float will gradually increase, as its lockup period has staggered selling windows. In each selling window, a percentage of insider shares unlocks and can be sold on the public market. The final selling window is 180 days after the IPO.

Investors should expect heightened volatility until the lockup period ends in December. Even after that, SpaceX will be a high-risk investment that goes through significant price swings, as space and AI, the company's core businesses, are both volatile industries.

While there's a lot to like about SpaceX, you may want to hold off on investing until the price comes down or the lockup period ends.

SpaceX became one of the quickest additions ever to the Nasdaq-100 index, setting up a fresh wave of buying from passive investors less than a month after the company's blockbuster public debut.

Nasdaq announced after the close Friday whether SpaceX qualifies for inclusion in the benchmark technology index. Assuming the company meets the requirements, index-tracking funds and other product sponsors would begin purchasing shares after the market closes on July 6, with SpaceX officially joining the Nasdaq-100 before trading begins on July 7.

More than $800 billion tracks the index, including the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), which is one of the most popular securities traded each day and is seen as a barometer for the artificial intelligence bull market.

The aerospace and satellite company is expected to enter the index with a weighting of less than 1%.

Adding SpaceX this quickly would make the Elon Musk company one of the first beneficiaries of Nasdaq's recently adopted fast-track inclusion framework for newly public companies. The changes allow some large IPOs to become eligible for the Nasdaq-100 after just 15 trading days, dramatically shortening what had historically been a far longer waiting period.

Under the previous framework, investors tracking the Nasdaq-100 could be forced to wait months before gaining exposure to newly listed market giants.

The inclusion could create another source of demand for SpaceX, which has been one of the most actively traded stocks since its June 12 debut. Index funds and exchange-traded funds tied to the Nasdaq-100 would need to buy shares to match the benchmark's new composition, while active managers who track the index closely might also adjust positions.

Because SpaceX's publicly tradable float remains small compared with its total market capitalization, even a modest index weighting could require meaningful purchases from passive investment vehicles.

Earlier this month, S&P Dow Jones Indices declined to create a similar fast-track process for the S&P 500. Therefore, SpaceX remains ineligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 because of that index's separate profitability and seasoning requirements.

— CNBC's Leslie Picker contributed reporting.

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman along with Motley Fool analyst Emily Flippen discuss:

Robinhood and Rivian layoffs.Are layoffs backfiring?Fox buys Roku, but why?SpaceX buys Cursor.World Cup of investing.Stocks on our radar.To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on June 19, 2026.

Travis Hoium: Is there a new problem with the layoffs in tech? Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I’m Travis Hoium, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Emily Flippen, and we are going to get to the hot topic of the day. That's the SpaceX IPO and the acquisition of Cursor that was officially announced this week.

But, Emily, I wanted to start with some of the layoff news around the market, around technology companies. We had Rivian announce some layoffs this week; we had Robinhood announce layoffs. The other big thing is Meta's layoffs, which was, I think, 8,000 people over the past couple of weeks, a rolling layoff that seems to be hitting their culture. Now, we're investors, and so we're looking at this from an investment standpoint. Typically, layoffs have been cheered over the past few years because it's cost-cutting, companies are going to be more profitable. But it seems like, especially at a company like Meta, we're starting to see the downside that, hey, if that comes at the cost of your culture and people actually wanting to work for you long term, maybe this isn't the right strategy. How in the world should we think about some of these layoffs as they're announced?

Emily Flippen: I'm just feeling shocked that Meta is still claiming to have a culture after all these years, with the number of directions that Zuckerberg has taken that company. I'm shocked that anybody at the company still feels like there's a cohesive culture. I understand the complaints there, but there's no doubt that layoffs, of course, reduce morale across the board. Nobody likes to see their friends, their co-workers, leave the company; nobody likes to feel like their own livelihood is threatened. But what I think is really interesting dynamic is that, to your point, this is really only a recent development, the idea of layoffs being cheered. I mean, prior to 2022, the market really didn't like layoffs. It usually meant a slower economy, less people employed. But after this pandemic, the narrative has really shifted. I think the narrative has become layoffs, Duce off lower inflation, which of course, everybody is concerned about. They also boost earnings, even temporarily, for a company. That’s all coming after what many perceive to be over-hiring that took place during and post-pandemic throughout 2020-2021.

There's actually been some research about this that I think is really interesting and reactions do, of course, and should, significantly change from company to company. But on average, layoff announcements do tend to be followed by poor stock returns for the companies that announce layoffs, and I think that, yes, culture has a part to do with that, Travis, but it might be interestingly enough, just that layoffs actually really produce less cost savings than a lot of people assume. They have the moment of being like, oh, maybe we're going to see a bump in EPS next quarter, but then it's followed by months and years of bad feelings.

Lou Whiteman: [OVERLAPPING]

Emily Flippen: Exactly.

Travis Hoium: Lou, it does seem like one of these things that's really new is, hey, we're announcing layoffs, but we're doing it from a position of strength, and that's supposed to be, it's the buzzword. That was what Robinhood said this week. Hey, we don't really want to do this, but we have a great business, a great balance sheet, lots of profits and we want to make sure that I don't know, we're getting ahead of what could be coming down the pipeline, it seems like an odd position.

Lou Whiteman: It is, I'm going to state the obvious here, but I think it needs to be stated because of some of what the companies say. Layoffs happen for a reason, and that reason normally isn't good. Sometimes an external reason, sometimes internal, you can make the case that right now it's happening because AI gives them cover, maybe. It might not be a warning sign, but there are very few CEOs out there who are going to just do layoffs for fun. If you were cutting people, it's probably because you see something. As Emily said, the reaction is relatively new, and it's far from universal. Just this week, we've had, companies doing layoffs where some it was cheered and some it wasn't, so it's not a universal thing.

Here’s the thing, though, at the end of the day, the market is always forward-looking. Layoffs, I take as a sign that things aren't going as well in this moment as they could be. But since I'm trying to invest in the future, the question is, is that does this position the company for success in the future? Rivian is one we talked about earlier in the week. Rivian, things are not going well today and they are doing layoffs because they need to save cash. But if they work, it could make them a better investment, so it's very nuanced. We never invest or we hardly ever invest on just the conditions today, we are always trying to take a look in the future. A CEO's job is to try to position their company to succeed in the future. Layoffs can be a part of that, so they can be a long-term positive, but they certainly aren’t just layoffs, so stock goes up or layoffs are fun, something like that. It is a sign that something isn't going to script.

Emily Flippen: Always drives me insane about this narrative is when companies say that we're laying off from a position of strength. What is that? If you actually look at the data for companies, the most expensive thing that a company can do is hire somebody. The resources, the time, and the literal money that is spent to bring a single full-time employee into the company’s universe, that is an expensive decision. What you're telling me when you laid off is that you made a lot of really bad decisions in the past. I care less about what that means for next quarter's earnings and much more about what it means for your ability to allocate resources effectively.

Travis Hoium: There always seems to be this narrative, too, that companies can easily pick out the top performers and the bottom performers. Lou, you probably remember, Jack Welch, what was it? Cut the bottom 10% every year, and that's a really easy thing to say, when you actually get into a company, the CEO, the vice president who is making these decisions. I've been in big companies as these have happened. They don’t really know what an entry-level person is doing, and who is a phenomenal engineer, and who just got put on a really bad project. It also seems like there's a level of randomness to it. If you are taking away from that long-term culture that you've been building, I'm going to pick on Robinhood here, but Robinhood has been a phenomenal growth business over the past few years, even since it started. If you start eroding that, like maybe Meta has over the past few years, Lou, that seems like a poor trade-off, short-term versus long-term.

Lou Whiteman: It is, but I mean, look, at the end of the day, Emily's right. If you overhired in the first place, shame on you, but you probably need to do something about it. But again, I don't think, no matter how they spin it, any CEO says layoffs are a good idea. I can think of one CEO who danced on stage after doing layoffs, but it wasn't his company, so I'm not going to even put that in there. It's a cautionary tale, but I think it's something CEOs already know, whether it's layoffs, buyouts, anything, these survivors are maybe looking over their shoulder a little. You've lost a friend, you've lost the person you eat lunch with. There's a lot of reasons why things can go even among the remainders, you have a net negative. Companies, again, if you want to signal as an investor, nobody goes through this if there isn't something else going on. I think the best signal is that, there's probably a reason if this press release came out.

Travis Hoium: Let's go to one of the interesting merger and acquisition items for the week. That is Roku being acquired by Fox. Emily, one of the things that was interesting as we got more news about this. I think it's fascinating that Fox is buying a tech company, and I think we can debate whether this is a great move or not, but there is also other potential buyers like Netflix, who are at least sniffing around this deal. It seems like Roku is a bit of a hot commodity despite being a dud for investors for quite a while here.

Emily Flippen: Hot commodity up until they made their decision to move to Fox. To be honest, I'm probably the worst person to talk to about this because I am not lacking emotion when it comes to this company. I'm a big fan of Roku. I've been a Roku shareholder and a big believer in really what has been happening in terms of the turnaround, especially as it relates to their ad business in recent quarters. I was incredibly shocked and disappointed to see the news that Roku was opening itself up for acquisitions here. I don't see the logic in my opinion, from Roku's perspective, but I do think it's a boon to whoever, in this case, Fox could purchase them. Roku's business has been massively turning around as they improve their ad stack. It seems like, in my opinion, founder and CEO Anthony Wood just wanted to free up time. That's the best guess I can get for why he would pursue this deal. He does own 55% of the voting shares for the company. The deal has already been approved by both boards. It seems like virtually nothing except for regulators, which I doubt will do anything,

could step in to stop this deal. Again, I can't rationalize this for Roku. Companies are still when I saw the deal announced, I saw articles from CNBC and others that were still referring to Roku as a streaming device hardware maker. Like, they don't understand the business at all. There's been this fundamental misunderstanding from investors about what Roku is and could be for the future. Fox is getting a good deal here, in my opinion, I think Roku shareholders like myself, are getting a bit of a dud deal, but you're right, share prices coming out of the pandemic have been obviously depressed for Roku for many years now, despite the fact that its business has performed strong. Don't understand the logic of combining with this legacy cable media business. Roku shareholders will own just under 30% of the combined company, so it won't be nominal to Fox's results, but you have to hope that Fox doesn't ruin the asset that they just purchased because part of the value of Roku was the fact that it was the only connected TV independent platform provider, and that will no longer be the case after this acquisition goes through.

Lou Whiteman: Emily is going to be disappointed to find out that I disable Roku as quickly as I can when I buy a TV because I just want my Apple TV to work.

Travis Hoium: You see, I'm the other way. I have a Roku stick working on Amazon Fire TV. I love it. But look, Emily, I'm going to try it, I don't know if this will pass the Emily Flippen smell test, but I will try to explain it. I don't know if I believe this, but this is my best guess.

Emily Flippen: Please convince me.

Travis Hoium: Well, we'll see about that. I think for the Fox side, it just confirms existing narratives. It's another reminder that traditional cable and television businesses are on the decline, and you need to jump onto a lifeboat, that's feature looking. I do think that that sort of works from that side. It is harder to figure on Roku, but I think it's possibly that they looked at that hardware business. I know it's not just a hardware company, but you need those boxes to get all of that add tech goodness. At the end of the day, you have to have those boxes out.

Emily Flippen: To be clear, it's not boxes, it's the actual TV itself.

Travis Hoium: Well, I know, but you have a lot of competition here, that's what I mean.

Emily Flippen: They have more market share than the next three competitors combined. They're killing it. Their market share has only gained since the company went public.

Travis Hoium: They do, but you also have Walmart in the game. You have Alphabet.

Emily Flippen: In their market share.

Travis Hoium: But what are they seeing that we haven't other thing is, too, and this is what I'm more thinking about. I always complain about how I can't switch channels the way I used to. If I want to watch two games and one's on Peacock and one's on Paramount, it's like a 10-minute process, and the future stinks versus the. The way I think that they're beginning to solve this is is that I have YouTube TV. YouTube TV is now integrating Peacock into that, and they're beginning to integrate ESPN and all of these things in it. I think we are getting back to the future where imagine just turning on your screen, and you just have basically go to the channel you want, you're living inside maybe the YouTube ecosystem.

I think there's a lot of ways where the future doesn't look better for Roku between these big-pocketed other systems and just bypassing it together. I think maybe that's what they're seeing, but otherwise, I don't have a clue. This is just of I'm dream casting the future I'd like to see, I think. It seems like everybody involved here does need to bring scale to the market. Whether you're Fox looking at advertising and competing at companies like Amazon now, or whether you're Roku going, hey, we've got a nice advertising business. It's growing, but it is absolutely nothing compared to all these other platforms, and that's something that advertisers think about. When we come back, we are going to get to the big news of the week that comes from SpaceX once again. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We know SpaceX, the newly public company that is controlled by Elon Musk as a space company. But this week, they finalized an agreement that is going to make it more of what it actually is, which is an AI company, Lou, buying Cursor for $60 billion. This is a deal that was pre-announced before the IPO, but we actually got the details, and it’s interesting that this is a huge acquisition, really finalized less than a week after going public.

Lou Whiteman: It was finalized before, basically, but they didn't want to have to go back and rip up the S1 and slow the process. This is just them doing what they want to do, whether or not it works. Look, I read the S1 and I still don't really know what the SpaceX AI business is. Can I admit that? Maybe I have reading problems, but {OVERLAPPING]

Travis Hoium: It does seem like one of those things where it can be whatever you want it to be as an investor, which.

Lou Whiteman: It was everything.

Travis Hoium: It’s a Neo Cloud, it's a model maker.

Lou Whiteman: Let's be honest, that is the only way you get a total but addressable market basically equal to U.S. GDP is to make it everything. But I do think at some point, they are going to have to narrow down exactly what they want to do with AI. I don't think the bull case is Grok is going to just whoop Cloud. I'm not even sure they're even trying with Grok anymore. If I'm honest with you, the way they're farming out data centers, things like that. The way I see it, though, Musk has a blank canvas with AI here, and he's got a big checkbook in which to spend. The idea now is to find a way to build value with AI and justify the valuation. Cursor feels like a step in that direction. I think, if anything, looking at this, I would expect it not to be the only step or the first step. I think they'll probably do more of this. Look, it's really hard to look at this business because the way we're looking at the AI business from xAI that we saw six months a year ago. But I think what will actually emerge, either good or bad is something very different that is still just now coming into focus internally and we don't have a clue what it looks like extern.

Emily Flippen: That's fair, Lou. I agree $60 billion, it's so much money, I don't want to say that it's not. SpaceX only raised around $85 billion through its public offering for context. It's not nothing, but it is just a drop in the bucket when we're talking about the valuation that is being attached to both xAI and SpaceX itself, given the fact that it has a market cap north of $2.5 trillion. It really doesn't actually move the acquisition itself, doesn't move the needle much for the company. This you only get to $2.5 trillion valuation by selling potential. That potential for AI includes things like data centers and space, which I've had way more conversations in the past two weeks of my life about data centers in space than I ever expected to if you had asked me just a handful of years ago.

But that is what's driving the perception of value. While I recognize that XAI looks bad, today, it looks lagging behind. Financially, it looks challenged, but I love to play devil's advocate. I can't help myself here, it's hard to SpaceX sometimes in its valuation, but I do think the biggest mistake investors make with this company and AI in general is that presuming that what is true today will be true tomorrow. A year ago, Grok's chat market share was less than 2% today. It's nearly 20, if you look at Google, it launched Bard and it was ridiculed for that. Then that has evolved into Gemini, which, in my opinion, is excellent. Same with Microsoft, and it's OpenAI. They struggle as Copilot, but now GitHub Copilot is dominating. The industry is moving fast, we shouldn't extrapolate what exists today as if that's always going to be the case for the future. But I do think to your point, Lou, they're using these resources to try to build the future AI business that is needed to justify today's price.

Travis Hoium: Emily, just a little pushback on that because it does seem like the Grok app and using that the way that you would use something like Gemini or Cloud is maybe not exactly the same. I assume a lot of that usage that you're talking about is people on Twitter going, hey, Grok, is this true or answer this question for me? It's always funny when you see a popular thread. There's 15 questions for Grok in that thread, so I assume that's a lot of that usage. But that isn't necessarily monetizable in the same way that it would be for paying a subscription fee for a cloud or something like that. Doesn't it seem like that's part of the challenge here is what's the actual use cases? What are people actually going to pay for it? At least Cursor brings something in-house that is a growing business, whether or not that has a mode around it with Grok now, in-house is maybe a bigger question, but is that at least part of the theory?

Emily Flippen: I was really hoping you just wouldn't push back on me there, Travis. Just take my market share data at face value and let's move on. You're certainly right as Grok has been rolled out, it's been rolled out in avenues for accessibility that are not directly being monetized right now. Twitter is a big one X, as well as obviously, Tesla vehicles themselves. Now, there's always an opportunity to put in subscription fees, that thing. But I do think the opportunity with AI. It's not monetizable, it's not a unique Grok problem. It's a challenge that all of these chatbots are experiencing. I think ultimately it comes down to the idea ever going to get from the consumer market, what you could get from the enterprise market. I think it becomes less, how do I get a user on X to pay for this and more, how do I get this where the real money is with the enterprises that are driving the vast majority of AI usage. It is a challenge Cursor is certainly a step in the right direction.

Travis Hoium: Lou, does this at least give some relevance to the addressable market that they talked about?

Lou Whiteman: Enterprise is what it is. What is their enterprise business, though? What I still look like it's Cursor. Is it, I guess, is that worth $27 trillion? We'll see.

Travis Hoium: The market thinks it does right now. When we come back, we’re going to play a World Cup-style game with investing. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We like to have a little bit of fun with investing in this segment, and we're going to play a World Cup-style game where we're going to have companies from around the world battle to see who is the ultimate champion. We've got a group of South American companies, European companies, Asian companies, and companies from the Americas. Lou, you have the first group from South America. We have Petrobras versus MercadoLibre. Who takes the championship there?

Lou Whiteman: This reminds me of an actual game we saw played in this World Cup. This is Morocco versus Brazil, where one of them is just the established Titan, and one of them is the plucky upstart, and they ended up playing to a draw, but we won’t do that here. The Petrobras is South America's largest energy company, they are the old school, the classic Titan, MercadoLibre didn't even exist when Petrobras was at its heyday, which you say about the Brazilian soccer team these days, too, I think. But it is the new up-and-comer, and I think MercadoLibre is the winner here. They are emerging as South America's champion. Who knows what's going to go on with them with their lending business? It is, if nothing else, I think, a speed bump. It's hard to do lending, especially at first. You need to adjust. But, Petro Boss, hopefully, we're getting back to normal in the Middle East, and I don't think maybe their momentum is going to carry. I'm going to go with MercadoLibre.

Travis Hoium: Emily, you are looking at Europe. We have ASML from the Netherlands versus Spotify.

Emily Flippen: I think both of these companies are probably upset they're going against each other in the first round here because I think they'd both rather go against the state-controlled oil giant. They're both incredible monsters in this bracket. ASML obviously the largest between the two market cap north of $700 billion; that's all because they have effectively a monopoly on EUV lithography, which is the only tool right now that can make the leading-edge AI chips that are needed to drive, I don't know, everything that we're seeing in the market today. It's really hard to go up against ASML, but I think Spotify is holding its own in this matchup. It's a beloved consumer story. It's a company that I think has a little bit of the underdog effect. Everybody said the gross margins will never get north of 30% because of the way that they have their contract and license set up with record labels, and that's true. Part of their business, but Spotify has said, Hold my World Cup beer here because there's so many different ways that we can pivot with the average consumer to monetize them more deeply.

I am unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side of the side you're on, one of those consumers that is now paying extra on top of my Spotify membership every month to access things like audiobooks. While I do love Spotify, and I think that it's underappreciated, how do you beat ASML? I recognize they're getting a lot of the near-term benefit here as they sell these EUV machines, but the world that we're seeing today cannot operate without it. I think that level of market dominance is just hard to compete with. I have to give the edge to ASML, but let's say it's a close match.

Travis Hoium: I swear you must have had Spotify leading this entire match and then coming from behind ASML, because with that argument, I thought Spotify was going to come out ahead.

Lou Whiteman: I'm saying be honest, though, Sweden and Netherlands, that's a good match too. I'd pay to watch that once. I like it.

Travis Hoium: Emily, I'm going to stick with you. Let's turn our attention to Asia, Samsung versus Tencent.

Emily Flippen: Another really close match in my book. Samsung, obviously based out of South Korea, they're the cheap giant here. They're in the global Top 10, or at least we're in the global Top 10 in terms of market cap size, and a lot of that's being driven by the memory shortage that we're seeing right now that's driving prices up significantly. They're still chasing market share from the South Korean company Hynix and hide bandwidth memory. Hynix does hold the majority market share there, but it is incredible how much the operating profit has grown. Last quarter, I think it grew something like north of 700%, again, all driven by the same things that's driving ASML up today.

But Tencent is not to be underappreciated. I think it's a really quality business. This Chinese business owns WeChat, Weixin, has billions. That's billions with a B of monthly users and revenue that is still managing to grow in the double digits. I come down to what can the market not operate without? While I do think that Samsung is absurdly cheap, it's mining cash, but I also think it's a really cyclical business. Most virtually north of 90%, all of the profits here drive on this one commodity on memory. I think the mote that Tencent has built with its everything app, how integral it is to life in China and has been for years now is the one that advances in my book.

Travis Hoium: This is exactly like the World Cup because all of these companies, I know them as stocks, but I have never used any of their products. I've never bought an ASML machine. I have never shopped with MercadoLibre. I've never used a Tencent product. This just watching the World Cup and going, oh, my God, these players from Brazil are amazing, or the Netherlands, who I never see on my TV.

Emily Flippen: Well, hearing you say that makes me feel God, maybe Samsung should have won because you couldn't include Samsung.

Travis Hoium: I at least know them. Well, these two companies, I have used their products. Lou, you have America's Alphabet versus Nvidia.

Lou Whiteman: Quick shout out first to our colleague Jim Gillies and acknowledged that, yes, we could have put Enbridge, Brookfield, even TD Bank. There's a lot of good companies in Canada, but, yes, we are going with two U.S. companies here in North America, what a match up. This is like France versus Portugal. France is probably the deepest team in the tournament, all over the place. They can hit you from everywhere versus Portugal, who's best known right now for that one shining star, Ronaldo, but actually has a lot more depth than we give it credit for.

That's what I see with Nvidia. Both of them have held trophies up. They're both really, really great companies. At the end of the day, though, France usually wins this matchup because of their depth, because of their ways to win. Alphabet, we've been joking about this, but Alphabet is the cheat code for everything investing right now. You want autonomous, how about Alphabet? You want AI? Well, there's Alphabet, even chipmaking. Hey, you ever think of Alphabet, Internet search, maybe even programmatic advertising. Who knows? Get back to that in one day. Alphabet's going to win here in one of these all-time classics. Our grandparents will be talking about what a wonderful matchup that was and dreaming back to that day when they took the field against each other.

Travis Hoium: I like how my Easy Button in AI has caught on with you, Lou, so I still think that is the easy button in AI. We have now MercadoLibre versus ASML to go to the final. Emily, I'm going to start with you. Which one of these companies is going to win, and then I'll be the tiebreaker if we need one.

Emily Flippen: This comes down to, who is the judge standing on the sideline here and how are they making these calls? Because this is a really formidable match-up, and if I’m the judge on the sideline and closely examining, I don’t know too much about soccer or football, as I should say. But judging whether or not there's been any out of bounds plays, any penalty kicks here, will say, I think MercadoLibre does quietly as the underdog maybe pull ahead here and that's because the same challenge that I think Samsung has ASML has, it can be a bit of a cyclical business. They're selling EUV machines that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There's large purchase contracts. While they done an incredible job of maintaining that, that can lead to a bit of lack of predictability, cyclicality. There's also the issue that a lot of these restrictions that the U.S. government and foreign countries have put on China has forced innovation within China itself, so they're in the process of trying to develop a competitor to ASML, whereas MercadoLibre has proven time and time again, there is no second in command. There can be no second in command. They go back to when C Limited tried to expand the Shape out across South America and failed miserably, no fence, C Limited.

But MercadoLibre is turning this flywheel effect from its ecommerce business into a financial powerhouse. Lou is right that there's risk associated with that financing business and I think it's one worth watching carefully. But the reason why that financing business is so important is because they're effectively working as a pseudo government agency in the countries in which they operate operate providing banking services where nobody else is, and they're doing so in really volatile times while also still growing their operating profit at record rates. It is just such a high-quality fintech business today that I think they score.

Lou Whiteman: This is the classic the young athletic team that might make some mistakes, but they can run all over the field versus just a strong fundamental team, solid in defense, not going to make a lot of errors. MercadoLibre looks flashy at times and I think we're wondering, but can they keep it going? At the end of the day, I think they do, and I think the cyclicality to make it a business thing instead of just soccer, Emily's spot on there, that ASML, just with the cyclicality, MercadoLibre is going to make more mistakes. They probably give up an own goal somewhere, but at the end of the day, they are the winner over 90 minutes, which is a long time if you have ever tried to run around that long.

Travis Hoium: To bring some analytics to this discussion, I think it's fascinating to look at ASML. I think David Gardner called it one of those companies that passes the SNAP test. If they disappear, a lot of the world changes very, very quickly. But they've only grown revenue at a 12.6% compound annual growth rate over the past five years. You look at MercadoLibre, that growth rate is 35.1%. MercadoLibre is the growth story, so I'm not surprised that it wins this battle. Lou, you're up first. We have Tencent versus Alphabet. Who do you have winning that one?

Lou Whiteman: This is a classic, too. To me, though, again, I hate rooting for France in these tournaments because it is so boring. But at the end of the day, you know France is going to look real good, and the other day against Senegal, they just looked so good. Alphabet, I almost hate rooting for them here, and it's almost like it's the boring choice. But boring wins for me. Alphabet is just, again, exposed to so many areas where we look like we're in the early stages of really interesting growth. They only need to get some of the things right. The depth they have on their bench, their just ability, if one thing isn't working to lean into another. Tencent is a great company, but Alphabet, I think they win here.

Emily Flippen: I will say, it doesn't seem like we're going to need your tie-breaking here, Travis. It's an unfair match-up because Tencent, I said, it's a quality company, pretty well diversified, but they're isolating their own AI losses here across a really profitable legacy business. When I compare the environment in China versus United States, I'll be seen so much incredible innovation in AI come out of China. I do not want to discount that. There are also more rules and regulations for the companies that are trying to develop models in that country than there are here in the United States, despite all the concerns we've had about the lack of access to mythos and tropics models, of course.

But I do think in this case, Alphabet pulls ahead. Their pitch is the opposite of a lot of these chipmakers. They make money from search, but also chips and Cloud and YouTube and Gemini, it's the everything AI company. But even when you strip AI out from Alphabet, it's not like the thesis breaks down. It's not like the company ceases to exist and that's not to say that I think there isn't risk with Alphabet. I certainly think there is. But between these two, I should really knock on wood, but I’m going to say it’s hard to see a world where Alphabet does not outperform Tencent, and that alone, I think, gives me Alphabet’s bet.

Travis Hoium: It's wild that we can have this discussion about Alphabet, and I don't think either of you have mentioned YouTube, an absolutely massive business bigger than Netflix, and yet it's just an afterthought when you think about Alphabet. I agree this is just one of the best companies in the world and not surprised that it won this matchup. We now have for the Championship. Alphabet versus MercadoLibre, Lou, you're making your pitch first. Who wins this?

Lou Whiteman: What's funny is just for fun, I put into Gemini, who would win a soccer match between MercadoLibre and Alphabet in Gemini. Do you know what Gemini said? Gemini said three to one to MercadoLibre, which do their bosses know that? I don't know. I think Gemini took it a little too literally and just talked about the South American tradition of soccer and all of that.

Travis Hoium: I can't see the Silicon Valley elite playing a lot of great soccer game.

Lou Whiteman: I am going to have to go with Alphabet, I think, here, too. There's a classic case where the underdog wins in the semifinal and gets our hopes up, and we're wow, if they can beat ASML, they can beat anyone and then we are just again, it's the France analogy where God, they're good, and I respect them, but it's always so boring when they just show up and just overwhelm the opposition. That's what happens here. It's a good game. MercadoLibre deserves a lot of credit, but Alphabet takes the win.

Emily Flippen: Man, I spoke too soon, Travis. You are going to have to be breaking a tie here because I'm the judge here, and I think MercadoLibre by far pulls ahead. Let me see. I agree with the AI in this case. I'm kicking myself for doing it, and the way that I'm framing up this match off on my head is I'm putting, let's say, $500 behind a recommendation today. Am I putting that money behind MercadoLibre? Am I putting that money behind Alphabet? I think there's, of course, a valuation argument that is boring and not worth getting into today. But the real reason it comes down is to growth, and in MercadoLibre, the opportunity in front of it is a fraction the size of Alphabet while still innovating and its fintech offerings that are just barely getting off the ground. Last quarter, revenue grew nearly 50%. That was the fastest pace for this company in nearly four years. It's an accelerating business, and they're doing it without spending oodles and oodles and oodles of capital on AI. In fact, when you strip out all of the narrative around AI today, I think MercadoLibre's thesis, it remains exactly the same. The credit book is a risk, of course, but I don't think it's less or any more risky, I should say, than a lot of the valuation that's driving I guess, speculation behind companies like Alphabet. MercadoLibre, when's in my book.

Travis Hoium: MercadoLibre had some tailwinds from U.S. currency, which would be headwinds for Alphabet. I just wanted to bring that in, 50% is a massive growth rate, but we do have a relatively weak dollar. I am the decider here. I'm going to give this to alphabet, and I'm going to go to something that we haven't talked about. We've talked about their artificial intelligence, their chips. We talked about Waymo. We talked about YouTube. They also own, what is it, 100, $150 billion worth of SpaceX stock and another $150 billion worth of Anthropic stock. Alphabet is not only one of the biggest, most powerful operators in the world. They are arguably one of the best investors in the world as well, and all that value is just hidden on their balance sheet. We are going to get a line item now. We'll end up in their next quarterly report. Now that SpaceX has gone public, and they have to mark that to market. Something for investors to consider next time they release earnings.

This was a lot of fun. I think it's a good tour around the world and some of the most powerful companies in the world. Great investment ideas. Hopefully, their Alphabet coming out on top in penalty kicks. When we come back, we are going to get to the stock center radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows The Motley Fool’s editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. We like to end the show with the stocks on our radar. Emily, you are up first. What are you looking at?

Emily Flippen: I'm looking at Life Time Holdings. Ticker is LTH and this is the premium positioned JAM chain. They have massive big build-outs all across the country here. That's an asset-light sale leaseback model growing pretty rapidly. Double digits here. They target really affluent memberships. Their median household income is north of $150,000 a year, so it should be more resilient during pullbacks, but the real pitch I have for you here, Dan, and the reason why you think you should pick Lifetime is because you have children, if I'm not mistaken, right?

Dan Caplinger: I do, yes.

Emily Flippen: What sounds better to you than paying? You're relatively low, a couple hundred bucks, let's say, a month membership fee to go to a gym that will give you free child care while you and your partner go to the pool at Lifetime, sip a drink, lay back, and just have to spend a nice Saturday afternoon without your kids involved. That sounds really nice?

Dan Caplinger: I would probably be doing dead lifts and not going in the pool, but yes, that does sound nice.

Emily Flippen: Well, that's why you and I are different people, but, yes, that's my pitch here for Lifetime. They have a lot of affluent, child and child free, yes, but lots of people use it for their day care as well.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about Lifetime?

Dan Caplinger: It's a good pitch, Travis, I can't argue with that. Emily, is this one of those companies that also owns all their buildings and real estate stuff?

Emily Flippen: No, so they did initially, but they're in this process of doing sale-leasebacks to free up capital so they can build even more locations. That might hurt the long-term economics. I'm not gonna lie to you. But for the near term, it's actually doing a lot to improve their capital structure.

Travis Hoium: Emily is a rare occurrence where Emily brings something interesting and good to the show, so I'm very happy about that. Emily trying to get me to spend $659 a month on my local Lifetime membership.

Emily Flippen: Worth it?

Travis Hoium: Maybe no.

Lou Whiteman: Drinking by the pool is the workout I can get in.

Travis Hoium: Well, that's even more.

Lou Whiteman: Maybe.

Travis Hoium: Lou, what are you looking at?

Lou Whiteman: Dan, since Emily brought something good, I feel no obligation to do that to you. I'm looking at Rivian. I took her RIVN was supposed to be a fantastic moment for this maker of electric trucks and SUVs. The new R2 SUV, a mass market vehicle starting at a reasonable price of $58,000 is hitting the market. The R has a substantial waiting list, and the plan is for Rivian to see a huge uptick in cash flow and start that slow inch towards profitability. At last this week, the company said it was going to lay off about 2% of its workforce to save cash. The jobs they're laying off, marketing and customer support jobs, not the jobs you want to see go during a time when you're ramping up your customer list. This feels like a pivotal moment for Rivian, a company that lost more than $3 billion last year. It has been over time, almost impossible to build a new automaker from scratch. There's one big exception, and they almost went bankrupt. Rivian really needs this R2 to deliver on its promise and fast. I'm Just watching close here for the ride. Shall we say.

Travis Hoium: Dan, are you on the R2 reservation list?

Dan Caplinger: Absolutely not. Couldn't catch me dead in those dorky loser mobiles.

Travis Hoium: Well, at least we have a strong opinion. I assume Emily takes the cake today. We're gonna go with Lifetime Holdings today, Mr. Travis. Thank you to Lou and Emily and Dan behind the glass. I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Earlier this month, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.15%), better known as SpaceX, finally completed its long-awaited initial public offering. The IPO predictably drew massive attention from retail and institutional investors alike, fueled by the company's innovations in reusable rockets and satellite internet connectivity, and its ambitious plans to deploy an orbital constellation of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.

For everyday investors who had limited access to SpaceX's shares, its public market debut opens an interesting door. The question that many are asking is whether an investment in the stock now can realistically transform a modest portfolio into millionaire status.

The company's early price action and broader lessons about stock market dynamics offer important clues.

Image source: Getty Images.

Breaking down SpaceX's roller-coaster debut SpaceX's first days of trading as a public company followed a classic pattern for IPO stocks. While its offering price was $135 per share, the stock opened on the Nasdaq at $150 on June 12 and closed its first trading session near $161 -- delivering a quick pop. Momentum carried prices even higher during subsequent sessions, with SpaceX briefly surpassing $225 per share to command a market capitalization of roughly $2.8 trillion at that time.

However, questions about its lofty valuation combined with broader market sentiment triggered sharp pullbacks. As of late afternoon on June 24, SpaceX was trading at around $158.

These volatile swings underscore how new public companies often deliver dramatic short-term moves driven by hype, liquidity events, and shifting investor sentiment.

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What does an investment in the SpaceX IPO look like today? The majority of investors who have gotten involved in SpaceX stock so far were not able to secure shares at the offering price. A modest initial investment of $5,000 at SpaceX's opening price of $150 would be worth roughly $5,270 as of this writing -- a modest gain of just over 5%.

Despite the steep sell-off from its peak, a gain of 5% in less than a month is still impressive. To put this into context, the long-run average annual return of the S&P 500 is about 10%.

The key takeaway here is that IPO stocks can deliver some quick upside. At the same time, these gains can be fleeting: Even after a strong debut, the position remains exposed to heavy selling. Moreover, the absolute dollar amounts remain limited.

IPOs often create quick wins for momentum traders, but they rarely deliver the kind of transformative, multiyear compound growth that's required to create generational wealth.

Can investing in SpaceX really make you a millionaire? The SpaceX IPO reinforces a fundamental truth about investing: Multibaggers are almost never created overnight. While the stock has delivered a decent gain for its earliest buyers, whether it can produce sustained outperformance will depend on how well the company executes on its ambitions over many years across its various business segments. History shows that stocks capable of turning small sums into millions always require patience, resilience, and conviction through drawdowns, and time for the power of compound growth to work its magic.

For retail investors, the most practical route to building a million-dollar portfolio involves dollar-cost averaging -- investing fixed amounts at regular intervals regardless of short-term price swings -- over time horizons of between 15 and 30 years or more. By steadily adding to a position in SpaceX while management scales the business, any investor can accumulate more shares during dips and position themselves to benefit from its potential price appreciation.

SpaceX (SPCX +0.13%) has taken investors on a wild ride since its June 12 IPO. It went public at $135 per share, reached a record high of $225.64 on June 16, but now trades at about $150. That volatility wasn't surprising, since it was the biggest IPO in history, with a debut valuation of $1.77 trillion, and a divisive stock.

The bulls expect its aerospace and AI businesses to grow exponentially, while the bears believe it's speculative and overvalued. Let's review both arguments and see how much a $10,000 investment in SpaceX could be worth by the end of 2030.

Image source: Getty Images.

The bullish case for SpaceX SpaceX's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, claims the company's annual revenue could reach $1 trillion by 2030. That would represent a 122% CAGR from its $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025. Wall Street's analysts believe SpaceX's annual revenue could reach $330 billion to $470 billion, representing 5-year CAGRs of 78% and 91%, respectively, if everything goes right.

To hit those targets, SpaceX needs to aggressively expand its launch (Falcon and Starship), Starlink, and xAI businesses. Starship, its largest rocket ever, could reduce its cost to orbit to less than $100 per kilogram and wipe out its smaller competitors in space logistics.

Starlink, which already serves over 10.3 million subscribers, could gain tens of millions more users across the enterprise, maritime, aviation, and defense sectors. Starlink is already profitable, and its profits will surge even higher as economies of scale kick in.

The xAI segment, which handles Grok, X, Cursor, and other AI-related businesses, could evolve into an AI infrastructure company as it launches its first orbital data centers. It would support that expansion with its launch and Starlink businesses.

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The bear case against SpaceX The bears will point out that SpaceX is still unprofitable, since Starlink's profits aren't offsetting the steep losses in its space and AI divisions. At $2.04 trillion, it's already valued at 109 times last year's sales -- so it looks expensive relative to its past growth.

SpaceX recently diluted its investors with its $60 billion all-stock takeover of the AI coding start-up Cursor, and it just announced another $25 billion bond offering -- even though it raised a record $75 billion in its IPO. Those issues could all limit its gains, especially if interest rates surge and drive investors away from speculative stocks.

Where will SpaceX be in 2030? I believe SpaceX will struggle to achieve its ambitious near-term goals -- which rely on hundreds of flawless launches, low interest rates, and rock-solid economic growth -- by 2030. Instead, a more realistic target might be a 30% CAGR (compared to its 33% revenue growth in 2025) from 2025 to 2030 -- which would still boost its revenue to $69.4 billion by the final year.

With a generous price-to-sales ratio of 30, it would have a market cap of $2.08 trillion in 2030. That 2% gain would only turn a $10,000 investment into about $10,200, so investors probably shouldn't go all-in on SpaceX until it posts its first quarterly reports.

Two weeks after its record-breaking IPO, SpaceX isn't far from where it started.

A report that OpenAI could delay its IPO, and stock slides for SpaceX and Cerebras, could slow IPO activity. But a lull may not last long.

Investors who'd been looking forward to OpenAI's hotly anticipated IPO this year might just have to wait.

CNBC's Seema Mody reports on news regarding SpaceX.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) stock traded modestly lower Friday as investors pulled back from high-growth names amid a broader risk-off market.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.48%, while the S&P 500 declined 0.06%.

Analysts Point To Long-Term NarrativeD.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria told CNBC on Friday that SpaceX is trading largely on future expectations, similar to other Elon Musk-led companies. He said investors are assigning value to long-term opportunities such as Mars exploration and space-based data centers.

Vanda strategist Viraj Patel told CNBC that SpaceX has attracted strong retail interest because it combines a transformational technology story, an ambitious long-term vision, a high-profile founder and extensive media attention.

Morningstar Wealth’s Mike Coop told CNBC that the “cult of Elon” continues to draw retail investors and contribute to elevated volatility.

The stock has a Hold rating and an average price forecast of $158.33 (high $190.00, low $115.00) from seven analysts. Recent analyst moves include:

Argus Research: Initiated with Hold (June 26) Susquehanna: Initiated with Neutral (Forecast $170.00) (June 23) Keybanc: Initiated with Sector Weight (June 22) SpaceX Price ActionSPCX Price Action: SpaceX shares were down 0.47% at $152.28 at the time of publication on Friday, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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Triller Group (NASDAQ:ILLR) shares surged on Thursday after the company announced a deal that will give it significant exposure to SpaceX Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) through a new treasury investment structure.

The company’s shares were up more than 42% on Friday, bringing its weekly gains to about 187%.  

The company said its unit, Trendy Reach Holdings, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the membership interests of a Bahamian investment vehicle, SAC1, in a transaction valued at $411.3 million. Through the acquisition, Triller will gain exposure to approximately 3.9 million SpaceX shares held within the vehicle.

The deal effectively places SpaceX-linked assets on Triller’s balance sheet as a strategic treasury holding, marking a notable shift in the company’s capital allocation approach. The transaction is being executed through a wholly owned special-purpose subsidiary and is supported by a secured financing arrangement.

Triller said the SpaceX position was established prior to any potential public listing of the private aerospace company and is being acquired at what it described as a meaningful discount to current implied market value.

“This is a transformational step for our Company,” said Wing-Fai Ng, Group Chief Executive Officer. He added that the investment provides “meaningful exposure” to SpaceX and is intended to reshape how investors evaluate Triller’s balance sheet.

The company also indicated that the structure establishes a dedicated SpaceX treasury position, making Triller one of the few publicly traded firms with disclosed balance-sheet exposure to the private company.

The transaction is expected to close in the coming days, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory filings.

As Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) closes out two weeks of trading, Steve Silver, an analyst at Argus Research, has initiated coverage of SpaceX stock.

On June 26, the Wall Street analyst initiated a ‘Hold’ rating for SpaceX stock. However, Silver did not provide a specific price target for SPCX stock for the coming 12 months.

He flagged several factors that lead to a neutral stance on SpaceX stock. For instance, he noted that while the company is growing strongly at the top line, it has yet to achieve consistent profitability.

As such, the analyst highlighted that SpaceX has been operating a hybrid business model that blends mature infrastructure with venture-style growth investment, thereby complicating near-term earnings visibility.

The analyst also pointed to the tight supply of SPCX shares and upcoming post-IPO lockup expirations as additional drivers of near-term volatility. At roughly 95 times 2025 revenues, Argus said it may likely be years before the valuation multiple normalizes to more typical levels.

“The IPO valuation implied a price-to-sales multiple of approximately 95-times 2025 revenues…we think it will likely be years before SPCX’s multiples land at more normal levels,” Argus noted.

SpaceX stock price forecast and performance Following the Argus rating on SpaceX, the average Wall Street target for the company’s stock hovered around $222.20 at the time of reporting, according to data from TipRanks. Out of the 7 analysts that have set SpaceX stock price target for 12 months, the highest target is $401, while the lowest was $115 at the time of publication.

SPCX stock since IPO. Source: Finbold Since it began trading earlier this month, SpaceX stock price has added about 13.45%, trading at about $153.16 at the time of publication. As such, the company had a market capitalization of about $2 trillion, already down $1 trillion from its top as Finbold reported. However, the company’s outlook could be bolstered by rising demand for AI stocks, especially after its acquisition of an AI-focused startup, as Finbold highlighted.

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Robert Greifeld, former Nasdaq chairman and CEO, joins ‘Squawk on the Street' to discuss SpaceX as the stock has witnessed big spikes and drops following its public debut.

Two weeks after its record-breaking IPO, SpaceX isn't far from where it started.

Much as Elon Musk's vision for Tesla is for it to be more than a car company, his plans for Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 0.92%) extend well beyond rocket launches. The company believes its biggest opportunity is in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. While SpaceX believes its total addressable market to be $28.5 trillion, the bulk of that, $26.5 trillion, is based on its opportunities in AI.

That is key to the dynamic for understanding SpaceX as an investment, as well as the challenges and potential rewards awaiting it in its effort to capture as much of that addressable market as possible.

Image source: Getty Images.

Early wins for SpaceX's AI ambitions Even before its initial public offering, SpaceX's ability to serve as an AI infrastructure provider was on full display. In May, it struck a deal with a major AI start-up planning its own IPO: Anthropic will be renting all the compute capacity online at SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center through May 2029 for $1.2 billion per month.

In June, SpaceX signed a similar deal with Alphabet, which will rent compute capacity for $920 million per month from October 2026 to June 2029. Both Alphabet and Anthropic are allowed to exit those agreements with a bit of notice, but if those deals both run their full course, they would generate over $70 billion in revenue for SpaceX.

Then, after its IPO, SpaceX announced another deal to rent out its computing capacity at its Colossus 2 data center, this time to Reflection AI, for $150 million per month from July 2026 through 2029. If that agreement lasts through 2029, it would deliver total revenue of $6.3 billion.

But turning its extra ground-based compute capacity into revenue may just be an early preview of the bigger opportunities SpaceX could capture.

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Data centers in space Terrestrial data centers are just the start of SpaceX's AI infrastructure plans. In January, the company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission seeking permission to launch up to 1 million solar-powered satellites to serve as orbital data centers.

According to its S-1 filing, SpaceX plans to start launching such satellites as soon as 2028. In addition, it has reportedly been in talks with Alphabet about its Project Suncatcher program, which is likewise exploring the possibility of putting data centers in orbit. Alphabet intends to launch two prototype satellites in early 2027 with help from Planet Labs; its talks with SpaceX reportedly focused on its potential as a launch partner for future satellites beyond those.

The expensive road ahead For SpaceX to build out AI infrastructure, especially in space, it won't be cheap. In 2025, out of its AI, space, and connectivity capital expenditures, AI easily had the highest costs:

2025 AI capital expenditures: $12.7 billion 2025 space capital expenditures: $3.8 billion 2025 connectivity capital expenditures: $4.1 billion The AI division also generated the least amount of revenue, at $3.2 billion. That said, Goldman Sachs foresees that number increasing significantly to $322 billion by 2030.

There's plenty of long-term upside potential for SpaceX if it can successfully and profitably execute on deploying AI infrastructure in space. But for investors, the price of trying to capture some of that potential is dealing with risks, volatility, and the discomfort of stock price pullbacks along the way.

Jack Delaney has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Goldman Sachs Group, Planet Labs PBC, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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The ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (CBOE:ARKX) has become a popular parking spot for investors seeking space exposure without waiting for the SpaceX IPO. With Elon Musk’s rocket company reportedly headed toward a public listing at a valuation north of a trillion dollars, retail demand for a single ticker capturing the theme has surged. ARKX, with $893 million in net assets and 35 positions, spreads the bet across launch providers, defense contractors, and chipmakers that supply them. The fund is up 46.71% over the past year, and the case for owning it rather than betting everything on a single IPO allocation merits examination.

Why the SpaceX-Only Trade Is Tempting SpaceX dominates commercial launch, controls Starlink, and is treated as the default proxy for the entire space economy. A single allocation at IPO pricing appears to be the cleanest way to own the theme. The problem is access. Retail investors will likely receive minimal allotments at IPO, and secondary-market float in the first months will be thin. One of our podcast discussions put it bluntly: “What we have for SpaceX remains tiny float, only 4% of shares traded.” Concentrating capital into a tightly held debut at a valuation already estimated near a trillion dollars leaves little margin for error.

Where the Single-Stock Bet Falls Short A SpaceX allocation gives an investor a single company, a single balance sheet, and a single regulatory environment. The space economy is broader than that. Launch is a piece of it, but so are satellite communications, defense electronics, semiconductors powering orbital compute, and ground navigation systems. A reader who buys SpaceX alone gets none of that secondary exposure and pays a price set by IPO underwriters rather than a competitive market. If the listing prices rise and trade down, as overheated debuts often do, the concentrated holder absorbs the full drawdown.

What ARKX Actually Owns This fund is built on the premise that space is really a supply chain story more than anything else. The top holding is L3Harris Technologies at 7.83% of net assets, followed closely by Rocket Lab at 7.78%. Rocket Lab is the most direct competitor to the dominant launch player in the portfolio, and its stock has done the heavy lifting on recent returns, gaining 190.18% over the past year. The larger defense contractor in the top spot added 18.86%, and another name in the defense space contributed 16.43% over that same period.

Below the top names, the fund holds AMD at 6.14%, Teradyne at 6.64%, and meaningful positions in Iridium Communications, Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Intuitive Machines. That mix captures the chips, test equipment, satellite networks, and lunar logistics that any space buildout requires. It also reaches outside the U.S. with Airbus, Thales, and Elbit Systems.

The Diversification Mechanism The single largest holding caps the fund’s exposure at under 8%, so no one disappointment can take the position down by more than a few points. Rocket Lab’s 29.94% drop over the past month illustrates the point. While that move would gut a concentrated holder, ARKX itself fell 7.34% in the same window because L3Harris, AMD, and the defense names absorbed less of the selloff. The structural trade-off is real: ARKX will move less than a concentrated SpaceX position in either direction, dampening both the upside of a runaway IPO and the downside of a broken debut.

The Real Tradeoffs This fund is actively managed, which means you get turnover and discretion from the research team running it. Its five-year return of roughly 56% trails broad market indexes over that same period, so it really sits in thematic allocation territory rather than core holding status. The fund has no direct position in the dominant launch company today, so an investor seeking pure exposure to that equity will not find it here. If and when that company goes public, the fund may add it, but its weight is unlikely to exceed the cap applied to other individual holdings.

How to Think About Sizing For an investor planning to chase a small IPO allocation, ARKX works as the broader sleeve holding the rest of the space budget. Buying the ETF in a tax-advantaged account avoids the capital-gains friction of trimming later. For a reader who already owns several of the top holdings directly, overlap is worth noting, since AMD, Amazon, and Alphabet appear in many core funds.

Reading the Setup This fund offers a way to own the rest of the space economy at a normal market price, with position caps that limit single-stock risk and a roster that has produced a 46.71% one-year return without depending on any one company. For a reader weighing how much capital to commit to an IPO where they may receive only a sliver of the allocation, the fund is worth evaluating as a diversified anchor for that single bet.

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Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham thinks the artificial intelligence boom has pushed the U.S. stock market to its most expensive level ever and could eventually lead to a historic decline.

"Based on the value of the stock market compared to GDP, with modifications, this is the most expensive market in American history," Grantham told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

While the GMO co-founder said he wasn't sure there was a comparable period, the tech bubble of 2000 is the closest analogy. He also highlighted the so-called Buffet indicator, which compares the total value of the U.S. stock market valuation with the size of the economy in terms of GDP.

The market capitalization to GDP ratio referenced by Grantham is estimated to be at 235%, according  to Longtermtrends.com. It means that the value of the total stock market is more than two times the size of the U.S. economy. 

Legendary investor Warren Buffett used this indicator, saying years ago that when it "approaches 200% — as it did in 1999 and a part of 2000 — you are playing with fire."

Graham said that, while the timing was terribly uncertain, markets could potentially peak.

Grantham is a famed investor known for his history of calling bear markets and has issued similar dire warnings in the past, including in March 2024.

At the time, he predicted the long-term outlook for U.S. stocks was almost as poor as at any other point in history but the stocks continued to advance after that warning.

"The long-run prospects for the broad U.S. stock market here look as poor as almost any other time in history," Grantham had said in a blog post released by Boston-based GMO at the time.

Grantham on SpaceXGrantham also discussed SpaceX following its blockbuster IPO. The stock raced higher in the first few days of trading but has sine lost steam. The investor said that while AI is where investors want to put all their money in, this also creates the conditions for excessive investment.

He pointed out that Amazon shares fell 92% after the dot-com bubble before the company eventually "inherited the earth."

SPCX 5-day chart

"The long term is complicated, I don't know, but is it going to have a crash like Amazon? Yes, very likely. And then what happens is indeed it may float away debris on the waves of time, or it will inherit a lot of the market, like Amazon did," he said.

SpaceX and its roughly $2 trillion valuation, he believes, is another sign of extreme market enthusiasm. 

He said historians may eventually view the company's public-market debut as "one of the defining peaks of all time."

"It's the thing you see around the top," Grantham said.