SpaceX just filed a complaint at the FCC that ties regulatory pressure directly into Rocket Lab's share price through a deal structure few investors have fully mapped out.
Regulatory friction at the Federal Communications Commission is turning a merger question into a share-price story, with SpaceX challenging Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM | IRDM Price Prediction) conduct as the agency reviews Rocket Lab’s (NASDAQ:RKLB) pending $8 billion takeover. The complaint hits Rocket Lab directly because the deal consideration ties Iridium payouts to Rocket Lab’s own share price near closing.
Rocket Lab stock is down 6% to $63.82, extending a rough week for the launch and space systems name. Rocket Lab stock was down 3% year to date (YTD) through Thursday’s close.
Notably, Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) stock is down 5% to $15.32 alongside the broader space complex. Intuitive Machines stock was up 31% over the past month heading into Friday, so today’s slide walks back only a slice of that run.
SpaceX Takes the Fight to the FCC SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday to examine Iridium’s conduct while the agency reviews applications tied to Rocket Lab’s proposed acquisition. SpaceX satellite policy associate Matthew Turk asserted that “Iridium’s well-documented history of anticompetitive attacks against its competitors and American consumers hangs as a cloud over the proposed transaction.”
Turk stated that “SpaceX does not oppose the transaction,” adding that “the Commission should carefully evaluate whether Iridium’s conduct is in the public interest.” Turk also mentioned that Iridium had filed more than 50 petitions over eight months seeking to block or restrict rival satellite deployments.
The underlying dispute involves SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink gateways, which can support gigabit-speed service. Iridium has argued that some proposed ground stations could interfere with its operations because the companies share portions of the 19.4 to 19.6 GHz and 29.1 to 29.3 GHz spectrum bands, and that several gateways could exceed permissible interference levels “by a wide margin.”
Why the Deal Structure Amplifies the Risk Iridium issued its definitive proxy this week and Rocket Lab its prospectus, sending the merger to a shareholder vote on September 24. Each Iridium share would convert into $27 in cash plus a variable number of Rocket Lab shares based on Rocket Lab’s 10-day volume-weighted average price shortly before closing.
The variable exchange ratio is the analytical crux for Rocket Lab shareholders. Because Iridium holders receive a variable number of Rocket Lab shares set by Rocket Lab’s own average price near closing, regulatory delay and Rocket Lab share weakness feed each other. That mechanic is why merger-arbitrage positioning has been disrupted and why regulatory noise transmits directly into Rocket Lab stock rather than staying contained in Iridium.
The transaction initially implied an equity value of $6 billion and an enterprise value of $8.1 billion, with former Iridium shareholders expected to own 5% of the combined company. Rocket Lab has secured a $3.6 billion bridge facility it may replace with longer-term debt, equity financing, or both.
Space Names Slide With the Sector The Procure Space ETF (NASDAQ:UFO) is down 2% to $43.92, giving up ground as its top space-focused holdings weaken together. Meanwhile, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is down 0.3% to $768.84, showing that the broad market is quiet while the space complex takes the hit.
Additionally, AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) stock is down 6% to $58.04, moving with the sector rather than any verified company-specific news. AST SpaceMobile stock was down 15% year over year (YoY) through Thursday’s close.
No company announcement, filing, contract, or analyst action has been verified at Intuitive Machines or AST SpaceMobile today. Both are trading with a space complex that is broadly lower, and neither move should be extended into confirmation of the Rocket Lab catalyst.
What to Watch Next Separately on Neutron, Rocket Lab said it completed checkouts of the reusable Hungry Hippo fairing, which endured 275,000 pounds of force during qualification testing, with control-surface hubs tested beyond 125% of projected flight loads. CEO Peter Beck has cautioned that “the window for an end-of-year launch is narrowing.”
Retail sentiment on Rocket Lab is divided, with some traders treating the regulatory issue as a serious threat to the deal and others treating the weakness as a buying opportunity. Dilution from at-the-market share issuance and Neutron timing remain live parts of that debate, and neither camp has a clean data point in its favor today.
Investors should keep their Rocket Lab exposure sized modestly into the September 24 shareholder vote, given how directly regulatory noise now transmits into the stock through the variable exchange ratio. Traders can watch for any Rocket Lab response at the FCC and for coordination language from Iridium that might narrow the interference dispute before the vote.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
A funny thing happened when Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -1.44%) reported earnings this month. First, SpaceX declined 13.6% despite beats on both earnings per share and sales for the company. SpaceX lost only $0.09 per share in the quarter, where Wall Street had predicted a $0.29-per-share loss. Sales of $7.8 billion eclipsed forecasts by $1 billion.
Potentially worse news for investors, the earnings announcement triggered a "lock-up" expiration, permitting SpaceX insiders to sell 20% of their stock. A second lock-up expires later this week, when SpaceX passes the 70-days-after-IPO mark, allowing another 7% of the stock to be sold.
But instead of continuing to fall, SpaceX stock did a U-turn. It recovered all its losses and by Wednesday's close was back above its IPO price and trading for $140 a share.
And one Wall Street analyst thinks this is only the beginning of the rally for SpaceX stock.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Morgan Stanley loves SpaceX stock SpaceX today carries a market capitalization of $1.9 trillion. It has no profit to back up that valuation, granted, thanks to an artificial intelligence division that's losing more than $1 billion per quarter -- and burning through tens of billions of dollars per year.
But that doesn't scare Morgan Stanley one bit.
In a note released last week, MS analyst Adam Jonas argues that SpaceX's non-AI businesses alone support nearly all of the present value of SpaceX stock, based on a combination of forecast sales and "earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization" (EBITDA). To hear Jonas tell it, SpaceX AI comes basically free of charge on top of what investors are already paying for the rest of SpaceX.
Valuing SpaceX as a sum of its parts Here's how the math works.
Over the past 12 months, the Space and Connectivity divisions of SpaceX -- essentially, everything not AI -- generated a combined $17.9 billion in sales and $8.6 billion in EBITDA, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. AI generated $5.1 billion in sales, but negative EBITDA of $313 million.
Jonas, however, foresees incredible growth for SpaceX over the next couple of years, in Space and Connectivity, and especially in AI.
The analyst calculates that earnings from Space and Connectivity justify the first $127 of SpaceX's current $140 share price -- so 91% of the stock's total market cap. Valuing the stock at 52 times 2028 EBITDA, and reverse-engineering Jonas' math, implies a forecast of $31.5 billion in EBITDA for Space and Connectivity in 2028 -- a 266% increase in just two years.
Meanwhile, consensus estimates on Wall Street have SpaceX as a whole generating $126.8 billion in EBITDA in 2028. Backing out the $31.5 billion contribution from Space and Connectivity, the AI division flips from a loss today to a $95.3 billion EBITDA profit just two years from now.
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How to value SpaceXAI This is a bold prediction. Assuming these estimates are correct, investors are valuing Space and Connectivity EBITDA at a 52 multiple. But they're valuing EBITDA from AI at an ultralow 1.7, giving this division a standalone market capitalization of just $162 billion.
What's more, they're doing this even though -- again, assuming Jonas' numbers are right -- SpaceX's AI division will be growing not just sales but profit many times faster than its Space and Connectivity divisions are growing.
Is that fair? Are investors assigning the "right" price to SpaceX AI?
Well, $162 billion might seem like a fair price to pay for an AI business currently generating negative EBITDA. It might even seem generous. But if two years of hypergrowth grow SpaceX's AI division to the point that it's generating 75% of SpaceX's profit, you'd expect investors would happily pay a much higher price for it. Accordingly, Jonas argues that SpaceX stock, which costs $140 today, could easily reach $300 per share within one year -- and potentially hit $600 in a bull-case scenario.
I remain skeptical. With all due respect to Jonas, I'm going to wait and see SpaceX's AI division prove that it can earn any profit at all before engaging in speculation about how fast it can grow its profit. Still, the possibility is intriguing.
If Jonas' estimates bear fruit, SpaceX stock could be a screaming buy.
Image Credits:Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images President Donald Trump bought as much as $50,000 worth of SpaceX shares on June 23, according to a financial disclosure first reported by Reuters, two weeks after the record-setting IPO of Elon Musk’s company.
It’s not clear what price Trump paid for the shares, but by that point they had fallen from their highs of over $200. SpaceX shares were trading in the mid-$150 range on June 23. At the end of trading on Monday, shares closed at the IPO price of $135, possibly putting the president’s stake underwater.
Trump and Musk are close, despite a brief falling out last summer that involved the businessman accusing the president of withholding the Department of Justice’s files on Jeffrey Epstein because of how often Trump’s name appears in them. SpaceX has been hoovering up an increasing amount of government contracts and benefiting from the Trump administration’s deregulatory stance, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Reuters that the president’s stock portfolio is managed by third-party financial institutions and replicate “recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.” SpaceX lobbied popular indexes to change their rules to allow for faster inclusion ahead of its IPO, which means many people likely own some of the company’s stock even if they don’t know it.
Anthropic is a pure play in what appears to be the faltering AI space. At least SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) has a rocket and an internet division. Recently, it became clear that at least some large corporations are willing to take slightly less AI firepower than Anthropic offers. And, by the way, Anthropic has tens of millions of dollars of obligations for data centers and Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) chips. (For some reason, Nvidia always seems to come out on top in all of these transactions.)
A large group of investors believes an Anthropic IPO will top the record set by SpaceX. The main reasons are revenue and the fact that AI may be the most important invention in human history.
Anthropic is outpacing its rivals’ revenue run rates, which is one reason it is such a hot investment. The estimated run rate for this year is $65 billion; OpenAI’s is as low as $40 billion based on the same calculation. The primary reason is corporate and institutional adoption. Anthropic’s Claude has become the industry leader. Investors don’t want to see individuals running Claude on their laptops. They want to see its AI functions at the world’s largest companies because that is where the real money is. But the FT recently ran a headline that read, “Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive.” This happens at the same time inexpensive Chinese models are rushing into the market.
No one could have anticipated this Chinese surge even a year ago. Only days ago, newspapers reported that Anthropic has also largely dodged the concern that AI is just too expensive, even for large companies. However, some others have said the investment has not yielded a strong ROI and have cut back spending, at least temporarily. For “temporarily” to go away, AI ROI has to improve significantly.
The SpaceX IPO gave the company a valuation of $1.77 trillion on the first trading day, and it raised $86 billion. That money is disappearing quickly and has gone to the SpaceX xAI division.
So why the enthusiasm for Anthropic compared to SpaceX? SpaceX has the rocket business cornered. Its Starlink should become the de facto internet access for most of the world. However, its AI business is not attractive, even a little. Even with capex of $18.4 billion in the most recent quarter, it is not enough. Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, said the capex sum must be much, much bigger. He needs more and more AI data center capacity. However, his models benchmark much behind those from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, at least. And then,, again, there are the Chinese.
But if you look at the bets an investor takes, a shareholder in SpaceX is betting on three divisions. An investor in Anthropic is only looking at one.
Anthropic is an AI pure play, the sector’s consensus leader. SpaceX was a rocket and internet business with an AI business bolted on. That means that the IPO value of SpaceX won’t be topped by Anthropic.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
SpaceX (SPCX) commands a lofty valuation, driven by the 'Musk Premium' and high institutional interest, but faces skepticism over fundamentals. Starship delays are a key overhang, as its successful deployment is critical for cost reductions, new satellite constellations, and future growth. Starlink drives 62% of revenue with rapid user growth, but ARPU is declining and gross margins are pressured by high D&A and launch costs.
SpaceX (SPCX -1.44%) CEO Elon Musk is concerned with the supply of electricity in the U.S. Over the past three months, the space company has spent $15.8 billion scaling its artificial intelligence compute infrastructure -- infrastructure that is highly energy-intensive. During SpaceX's first earnings call on Aug. 11, Musk stressed the need to scale up its energy infrastructure in tandem.
"[O]ur tentative target is to actually have 20 gigawatts at the power and cooling level online by the end of next year," Elon Musk revealed. "Now I don't think we're going to achieve 20 gigawatts, but we want to have a series of projects that cumulatively come to 20 gigawatts by the end of next year. Some of them won't pan out exactly on time, but I would expect that we still probably have at the power plant level, something close to 15 gigawatts."
Image source: The White House.
For comparison, New York City requires roughly 10 gigawatts of power during a heatwave, putting SpaceX's near-term energy needs well beyond the largest city in the U.S.
Thus far, SpaceX has relied on a variety of renewable and conventional electricity sources to power its growing data center empire. More recently, it has leaned heavily on natural gas. But in the long term, new solutions that provide large amounts of reliable, low-carbon baseload power will be needed.
It's no wonder, then, that the CEO of OpenAI -- one of SpaceX's biggest competitors -- personally invested in a relatively new approach to nuclear energy. Fortunately for investors, there are two pure-play stocks betting on that exact thesis.
Nuclear energy is perfect for artificial intelligence In general, nuclear energy is well-suited to meeting the rising energy needs of SpaceX and other AI companies.
"Unlike wind turbines and solar arrays that generate electricity intermittently, nuclear power plants typically put out a constant supply of energy to the grid, which aligns well with what data centers need," observes an industry report by the MIT Technology Review.
The main issue with nuclear is simply how long it takes to get a new plant online. "The problem is how to build up nuclear capacity -- existing facilities are limited, and new technologies will take time to build," the MIT Technology Review warns. "To meet electricity demand from data centers expected in 2030 with nuclear power, we'd need to expand the fleet of reactors in the country by half."
This is where small modular reactors, or SMRs, can play a key role. Designs for these miniature power plants have been around for decades. Only two have ever been commercialized, however. That's because while quicker to build, SMRs aren't necessarily cheaper on a per-megawatt basis. But with deep-pocketed AI companies looking to scale energy supply as quickly as possible, adoption for SMRs may soon be on the rise. Right now, more than 80 SMR facilities are in development worldwide.
Where should investors look? There are two main options.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, personally invested in Oklo Inc. (OKLO -5.70%) and served as its Chairman for many years. Oklo is currently seeking regulatory approval for its designs, yet has already signed deals with several major AI companies, including Meta Platforms.
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NuScale Power (SMR -3.72%) is taking an alternative approach. The company is already approved by U.S. regulators to build an SMR system and has forged deals with utility providers rather than AI data center operators. The company's deal with the Tennessee Valley Authority, for example, could result in a 6-gigawatt system being built in the eastern U.S. It would be the world's largest SMR system if built.
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Importantly, neither Oklo nor NuScale have ever successfully commercialized one of their designs. And there is no guarantee that their promising project pipelines will ever translate into meaningful revenue, let alone profit. But if you're looking to bet on AI's rising power demands, these two SMR stocks should top your research list.
Anthropic executives believe their upcoming public offering will match or exceed the $75 billion that SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) raised in June in what was then the largest first-time share sale ever, per a Bloomberg report, as reported on CNBC by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The company could file for its public listing before the end of the month, and it has pointedly avoided naming a valuation in recent investor briefings.
That silence is the actual story. Raise size and valuation are different numbers, because a company can sell a small slice of itself for an enormous check and defend almost any market cap the syndicate wants. Sorkin’s claim that the industry is waiting on Anthropic is really about the second number, since “the entire industry is largely dependent on what valuation Anthropic comes up with, because then it will move towards what valuation OpenAI ultimately comes up with.”
Both Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) hold Anthropic as an investment and have booked large non-operating gains from earlier rounds. Whatever mark Anthropic prints will move those carrying values and anchor the comp OpenAI’s bankers will use next.
Reading Anthropic’s Silence On Price The refusal to discuss valuation is a negotiation tactic and probably a smart one. Bankers prefer to let demand set the range, and every leaked target then reads as a floor rather than a ceiling.
There is also positioning at work. SpaceX is a company with hard assets, cash flow, and a two-decade operating history, while Anthropic sells tokens, so the size comparison flatters the newer business.
Sorkin’s view that the sector waits on this one number is fair. Private-market AI valuations have converged on a small set of comparable rounds, and each print justifies the next.
Whether that is genuine price discovery or a self-referential loop depends on the S-1. Without disclosed revenue durability and specific compute obligations, the headline number is consensus about consensus, and public investors will be underwriting the private-round mark with a filing wrapper.
Why Amazon Is The Closer Trade Amazon is the deeper partner to Anthropic by a wide margin. Its Q2 report showed $53.4 billion in non-operating pre-tax income tied largely to marking up the Anthropic stake, which produced a GAAP EPS of $5.75 against a $1.82 consensus.
The operating relationship goes further. Andy Jassy said Anthropic and OpenAI have made “multi-year, multi-gigawatt commitments” to Trainium, and AWS grew 36.7% in Q2 to $42.2 billion, its fastest expansion in 18 quarters.
AWS backlog reached $496 billion, and Jassy told investors AWS could eventually be “a trillion dollar annual revenue business.” The Anthropic relationship is a live piece of that thesis, and it is a reminder that the AI trade extends well past the chipmakers into the power, cooling, and infrastructure names doing the actual buildout (we pulled seven of those into a free report here: 7 Stocks Powering the AI Boom).
Shares are up 12.05% year-to-date at $258.63. An IPO that validates the current carrying value would be confirmation, and one priced materially higher would force analysts to rework the sum-of-the-parts for Amazon.
Microsoft’s Smaller Stake And What To Watch In The S-1 Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is more of an OpenAI story than an Anthropic story. Q4 FY2026 still included a $3.2 billion gain from our investment in Anthropic as a discrete driver, and the bigger AI comp is the roughly 27% OpenAI position valued at about $135 billion after the Q1 restructuring.
Satya Nadella framed models as inputs and Azure as fungible infrastructure hosting “over 11,000 models including the latest from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, XAI as well as our own MAI family.” Shares are essentially flat year-to-date at $483.24 after a 24.03% one-month rally.
For the S-1, the real test is whether public investors receive sufficient disclosure to underwrite the multiple without relying on private-market comps. Watch the split between primary and secondary shares, revenue concentration among a handful of API partners, and the scale of Anthropic’s compute obligations to Amazon and others.
If those disclosures are thin, the IPO is a private round with a public wrapper, and the reprice it forces on Microsoft and Amazon will likely fade. If they are substantive, it becomes something a public investor can actually underwrite, and the number Anthropic prints will genuinely reset how the market values every AI-exposed name you already own.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
U.S. President Donald Trump invested as much as $50,000 in Elon Musk's SpaceX in June, according to a public financial disclosure, giving him a financial stake in a major government contractor run by his former adviser.
He bought between $15,001 and $50,000 in shares on June 23, according to a financial disclosure signed by him on August 12 and made public on August 22. The purchase was part of more than 1,000 stock trades the president made in June.
SpaceX held its initial public offering on June 12, which demolished IPO records.
In a statement to Reuters, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said that third-party financial institutions independently manage the president's portfolio and replicate "recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000."
"Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold," Ingle said in the statement.
Trump's investment in SpaceX adds a new financial link between the president and Musk's rocket company at a time when the administration is making decisions that could affect the firm's fortunes.
SpaceX is a U.S. military contractor, and often seeks approvals from federal agencies. Trump on Thursday directed his team to help drastically increase the number of U.S. commercial space launches. SpaceX is a dominant player in that sector.
Reuters could not immediately determine the precise amount of the investment because federal officials use ranges to declare the value of their assets on their financial disclosure forms.
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SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) has reportedly locked in more than $8 billion in contracts tied to the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile-defense program, and by the accounting circulating in Washington, that gives the company roughly $8 billion.
That headline number sits on top of a company that just filed its first full quarter as a public firm. SpaceX reported second-quarter revenue of $7.814 billion, a 14.59% beat against consensus.
In the earnings report, president Gwynne Shotwell told analysts that the company won “more than $6 billion in U.S. contracts in Q2, supporting major Space Force programs.”
The transcript itself does not use the phrase Golden Dome. The $8 billion tally comes from reporting on Aug. 20, 2026 that stitches together disclosed awards and places SpaceX above the $6 billion the company confirmed on its call.
The story is fundamentally about scale. A single defense line item now carries a total larger than most contractors book in a full year, and it points to a company whose FY 2027 Golden Dome funding request from the Pentagon sits at $17.9 billion for one fiscal year.
Golden Dome Payday: $8 Billion and Counting The Golden Dome is described by the Department of War as “the Nation’s premier initiative to deter and defeat advanced missile threats.” That mission requires space-based sensors, secure communications, and a way to quickly launch and refresh hardware.
SpaceX happens to own every step of that supply chain. It launches satellites, manufactures them, and, through Starshield, sells secure connectivity to the government.
The Q2 disclosure fits that description cleanly. Shotwell said the awards support “mission-critical communications and sensing capabilities”, and she framed them as tranches rather than a one-time payment.
The company’s Enterprise & Government product line, which includes Starshield revenue, generated $1.806 billion in the quarter alone, up 108% year over year.
That is the base the Golden Dome contracts are designed to lift further. Total company backlog closed the quarter at $47.5 billion, although management declined to break out how much of that belongs to government work.
Market Reaction Since the Q2 Report Shares changed hands at $115.09 on the day the 8-K hit, Aug. 4, 2026. The market closed on Aug. 20 at $134.
Fuse pegs the move from the filing date at 6.92%, using a start price of $125.33. The one-month change through Aug. 20 sits at 8.47%.
The path was choppy. The stock is still down 16.74% from a June starting price of $160.95, and it fell 4.05% on Aug. 20 alone.
Retail sentiment tracks that unevenness. Reddit boards swung from bearish scores in the 20s and 30s around the earnings release to a very bullish 82 on WallStreetBets a few days later, with dilution and share unlocks running as parallel themes.
At $1.031 trillion in market capitalization, this is now as much a mega-cap defense supplier as a rocket company. The valuation reflects that dual identity, and Golden Dome is the piece that ties them together.
Bull Case: Why the Number Likely Grows The bull case begins with substitutability, or the lack of it. Golden Dome needs proliferated low-Earth-orbit sensors, hardened comms, and cheap access to space, and no rival can deliver all three at SpaceX’s cadence.
The company reported 78 total launches and 1,041 tons of mass to orbit in the first half of the year. No competitor is close to that operational scale.
Starship extends the moat. Management said the vehicle is designed to “quadruple payload capacity and reduce launch costs by 10 times compared to our Falcon 9 rocket”, and Shotwell expects flight cadence to reach “at least one flight a day” a year out.
Golden Dome funding levels support the case that these awards are early tranches. The Pentagon’s FY 2027 request alone earmarks $17.9 billion for Golden Dome, and that figure is designed to grow as the layered architecture builds out.
The qualifications matter. Shotwell was careful to note that “some of which we will have to compete”, and Pentagon budget documents show competing contractors like Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) and SciTec already active in missile warning and tracking. Political dependence is real, because Golden Dome funding runs through congressional reconciliation and appropriation processes that can shift with any administration.
Bottom Line for Long-Term Holders Retirement-focused investors can build a case around this contract stream without assuming SpaceX captures every dollar of Golden Dome. What they need is for the company to maintain its position as the default option for space-based defense infrastructure as the program scales, and the Q2 numbers suggest it is doing exactly that.
Enterprise & Government revenue growing 108% off a $1.8 billion quarterly base shows the trajectory. That growth was recorded before Golden Dome awards fully flowed through the income statement.
The risks belong on the same page. Starship is still burning cash, with Space segment adjusted EBITDA at a $205 million loss, AI capex hitting $15.83 billion in a single quarter, and the pending $60 billion Cursor acquisition raising integration questions.
The next catalyst worth watching is the Cursor close, expected in Q3 2026, alongside further Space Force award disclosures. If the $8 billion figure looks conservative twelve months from now, this quarter will read as the moment SpaceX became a defense prime with a rocket division.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Phillip Securities analyst Glenn Thum recently set a target price of $75 per share for Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX). As of the time of this writing, that would amount to a 45% decline in the stock price. Moreover, Thum has a five-star rating on TipRanks and an 87% success rate, which has won him considerable credibility.
Admittedly, only two out of 35 analysts rate SpaceX as a sell, and certainly, such forecasts do not always come to pass. Nonetheless, it highlights some risks with owning SpaceX stock.
Here's why investors would probably serve themselves well by heeding this warning.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
The bearish SpaceX call Thum pointed out a few reasons for his negative outlook on this company. He noted its capital expenditures (capex), which now amount to approximately 2.4 times SpaceX's revenue in the second quarter of 2026. Additionally, Thum expressed some discomfort with 19.5% of Q2 group revenues coming from a single AI customer, widely believed to be Anthropic.
Furthermore, its revenue stream is somewhat uncertain as its cloud service customers can leave its platforms with just 90 days' notice. Additionally, it is probably not surprising that Thum cited the $542 million operating loss in the space segment in Q2 as another negative.
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The concerns do not end there. In Q2, revenue grew by 92% year over year. Such increases tend to lead to elevated stock prices, and that certainly is the case with SpaceX.
Still, one has to wonder if that is enough to justify the stock price. As a money-losing company, SpaceX has no P/E ratio. However, its price-to-sales (P/S) ratio recently stood at 86, a level even the most robust growth stocks might struggle to justify.
Also, SpaceX shareholders started facing lock-up expirations in August, and these will continue through next June. Although those are not share dilutions, it offers key insiders the opportunity to sell shares. Since that amounts to billions of shares over the next 10 months, investors should expect selling pressure to hit the tape at each lock-up expiration.
Indeed, none of this directly affects SpaceX as a company. Its dominance in space launches and leadership in satellite internet and AI make it likely the company will prosper in the long term. Nonetheless, with several factors placing pressure on the stock, it is likely wise to take Thum's warnings seriously.
Moving forward with SpaceX stock Investors should heed the warning from Phillip Securities analyst Glenn Thum and avoid SpaceX stock for now.
To be sure, SpaceX is well positioned to prosper as a company. Its market positioning and the growth of its space, AI, and connectivity segments may undergird the stock once conditions become more favorable for new investors.
However, Thum has outlined headwinds, including high capex and uncertainty around some of its revenue streams. Additionally, its P/S ratio is a possible bubble, making it likely that many insiders will sell shares after their lock-up expirations.
Ultimately, with the risks outlined by Thum, the communication stock is probably too risky to buy at this time.
SpaceX, trading at 93 times next year's estimated earnings, seems hardly the stock to unite both short-term-focused hedge-fund managers and more long-term-oriented mutual-fund managers.
An investor who bought $500 worth of SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock on June 23 would now be sitting on a loss, as shares have retreated significantly from their post-IPO highs.
With the stock falling from $156 on June 23 to $136 on August 23, that investment would have dropped to about $436.
The decline represents a loss of about $64, or 12.8%, over the past two months, as selling pressure and share unlocks weighed on the stock.
SpaceX stock price chart. Source: Finbold Notably, SpaceX completed its initial public offering in June at $135 per share. The stock rallied strongly after listing, closing its debut session near $161 and later climbing above $220 in mid-June as investor enthusiasm pushed the company’s market capitalization beyond $2 trillion.
Why SpaceX stock corrected However, the rally proved difficult to sustain. By late June, shares had settled near $156 before entering a prolonged correction.
The stock has since retreated toward its IPO price amid post-listing volatility and multiple lockup expirations that increased the supply of tradable shares.
A key factor behind the decline has been successive share unlocks following the IPO. The latest release made roughly 319 million shares eligible for trading around August 20, adding further selling pressure.
Despite the weaker share price, the aerospace manufacturer continues to report strong operational and financial growth.
SpaceX fundamentals The company generated $7.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 92% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA surged 191% to $3.5 billion, while the net loss narrowed significantly from the same period a year earlier.
Starlink remains the company’s largest business segment and primary source of cash flow. The satellite internet network has surpassed 11,000 satellites in orbit and continues to add subscribers across consumer and enterprise markets.
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s launch operations remain highly active. The company completed its 100th mission of 2026, reinforcing its position as the world’s leading commercial launch provider.
Investors continue to focus on the long-term potential of Starship and the company’s artificial intelligence business following the acquisition of xAI earlier this year.
Notably, SpaceX is investing heavily in AI infrastructure and cloud computing capacity while advancing Starship development to support future satellite deployments and commercial missions. Those investments have kept capital expenditures elevated and continue to weigh on profitability.
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Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.22%), better known as SpaceX, shattered records with its IPO in June. The company went public at a valuation of $1.77 trillion and raised $86 billion. Both stand as records.
But Anthropic could shatter at least one of them. The AI lab confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC at the start of June, and it could go public before the end of the year. When it does, it could command an even higher valuation than SpaceX.
Anthropic's last funding round in May valued the company at $965 billion. But its valuation could climb to $2 trillion by the time it goes public, according to some investors. Here's why it could be the highest-valued company to go public in history, and how it compares to SpaceX.
Image source: Getty Images.
Why do investors think Anthropic is headed toward $2 trillion? Anthropic is the fastest-growing software company in history. The company reached a $65 billion run rate in July. That level of revenue would put it firmly in the Fortune 100, but what's even more impressive is that it wouldn't even have made the Fortune 500 list a year ago. The company has seen revenue explode this year from a $9 billion revenue run rate to start the year, which is up from a $5 billion run rate last August and a $1 billion run rate at the start of 2025.
Investors expect Anthropic's revenue run rate to climb to between $100 billion and $120 billion by the end of the year. The company is reportedly projecting $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue for the full-year 2028. Keep in mind, this is a company that's just five and a half years old.
Elon Musk is also projecting rapid revenue growth for SpaceX and its artificial intelligence business. He said the company's internal projections indicate it will reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. Musk also thinks that the 10 gigawatts of compute capacity SpaceX plans to have online by the end of 2027 will produce between $300 billion and $500 billion in revenue for the business in 2028. Investors should take Musk's projections with a grain of salt. He has a habit of overpromising.
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For reference, SpaceX just reported quarterly revenue of $7.8 billion, for an annual run rate of $31.2 billion, less than half of Anthropic's. That said, it didn't start bringing on cloud computing customers until late in the quarter. Management thinks it'll reach a $100 billion annualized run rate by the end of the year, which puts it on par with investors' expectations for the AI lab.
Should you buy Anthropic or SpaceX? Both companies are growing quickly as demand for artificial intelligence continues to increase. There are still many questions about Anthropic that need to be answered, and we'll get a lot of information once it releases a public IPO prospectus.
The key considerations are whether either company has a competitive moat. SpaceX's revenue growth stems from its ability to supply compute amid a massive capacity shortage. It counts Anthropic and Google as its biggest customers, the latter noting that it's only buying capacity as a temporary means to ensure it can serve its largest and most valuable customers.
Meanwhile, Anthropic's AI models consistently rank at the top of the frontier model class. What's more, its harnessed its models' capabilities to create excellent tools like Claude Code and Claude Cowork. While other AI labs have followed in its footsteps, Anthropic has continued to demonstrate leading capabilities. That's exemplified by both its incredible revenue growth this year and reports that it charges 2.5 times the rate of OpenAI for its leading model.
The other consideration is how profitable the business actually is. Massive revenue growth means nothing unless there's a clear path toward profitability. To that end, SpaceX's AI business reported an adjusted operating loss of $741 million last quarter, an improvement over its $2.09 billion loss in the first quarter. But with a massive step up in compute spending, it'll likely remain negative for some time. Meanwhile, Anthropic is already producing a positive operating profit, according to reports. The company was projected to produce a positive adjusted operating profit of $559 million in the second quarter.
So, with higher levels of revenue, a consistently demonstrated competitive advantage, and better operating margins, Anthropic should be worth more than SpaceX. With SpaceX commanding a market cap of $1.85 trillion as of this writing, it's no surprise investors think Anthropic is worth at least $2 trillion.
Anthropic's backers reportedly want the artificial intelligence (AI) company to go public in October at a valuation of $2 trillion or more. The Financial Times reported the figure this month, citing the company's investors.
Anthropic itself has confirmed far less. It filed a confidential draft registration statement on June 1, and it hasn't publicly set a valuation, a date, an exchange, or a ticker. Bloomberg reported Thursday that the company expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record raise, and could file publicly as soon as the end of this month.
A $2 trillion debut would be the largest initial public offering (IPO) ever, and the company it would take the record from is barely two months into public life. SpaceX (SPCX +2.22%) priced the current largest IPO on record in June, at a valuation of about $1.77 trillion.
That makes SpaceX a timely case study. Anyone weighing whether to chase the next record listing can look at exactly what the market did with the last one.
Image source: Getty Images.
The reported appetite for Anthropic rests on explosive growth. Preliminary figures the company shared with prospective investors put second-quarter revenue above $11.5 billion, more than double the first quarter's $4.73 billion, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. Investors who spoke to the Financial Times expect annualized revenue of $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of the year.
Days before filing, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. In other words, its backers are now discussing a price about double what they paid in late May.
Worth noting, too: According to the same reporting, Anthropic's own senior executives haven't fixed a valuation target, even privately. The $2 trillion figure belongs to the investors, not the company.
Up 67%, down 22%, back to evenSpaceX sold 555,555,555 shares at $135 apiece on June 11, raising $75 billion at the offer in the largest IPO on record -- and about $86 billion in all, once its underwriters exercised their option to buy 83.3 million more shares. Trading began the next day, and the first public trade came at $150.
The 10 weeks since gave buyers the full range of outcomes. Shares ran as high as $225.64, a 67% gain from the offer price. They then fell as low as $104.83, which is 22% below it.
As of this writing, the stock sits within a few percent of $135 -- about 40% below its high, and almost exactly where it started.
So the investors who got shares at the offer price have made essentially nothing in two months. And anyone who bought at the opening trade is down about 9%.
The sellers set the recordThe business performed the whole time, which is what makes the return so instructive. SpaceX grew second-quarter revenue 92% year over year to $7.81 billion, and its AI segment's revenue more than tripled year over year to $2.6 billion. The company signed $14.1 billion of cloud computing contracts during the quarter, narrowed its net loss to $541 million from $1 billion a year earlier, and ended June with $47.5 billion in backlog.
Growth like that usually moves a stock. Across the full 10 weeks, on net, it hasn't moved this one -- because the offer price had already charged for it. Even today, SpaceX trades at about 57 times revenue, annualizing its second-quarter figure. The sellers, in short, set a record price precisely because the growth story was at full strength -- and the buyers have spent two months waiting for the story to catch up to what they paid.
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Anthropic's math could work out better. If revenue lands where its backers project, a $2 trillion valuation would be about 18 times the annualized revenue they expect by December. That is a lower price against hoped-for sales than SpaceX commanded.
But it still assumes annualized revenue grows another 50% or more from the $65 billion annualized run rate the company reported for late July. And it prices that assumption in before the company has reported a single quarter in public.
Of course, SpaceX's two months prove nothing about the next two years, and a business that keeps doubling can outgrow any starting price eventually. But I think the two-month record is worth taking at face value.
The largest IPO ever delivered a 67% surge, a 53% collapse from that peak, and, for the investor who simply bought and held from the start, a return of about zero -- all while the business nearly doubled its revenue year over year. A record-setting price means the growth is charged upfront. Two months in, that is exactly how it has traded.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX (SPCX +2.22%), held a 48.4% stake in the company as of June 30, according to a recent regulatory filing. Let's see what that massive position -- which is worth about $860 billion as of this writing -- means for its other investors.
What does Musk actually own? Musk holds 6.42 billion shares of SpaceX. That includes 849.5 million Class A shares and 3.92 billion Class B shares held by trusts in which Musk is a trustee; 1.30 billion restricted Class B shares directly held by Musk; and 350 million Class B shares tied to stock options.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX's Class A shares, which public investors can buy, only carry one vote per share. But its Class B shares are "super-voting" shares that carry 10 votes per share. Musk -- through his personal holdings, trusts, and options -- controls 93.6% of the outstanding Class B shares.
When combined with his Class A shares, he retains 82%-84% of SpaceX's total voting power. In other words, Musk single-handedly controls all of SpaceX's board member elections and removals, as well as all approval and veto powers over the company's major business decisions.
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What does this mean for SpaceX's other investors? Therefore, investors can expect SpaceX to stay committed to the capital-intensive expansion of its Starlink, rocket launch, and AI businesses without any public pressure. That's good news if you believe SpaceX can achieve Musk's lofty goal of becoming the first company to generate over $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. That would represent a 5-year CAGR of 122% from its 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion.
But that's bad news if you had expected SpaceX to exercise more restraint and financial discipline as a public company. With a market cap of $1.79 trillion, SpaceX already trades at 96 times its 2025 sales. That frothy valuation doesn't leave the company much room to disappoint its investors.
Lastly, investors should keep an eye on June 12, 2027, the day Musk's 366-day lockup period expires. But SEC Rule 144 -- which caps the volume of equity an insider can sell within three months at either 1% of a stock's outstanding shares or its average weekly trading volume -- will prevent Musk from liquidating his massive stake.
Musk will also likely set up an automated SEC Rule 10b5-1 trading schedule to sell his shares on specific dates to avoid insider trading charges. So while Musk can start selling some of his SpaceX shares next year, he'll stay in firm control of the rapidly growing company.
Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.22%) stock hasn't been the massive success investors might have been hoping for thus far. While it had a strong run-up in its first few days of trading, it's fallen 29% from its high. However, it's on the rise again, and recently was up 32% since Aug. 1.
Is it too late to buy the stock?
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX is more than hype and more than rockets Elon Musk has generated a massive following for pretty much everything he does, and SpaceX is a sort of culmination of that. He has roped together several of his businesses under the SpaceX banner, starting with the SpaceX rocket launching business and including Starlink, which it calls the connectivity business, and xAI.
While fans may be more excited about Musk that anything else, the AI business is where most of the opportunity is. Management has identified a $28.5 trillion total addressable market over the next few years, with $26.5 trillion going to AI.
The company as a whole isn't profitable yet, but in the 2026 second quarter, it reported outstanding growth, mostly coming from AI. The AI business grew 247% year over year, although the company posted a $1.3 billon loss. Total revenue was up 92%, beating Wall Street estimates, and the Starlink business reported $1.7 billion in net income.
All of the businesses are gaining momentum. SpaceX is the largest rocket launcher in the world, and has launched 78 rockets so far this year. It's getting closer to its goals of totally reusable rockets, and its launch in late July, subsequent to the second quarter, was its softest splashdown ever.
Most of the rocket launches were bringing more satellites into space for Starlink, which has 12 million subscribers as of the end of the second quarter, double from last year. It signed agreements with several global air carriers including American Airlines as well as with international mobile carriers such as SoftBank, and it doesn't have any real competitors at this time.
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The AI business is thriving as well, and it recently cemented several important new deals. It landed $14.1 billion in cloud contract revenue in the second quarter with companies including Anthropic and Alphabet, and it announced the acquisition of coding company Cursor, which it closed last week. Cursor already has a $4 billion run rate, according to reports, and that could add significant revenue, and opportunity, to SpaceX's total.
Wall Street says buy? It's not hard to see why many SpaceX is generating hype. It has three businesses that either dominate or are major players in their categories, and these are all future-oriented areas.
About 75% of the Wall Street analysts covering SpaceX stock call it a buy right now, but that's actually less of a consensus than you might think. Many top stocks have an almost uniform buy rating, or mostly buys with a small percentage of holds. However, three analysts are calling SpaceX stock a sell right now. The median target price is $217, or 55% higher than today, but that's partially skewed by one analyst's $800 target.
Even at the lower price, SpaceX stock is still extremely expensive, trading at 66 times trailing 12-month sales. That's cheaper than it was when SpaceX went public, but it's no bargain. So no, it doesn't look like it's too late to buy at all. I would say it's still too early, and investors who believe in Musk and his vision and want a piece of it should wait for a more attractive entry point.
A trading expert has projected that SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock is likely to trade near $300 in the first quarter of 2027, citing a bullish technical structure.
According to an analysis by TradingShot published on TradingView on August 20, the outlook is based on SpaceX recently breaking out of a months-long accumulation phase.
The analyst noted that the move above a key resistance zone signaled the end of the stock’s post-IPO consolidation period and the beginning of a broader expansion trend.
TradingShot’s outlook suggests SpaceX has continued to follow the post-IPO roadmap first outlined shortly after the company’s public debut.
SPCX stock price analysis. Source: TradingView Following its June 2026 IPO, SPCX surged to an all-time high of approximately $225 amid strong investor enthusiasm before entering a prolonged correction. The decline eventually pushed the stock close to the $100 level, creating what the analyst identified as a capitulation bottom.
Key SPCX stock price levels to watch Over the following months, SpaceX traded within a broad $100 to $150 accumulation range as the market absorbed selling pressure from profit-taking and lock-up expirations. During that period, the $150 to $155 zone emerged as the stock’s most important resistance area.
TradingShot had previously argued that a decisive break above that range would confirm the end of the accumulation phase and signal that long-term buyers had regained control of the trend.
That scenario has now played out, with SpaceX moving above the resistance zone and turning it into support.
The breakout subsequently cleared the way for a move beyond the analyst’s first upside target of $220, placing the stock firmly within what the chart describes as a macro expansion phase.
Based on the current structure, TradingShot expects the aerospace manufacturer to reach approximately $270 by late February 2027, corresponding to the 1.236 Fibonacci extension from the previous all-time high. If bullish momentum remains intact, the stock could approach the $300 level in the first quarter of 2027.
The bullish technical setup comes as SpaceX continues to attract investor attention following its record-breaking IPO. The company priced shares at $135, raising approximately $85.7 billion and debuting with an implied valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion.
SpaceX strong earnings While the stock experienced significant volatility after listing, recent financial results have reinforced the company’s long-term growth narrative.
For the second quarter of 2026, SpaceX reported $7.8 billion in revenue, up 92% year-over-year, while adjusted EBITDA increased 191% to $3.5 billion. The company’s Starlink connectivity business generated approximately $4.3 billion in quarterly revenue, while its AI segment expanded 247% year-over-year to about $2.6 billion.
SpaceX ended the quarter with roughly $100 billion in cash and marketable securities, giving it ample resources to fund AI infrastructure and space operations.
Investor sentiment has also been boosted by Starlink, which has grown to an estimated 12 million subscribers, double the level a year ago. The business generated more than half of SpaceX’s quarterly revenue, cementing its position as the company’s primary cash engine.
The segment received a strong endorsement from All-In Podcast co-host David Friedberg, who argued that Starlink alone could be worth $1 trillion within 18 months, citing its expanding subscriber base, recurring revenue model, and long-term cash flow potential.
The bullish outlook has also been echoed by Elon Musk, who sees AI and robotics driving future bandwidth demand.
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On her June 18, 2026 podcast, Suze Orman told listeners that if they wanted exposure to Elon Musk’s newly public rocket company, the cleanest way was to dollar cost average into the stock itself, symbol SPCX, at around $200. That day, SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) closed at $185. This morning it changed hands near $136, and an analyst desk flagged a fresh Sell initiation on the name, one of several bearish calls now on the Street.
If you followed Orman’s advice and put $500 a month into SPCX starting June 18, you are underwater on nearly every tranche. Orman’s core audience is retirees and near-retirees who trust her voice on capital preservation. A single-stock DCA into a pre-profit, capex-heavy IPO is a different animal than what most of that audience signed up for.
Why This Advice Was Structurally Wrong for the Audience Dollar cost averaging reduces timing risk in a diversified portfolio. It is a poor tool for reducing valuation risk in a single stock. Orman conflated these different problems.
If you committed $500 a month for the three months since that podcast, and SPCX went from $185 on June 18 to about $136 today, your average cost sits somewhere in the mid-$150s. That is a 28% drawdown on your first buy and a smaller loss on later ones. DCA cushioned the pain but did not eliminate it. The deeper question is whether the business supports the price at any of those levels.
The Q2 report provides the raw material. SpaceX beat on revenue at $7.81 billion versus $6.93 billion expected, with Starlink and AI leading the mix. The $541 million net loss and the $18.37 billion of capital spending in a single quarter, $15.83 billion of it on AI compute, tell the other side of the story. A company burning that much cash to build data centers is a venture bet with a ticker, categorically different from a bond substitute (we profiled seven suppliers riding that same buildout, from power to cooling, in a free AI infrastructure report).
Reddit noticed what Orman did not price in. On August 7, roughly 911.5 million shares held by employees and early investors became eligible to trade. As one poster put it, “That’s more than the roughly 639M shares sold in the IPO”. Buying near the highs before that supply event is the opposite of what dollar cost averaging protects against.
Position Size Changes Everything The single factor determining whether Orman’s advice was reckless or merely aggressive is what percentage of your portfolio you put into it.
Consider two listeners. Listener A hears “dollar cost average” and puts 2% of a $500,000 portfolio into SPCX at $185. The stock falls to $136. The loss is roughly $2,650, or half a percent of the total account. Annoying, not life-changing. Listener B puts 25% of the same portfolio in. Same drawdown, but now the account is down more than $33,000, and the retirement math bends.
Both followed the exact same advice. One is fine. One is not. Orman’s on-air instruction did not specify a cap, and that omission is where the harm lives.
What to Do Now if You Bought the Podcast Total your SPCX cost basis and divide it by your investable assets. If the number is above 5%, the position is a concentrated bet, not a DCA sleeve. Decide if you meant to make a concentrated bet. Read the Q2 filing yourself. Revenue growth is real, but so is a $541 million quarterly loss against $18.37 billion in capex. Decide whether you are comfortable owning that profile. Track the analyst view. Today’s Sell initiation is one of several bearish ratings. Note the price target when published and compare to your average cost. Set a rule before the next unlock. The 911.5 million share event is behind you. More lockup expirations are ahead. Decide in advance what price or fundamental change would cause you to trim. At least one member of Congress, Rep. Timmons, disclosed a SpaceX purchase on July 18, 2026, and this morning Musk himself was busy retweeting a post calling X “the nervous system of the world” rather than addressing the stock. Both are noise around the ticker, a reminder that the loudest voices on a stock rarely have your retirement in mind.
Dollar cost averaging manages timing risk, not the risk that you picked the wrong stock at the wrong price.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Retail investors talked up five hot stocks during the week (Aug. 17 to Aug. 21) on X and Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets, driven by retail hype, earnings, AI infrastructure momentum, and corporate news flow.
Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA), Walmart Inc. (NASDAQ:WMT), Strategy Inc. (NASDAQ:MSTR), Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV), and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX), biotech, pharmaceutical, retailer, Bitcoin treasury, semiconductor, AI, and space sectors, reflected strong retail interest.
On Aug. 19, MRNA with Merck & Co Inc. (NYSE:MRK) announced a positive Phase 3 INTerpath-001 result for their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran, in high-risk resected melanoma. The therapy met its primary endpoint of improved recurrence-free survival and a key secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival—the first successful late-stage readout for an mRNA cancer vaccine—sending MRNA shares surging more than 177% that day. However, it was followed by a sharp profit-taking pullback on Aug. 20, with analysts raising targets and the company planning regulatory discussions. Trending
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Few retail investors were contemplating whether MRNA would rebound as it corrected after the 177% explosion. The stock has traded in a range of $22.28 to $176.66, trading around $132 to $139 per share, as of the publication of this article. It advanced by 395.80% over the year and 167.34% in the last six months. The stock was up 352.09% year-to-date. According to Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings, MRNA was maintaining a strong price trend over the short, medium, and long term. Walmart On Aug. 20, Walmart reported fiscal second-quarter 2027 results that beat estimates with revenue of $187.9 billion, up 5.9%, and adjusted EPS of $0.81, driven by strong global e-commerce growth of 23% and advertising gains, while raising full-year sales guidance to 4–5% and adjusted EPS to $2.80–$2.87. However, U.S. comparable sales rose only 2.6%, the slowest in about six years, missing forecasts amid pharmacy headwinds and consumer caution over high fuel prices, soft third-quarter guidance, and plans to use $2.9 billion in tariff refunds for price cuts sent shares down roughly 9%. Retail traders were mocking WMT’s decline as it dragged all the indices down following its second-quarter results. The stock had a 52-week range of $95.42 to $135.16, trading around $102 to $105 per share, as of the publication of this article. It advanced by 1.24% over the year, but fell 15.57% in the last six months. The stock was down 6.79% YTD. Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings showed that WMT had a weak price trend in the short, long, and medium terms, with a solid quality score. Strategy This week, MSTR disclosed in an 8-K that it sold about 3.46 million shares for roughly $334 million in net proceeds during the prior week, with no Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) purchases or sales, leaving holdings steady at 840,447 BTC, allocating the funds to STRC preferred dividends, buybacks, and boosting its USD reserve to $4.8 billion; a sharp Bitcoin rally, pushing prices above $70,000–$77,000, drove MSTR shares higher and flipped the company’s BTC position back into an unrealized gain of about $1.4 billion. A few retail investors who missed the MSTR rally following the BTC surge were regretting their decision. The stock had a 52-week range of $81.81 to $365.21, trading around $111 to $124 per share, as of the publication of this article. It declined by 67.36% over the year and 14.24% in the last six months. The stock was down 26.03% YTD. MSTR maintains a weak price trend over the long and medium term but a strong trend in the short term, as per Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings. Broadcom This week, AVGO shares faced pressure early on from lingering concerns over an actively exploited VMware vCenter security vulnerability and AI backlog financing. The stock then dropped after rival Marvell Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MRVL) announced a major custom AI chip development deal with Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, including warrants potentially linked to up to ~$120 billion in purchases, raising fears of eroded exclusivity in Google’s TPU ecosystem despite Broadcom’s existing long-term supply agreement through 2031. The stock later stabilized as analysts downplayed the competitive threat amid Broadcom’s strong AI revenue momentum, with the company also promoting its VMware Explore 2026 event. While most retail investors had a bearish view on AVGO, some were confident about AVGO’s trajectory. The stock had a 52-week range of $287.17 to $495.00, trading around $363 to $370 per share, as of the publication of this article. It rose by 25.02% over the year, 9.43% over the last six months, and higher by 5.18% YTD. According to Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings, AVGO was maintaining a strong price trend over the long term but a weak trend in the short and medium terms, with a poor growth score. SpaceX SPCX shares rallied early this week on institutional ownership disclosures, with heavy stakes from Alphabet, Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), and others. Recent Falcon 9 launches and momentum reclaiming near its IPO price also aided, but it faced pressure mid-week from competitive news about China’s LandSpace reusable rocket landing and anticipation of dilution. The key event was the Aug, 20 unlock of roughly 319 million shares, which added supply and sent the stock lower. Most retail investors were highly bearish on SPCX stock this week. The stock has traded in the range of $104.83 to $225.64 since listing, trading around $133 to $136 per share, as of the publication of this article. It fell by 10.67% since listing, up 11.81% over the last month, and down 5.16% in the last five trading sessions. According to Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings, SPCX was maintaining a weak price trend over the short, medium, and long terms. Retail focus comprised AI infrastructure momentum, earnings, and corporate news-driven narratives with broader market action during the week.
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SpaceX SPCX shares gained 1.4% on Friday as investors weighed the rapid expansion of its Starlink satellite network, upcoming share unlocks and the company's significant capital spending requirements.
The stock had fallen 3% on Wednesday and declined 4.1% on Thursday as another 319 million shares held by employees, early investors and other insiders became eligible for trading.
SpaceX launched another 24 Starlink satellites from California on Tuesday, bringing the constellation closer to 11,000 spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
Tracking data from astronomer Jonathan McDowell showed around 10,979 Starlink satellites in orbit as of Aug. 19, with about 10,963 operational.
SpaceX has launched more than 12,700 Starlink satellites since 2019, although roughly 1,700 have since deorbited.
The network now represents nearly two-thirds of all active satellites orbiting Earth.
SpaceX has approval to launch between 15,000 and 19,000 Gen-1 and Gen-2 Starlink satellites by 2031.
The company has also sought approval for a next-generation constellation of up to 100,000 satellites.
CEO Elon Musk said earlier this month that the Starlink system could eventually exceed 100,000 satellites.
He has also said the space economy will be significantly larger than Goldman Sachs' current $1.8 trillion projection for 2035.
Starlink is already a major contributor to SpaceX's financial performance.
The company's Connectivity segment generated $4.3 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2026, accounting for about 55% of SpaceX's total $7.8 billion revenue.
The segment generated $1.7 billion in operating profit, up 66% year over year.
The growth was supported by a doubling of subscribers to 12 million.
SpaceX aims for Starlink to eventually carry most of the world's internet traffic.
The company also sees potential applications in AI infrastructure, mobile connectivity and internet services for homes, businesses and governments.
Investors are also monitoring the impact of additional shares becoming available for trading.
The Aug. 20 unlock made up to 319 million restricted shares eligible for trading. The shares represented about 2.4% of SpaceX's outstanding stock and could increase the company's tradable float by around 20%.
Additional unlocks are scheduled through the rest of 2026, while Musk's large stake remains locked until June 2027.
Meanwhile, DZ Bank analyst Markus Leistner initiated coverage with a Sell rating and a $100 price target.
The bearish view contrasts with broader Wall Street sentiment, with about 75% of analysts covering SpaceX rating the stock Buy. The average analyst price target stands near $226.
The differing views partly reflect the scale of SpaceX's future investment requirements.
FactSet estimates SpaceX revenue could exceed $100 billion in 2027, compared with about $44 billion in 2026.
However, Wall Street projects roughly $800 billion in cumulative capital spending by the end of the decade.
Much of that spending is expected to support AI and communications infrastructure.
SpaceX currently operates about 1.4 gigawatts of computing capacity at two terrestrial data centers and aims to reach 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
For investors, the company's rapid Starlink growth offers significant revenue potential, but the scale of required investment and continued share unlocks remain important factors for the stock.
Anthropic is aiming for an IPO that could make history, expecting to match or even top SpaceX's record-setting debut, according to sources. The maker of Claude could file publicly by the end of this month.
In the 1990s, Philippe Laffont cut his teeth working for Julian Robertson's legendary hedge fund, Tiger Management.
When Tiger Management closed in 2000, many of Robertson's disciples launched their own funds. This group is known as the "Tiger cubs," and many of them have done extraordinarily well.
Laffont is one example. His hedge fund, Coatue Management, had roughly $48.6 billion in assets under management at the end of the second quarter, and Laffont has become a billionaire himself.
At the end of the second quarter, nearly 23% of Coatue's capital was invested in three artificial intelligence (AI) stocks.
Image source: Getty Images.
Taiwan Semiconductor -- 8.8% Taiwan Semiconductor doesn't quite get as much attention as a chip designer like Nvidia, but it arguably plays just as important a role in the AI build-out, given that it manufactures most of the complex chips that designers such as Nvidia create.
Various studies indicate that Taiwan Semiconductor now handles more than 70% of advanced AI chip manufacturing worldwide. Counterpoint Research put Taiwan Semiconductor's share of the third-party foundry market at 73% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 68% one year prior.
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The stock is up nearly 72% in the past year. Taiwan Semiconductor has also been expanding its production capacity to meet the incredible demand for high-end chips. The company recently committed an additional $100 billion to its fabrication campus in Arizona, bringing its total planned investment on that site to $265 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has, on numerous occasions, more or less called Taiwan Semiconductor a critical part of the AI supply chain, not only because of its dominance in the foundry space but also because of the supply chain it has built en route to becoming the dominant chip manufacturer.
Micron Technology -- 7.5% In the second quarter, Coatue increased its position in Micron Technology by 1,794%, bringing its total position at the end of the quarter to more than $3.6 billion.
Micron has been one of the hottest trades of the year, up roughly 197% (as of Aug. 18), driven by strong demand for memory, which plays a critical role in data centers by feeding data to graphics processing units (GPUs) and other processing chips.
Micron makes both NAND flash memory and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM).
NAND flash memory is a cheaper, long-term solution that can store massive data sets for GPUs, whereas DRAM is a temporary yet faster-to-access form of memory that helps AI models retrieve data so that they can process it and respond more rapidly to queries.
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Demand for both types of memory has far exceeded the volume that manufacturers are able to produce, leading to soaring memory prices, and they are expected to remain supply-constrained until 2027 and maybe even 2028. Memory companies have historically been cyclical businesses in part because of the time it takes them to increase their manufacturing capacity. Whenever there's a shortage, they expand, but when supply catches up to demand, it usually overshoots, flipping the market dynamic. And often, by the time new foundries come online, memory demand has already declined, leading to a supply glut.
But some think the incredible level of memory demand being driven by the AI trend could change things. In the third quarter of its fiscal 2026, Micron inked 16 multiyear strategic customer agreements that will collectively generate at least $100 billion in revenue through 2030.
It's quite possible that Laffont and the Coatue team think this memory cycle could be very different for players like Micron.
SpaceX -- 6.5% Coatue Management also makes venture investments in privately held companies, and Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +1.38%) was one of them. Coatue reportedly gained exposure to the company in later private funding rounds, according to CNBC.
At the end of the second quarter, Coatue disclosed that its SpaceX position was valued at close to $3.2 billion.
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Given that Laffont and the Coatue team are big believers in AI, that investment makes sense. In its registration statement, SpaceX asserted that its AI unit has a total addressable market (TAM) of $26.5 trillion.
SpaceX has already begun to forge lucrative deals leasing AI compute from its data centers, and the company claims it will be able to build more of them faster and monetize them more quickly than competitors. SpaceX also plans to build a massive chip manufacturing complex, dubbed "Terafab," and has big ambitions in space, including plans to deploy a constellation of orbital data center satellites.
Many of its space ambitions hinge on making its super-heavy-lift reusable rocket, Starship, operational and eventually deployable weekly, and possibly even daily.
Wall Street expects Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ) to grow its revenue at a pace that would leave even Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ) in the dust — and Elon Musk says analysts still aren’t thinking big enough.
Ticker Take founder Jon Erlichman shared a chart comparing analysts’ five-year revenue growth estimates for some of the world’s largest companies. SpaceX topped the list with projected revenue growth of 2,090%. It stood far ahead of Nvidia’s 288%, Alphabet Inc‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) 140%, Microsoft Corp‘s (NASDAQ:MSFT) 136%, Amazon.com Inc‘s (NASDAQ:AMZN) 81% and Apple Inc‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) 54%.
That means Wall Street already expects SpaceX’s revenue to grow at more than seven times Nvidia’s pace over the next five years. It’s a remarkable comparison considering Nvidia has become the defining winner of the artificial intelligence boom; while SpaceX is still widely viewed as a rocket company despite its rapidly expanding businesses.
Are Analysts Still Too Conservative on SpaceX?Responding to the chart on X, Musk wrote, “I think both SpaceX and Tesla will exceed these estimates.”
While the comment covered both companies, SpaceX’s projection stands out. Analysts are already modeling an extraordinary 2,090% revenue increase over the next five years—compared with 119% for Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and 288% for Nvidia.
In other words, Musk isn’t just saying SpaceX will outperform expectations; he’s arguing that even one of Wall Street’s most optimistic growth forecasts still doesn’t go far enough.
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Analyst optimism stems from Starlink’s subscriber growth and the company’s push into AI infrastructure — businesses that drive future revenue alongside rocket launch operations.
Reuters has also reported that SpaceX expects to reach a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of 2026.
The next question is whether SpaceX can deliver.
If Starlink continues to scale and AI becomes a meaningful revenue contributor, today’s seemingly extraordinary forecasts may eventually look conservative. That possibility—not just the comparison with Nvidia—is what makes Musk’s brief response worth paying attention to.
Musk’s Track Record of Overpromising Looms Over SpaceX It’s a familiar story: Musk once predicted Twitter would generate more than $26 billion in revenue and nearly quintuple its customer base by 2028, but the company fell far short, with ad revenue plunging.
The failed projections have raised concerns about Musk’s similarly ambitious promises for SpaceX.
Those concerns have intensified after SpaceX’s first public-company earnings showed a $541 million quarterly net loss and $4.3 billion loss in the first quarter, alongside massive capital spending.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
DZ Bank initiated coverage of SpaceX with a Sell rating and a $100 price target on August 21, 2026. Against Thursday’s $134 close on a $1.03 trillion company, the target is a rare public bear call on a recently public mega cap, and it deserves a close look from long-term holders.
Ticker Company Firm Action Old Rating New Rating Old Target New Target SPCX SpaceX DZ Bank Initiation N/A Sell N/A $100 Analyst’s Case The DZ Bank Analyst Markus Leistner warned of “crash risk in the valuation orbit.” Capital expenditures reached $18.37 billion in a single quarter, with $15.83 billion directed to AI compute infrastructure, and management guided the next two quarters to a similar CapEx level. That buildout has to be powered, cooled, and networked by somebody, which is exactly why we rounded up seven suppliers behind the AI data-center boom in a free report here. Add the pending $60 billion Cursor acquisition expected to close in Q3 2026 and a $541 million net loss, and the bear case writes itself.
Company Snapshot SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) is a vertically integrated aerospace, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence company operating across Space, Connectivity, and AI segments. In its first public quarter, revenue reached $7.81 billion versus a $6.82 billion consensus, a 14.59% beat, with a loss per share of $0.09 against a $0.29 estimated loss. AI segment revenue grew 247% year over year, Connectivity revenue hit $4.29 billion, and Starlink subscribers doubled to 12.0 million. The company ended the quarter with $93.52 billion in cash and a $47.5 billion backlog.
Why the Move Matters Now SpaceX stock has been under pressure since its debut. Shares closed at $134 on August 20, 2026, down 16.74% from the June 12 close of $160.95, and opened Friday trading at $131.54. Float mechanics matter. A widely circulated r/stocks post flagged that “up to 911.5M shares held by employees and early investors become eligible to trade,” more than the roughly 639M shares sold in the IPO. “Less than 5% of the company was initially available to trade. That scarcity was a big part of the setup, and now it starts changing,” the author wrote. Against that supply backdrop, DZ Bank’s Sell initiation carries more weight than the isolated rating suggests.
What It Means for Your Portfolio For retirement-focused investors, the DZ Bank Sell initiation is a useful counterweight to the bullish narrative. The operational story is intact: management is projecting $100 billion of ARR by December 2026 and sees a path to $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. The risk is the price to get there. With CapEx guided to remain elevated, a $60 billion acquisition pending, and post-lockup supply hitting the market, the SpaceX thesis hinges on execution. The revised outlook warrants a closer look, even as near-term volatility remains a real risk.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
If you invested $1,000 in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock a month ago, you would now be holding about $1,165, reflecting the space company’s gain of about 16% in the same period.
Specifically, SpaceX shares have climbed from around $115 on July 22 to $134 by press time, August 21, bringing the total gain per share to approximately $19.
Consequently, the hypothetical $1,000 investment would have generated more or less $165 in profits in the one-month period.
SPCX one-month stock price chart. Source: Finbold Looking further back, the progress on the monthly chart shows just how volatile SpaceX has been since it went public at $135 per share on June 12. Indeed, at the debut, the company raised $85.7 billion in what was the largest initial public offering (IPO) on record, reaching about $1.77 trillion in market capitalization.
Thanks to the explosive launch, SPCX shares surged to a record high of more or less $225 in a matter of days, pushing the market value above $2 trillion. However, shares soon fell below the IPO price, eventually hitting a low near $105 in early August.
Thus, if you invested earlier, you would have suffered some notable losses. For example, if you invested $1,000 two months ago, on June 22, when SPCX was priced at $154, your investment would be worth about $870 – a roughly 13% loss of $129.
Will SpaceX stock rally again? Despite the volatility, some Wall Street analysts remain bullish on Elon Musk’s company. For example, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas expects the stock to rebound and reach a new all-time high over the next 12 months.
Jonas maintained a ‘Buy’ rating on SpaceX and reiterated his 12-month price target of ‘$300’ on August 20. Based on the current price, the target implies potential upside of 123%.
The bullish outlook centers on Grok Bot, which Jones believes could be an important early step toward a broader enterprise platform that combines artificial intelligence (AI), real-time data, and low-cost, scalable computing.
Morgan Stanley also believes that the market is undervaluing SpaceXAI by viewing it primarily as a successful neocloud, i.e., a specialized cloud provider focused on AI and high-performance computing workloads, instead of recognizing its broader growth potential.
Ultimately, the broader analyst consensus remains optimistic. According to data from TipRanks, 32 analysts have assigned SpaceX an average 12-month price target of $232.35, implying potential upside of roughly 73%.
Featured image via Shutterstock
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SpaceX trades near its IPO price after experiencing several large price swings. Both bulls and bears have good arguments about what will happen with the stock.
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, is preparing to publicly file paperwork for an initial public offering as soon as the end of this month.
The listing could match or surpass the record $75 billion flotation completed in June by SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, according to Bloomberg. No technology flotation had raised more.
Details, including the exact size and timing of the offering, have yet to be confirmed.
A public filing would give outsiders their first detailed look at the company's finances, from quarterly revenue growth to its biggest business lines.
Bringing the paperwork forward would let Anthropic beat OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, to the public markets in a rivalry that has come to define the sector.
OpenAI is not expected to go public until later this year or early 2027.
A successful listing would mark a milestone for the commercial AI industry.
From also-ran to enterprise force
Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by its chief executive, Dario Amodei, and his sister Daniela Amodei, both former OpenAI employees.
Once cast as an also-ran, the company has since built a fast-growing business selling AI tools to large employers.
The turning point was Claude Code, an AI coding agent that helped win over corporate customers at speed.
The product lets software developers hand routine coding tasks to an AI assistant.
Anthropic has followed it with products such as Claude Cowork, plus tie-ins with workplace software including Microsoft 365, made by the US company Microsoft.
Revenue and valuation
The company raised $65 billion in May at a valuation of $965 billion, overtaking OpenAI, which raised $122 billion at a valuation of $852 billion in March.
Anthropic reported revenue of $11.5 billion in its most recent quarter, 14 times higher than a year earlier.
OpenAI, by comparison, reported second-quarter revenue of $6.2 billion, up 18% on the previous three months, the Wall Street Journal said this week.
The figures point to Anthropic now growing faster than the company it was once measured against.
Political and competitive headwinds
Anthropic has also clashed with the Trump administration over the military use of its technology.
The administration has sought to stop the US defence department using Anthropic's systems to build fully autonomous weapons or to run mass surveillance of Americans.
It later designated the company a supply chain threat.
The disputes add a layer of political risk ahead of the planned listing.
Anthropic and OpenAI both face rising competition from open-source AI, particularly cheaper systems from China that could draw away potential customers.
Chinese developers have released capable open-source models at a fraction of the cost.
You can buy Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -4.05%) on the Nasdaq, but the vast majority of shares are still locked up. On June 12, the company sold 639 million shares at its initial public offering (IPO) -- making roughly 5% of the share count available for sale, with another massive wave of 911.5 million shares becoming eligible for sale on Aug. 6. More shares will be unlocked in the coming months, but that doesn't mean that early investors have to sell, it just means they can if they want to.
So naturally, SpaceX investors may be curious to know who is holding shares. Second-quarter 2026 Form 13F filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission just revealed major SpaceX shareholders, including high-profile corporations, hedge funds, asset managers, venture capital firms, and even endowments, such as Harvard and the University of California.
With 551,189,500 shares, Alphabet (GOOG -1.02%) (GOOGL -1.18%) is the second-largest SpaceX holder behind founder and CEO Elon Musk. Nvidia (NVDA -0.33%) is also a top holder with 122,764,805 shares.
As of July 28, SpaceX had 7,696,293,669 Class A shares and 5,485,486,276 Class B shares for 13,181,779,945 total shares -- giving Alphabet a 4.2% stake and Nvidia a 0.9% stake. That's significantly more than BlackRock's (BLK -1.65%) 51,037,137 SpaceX shares, Vanguard Capital Management's 26,556,713 shares, and Vanguard Portfolio Management's 10,225,389 shares.
Here's why Alphabet and Nvidia own large stakes in SpaceX, why investors can expect major investment management companies to own significantly more SpaceX in the coming months, and why the highly anticipated unlocking of SpaceX shares may not be as big an event as some investors think.
Image source: Getty Images.
High-profile SpaceX investors The latest 13F filings don't necessarily reflect recent purchases, but rather, an up-to-date tally of SpaceX ownership by major holders.
Alphabet invested $900 million in SpaceX back in 2015 -- a brilliant move in hindsight. Nvidia invested $10 billion in xAI in January before SpaceX bought xAI in February -- converting Nvidia's xAI shares into SpaceX shares. So, in both cases, Alphabet and Nvidia owned SpaceX stock before the IPO. BlackRock and Vanguard are buying SpaceX on behalf of their clients, many of whom are households loading up on post-IPO shares.
SpaceX's ownership will soon shift from early investors who backed it years ago (and some decades ago) to new investors buying it on the Nasdaq.
BlackRock and Vanguard are the two largest institutional holders of most stocks because they are the largest issuers of index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). For context, BlackRock, Vanguard Capital Management, and Vanguard Portfolio Management hold a combined 17% of Microsoft (MSFT -0.47%) and 16.8% of Apple (AAPL -1.75%).
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A gradual rather than rapid ownership shift SpaceX's float will increase as more SpaceX shares are unlocked and begin trading on the Nasdaq. The float is simply the number of shares available for public trading. As the float grows, investment management firms like BlackRock and Vanguard will increase their stakes in SpaceX. Nine Vanguard ETFs opened positions in SpaceX in June, and those positions will likely increase if insiders sell shares and if SpaceX's market cap increases.
The snowball will really start to grow once SpaceX is added to the S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.87%), which could occur as early as June 2027. When that happens, the S&P 500 index funds and ETFs will begin gobbling up SpaceX shares.
However, investors shouldn't expect SpaceX's float to magically balloon overnight. There are plenty of companies where insiders hold considerable positions even though the company has been public for decades, such as Oracle (ORCL -1.21%), where Larry Elisosn still owns roughly 40%.
All SpaceX shares will be unlocked in December, except for insiders like Elon Musk, whose shares will be unlocked in June 2027. Eventually, BlackRock and Vanguard will probably overtake Alphabet and Nvidia's stakes. But even if the shares were magically unlocked today, I wouldn't expect Alphabet, Nvidia, or early and local investors like Ron Baron to offload big positions. I'd also expect Musk to keep a sizable stake, and big Tesla investors like Cathie Wood to continue building positions. Rather, I'd expect most of the shares sold on the Nasdaq to come from hedge funds and venture capitalists who bought SpaceX over its multiple funding rounds since its incorporation in 2002 and from employees who received restricted stock units.
All told, unlocking SpaceX shares is a big deal, but it could take a long time for the float to meaningfully increase and for major investment management firms like Vanguard and BlackRock to hold positions on behalf of their clients that rival those held by early investors.
SpaceX (SPCX -4.05%) closed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor last week, just days after releasing its latest AI model, Grok 4.6. The deal gives SpaceX an instant foothold in the enterprise AI market through Cursor's popular code editor.
Cursor brings an installed base of over 50,000 companies, including nearly two-thirds of the Fortune 500. Those users generate valuable streams of interaction data that have helped train Composer, Cursor's own coding model. That team now trains on SpaceX's own compute, and Composer 3 is expected to arrive soon.
The deal improves SpaceX's competitive position in a rapidly growing market. Recently, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic's annualized revenue had crossed $65 billion, and OpenAI's had exceeded $40 billion.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Image source: The Motley Fool.
Grok is in the game Grok 4.6 scored 61 on the benchmark Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, matching GPT-5.6 Sol and sitting just behind the newest Claude models. On the SWE-bench that ranks large language models as tools for coding, it's in the top cluster.
The difference is price. Grok 4.6 launched at a fraction of the cost of the most advanced models, an advantage enabled by SpaceX's Colossus clusters. The company ended June with 1.4 gigawatts of nameplate compute and expects to surpass 2 gigawatts by year's end.
The next generation, Grok 4.7, is expected within weeks as xAI aims to gain ground on the latest GPT and Claude models.
What Cursor brings Few domains in AI have become as lucrative as coding, and Cursor gives SpaceX a seat at the table. Before this acquisition, SpaceX was a laggard in that market. Now, it has two model families in Grok and Composer, the coding tools, and an AI agent in Grok Bot. Those sit on top of the company's expanding power and data center assets. This level of vertical integration provides an edge over the frontier labs, which still rent much of their capacity.
The decision to buy Cursor was a smart bet, but SpaceX still lacks a large recurring profit center like Alphabet's Search or Microsoft's Office to fund its AI ambitions. Meanwhile, the stock price will face new pressures through mid-2027 as the lock-up periods currently keeping most of its shares out of the public float expire.
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But if SpaceX can leverage Cursor to make its models a top choice for software developers, that would put it in the same conversation as Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which are targeting trillion-dollar-plus valuations in their upcoming IPOs.
The $60 billion price SpaceX paid for Cursor was steep, but I think it will be the key that unlocks a much larger opportunity.
Spire Global (SPIR -0.36%), a satellite-based data and analytics company, went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) five years ago. Its stock opened at a reverse-split-adjusted price of $83.36 on the first day, but now trades at about $13 per share.
Image source: Getty Images.
Could Spire surprise investors with a comeback? Like many other SPAC-backed space companies, Spire overpromised and underdelivered. But its business -- which collects data across its own proprietary constellation of nanosatellites and sells that information through space-as-a-service subscriptions -- is still growing.
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Spire's revenue plunged 35% to $71.6 million in 2025, but the divestment of its maritime business caused that decline. It still serves the aviation, weather modeling, and defense markets, and analysts expect its revenue to rise 11% to $79.6 million in 2026 and 24% to $99 million in 2027. They also expect it to significantly narrow its net losses through 2027.
With an enterprise value of $536 million, Spire trades at less than seven times this year's sales. It won't attract as much attention as SpaceX (SPCX -5.34%), which is worth $1.79 trillion and trades at 40 times this year's sales, but it might be a hidden gem in the growing space sector.
Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
SpaceX shares SPCX fell around 4.94% to $132.60 in early Thursday trading, pushing the stock below its $135 initial public offering price as another large batch of shares became eligible for sale.
The decline comes after SpaceX defied expectations during its first major lockup expiration earlier this month, when more than 900 million shares became eligible for sale, but the stock instead rose sharply.
The immediate downward pressure was accelerated today after DZ Bank initiated coverage of SpaceX with a 'Sell' rating and a $100 price target, warning of a potential 'crash risk' given the massive capital requirements needed to justify its massive valuation.
SpaceX's $86 billion IPO on June 11 attracted strong demand from investors drawn to Elon Musk's plans for the company, which include expanding Starlink satellite internet, developing data centers in space, pursuing artificial intelligence, and pursuing longer-term space technology initiatives.
The stock initially rewarded investors, climbing from its $135 IPO price to more than $225 within days.
Less than two months later, shares fell as low as $105 before recovering to around $145.
The latest move below the IPO price highlights the volatility that can accompany large new listings as early investors gain the ability to sell their holdings.
SpaceX has adopted a staggered lockup structure that allows shareholders to sell their holdings across more than a dozen different dates.
The company's second major unlock took place today, with about 319 million shares held by early investors and employees becoming eligible for trading.
The structure differs from the traditional IPO lockup, in which pre-IPO shareholders are generally prohibited from selling their shares for 180 days after a company goes public.
Lockups are designed to give new public-market investors greater confidence that existing shareholders will not immediately sell large portions of their holdings.
Pre-IPO shareholders can include company executives, venture capital firms, private equity investors, wealthy individuals and employees.
SpaceX's staggered approach is intended to prevent a large volume of shares from reaching the market simultaneously and potentially putting greater pressure on the stock.
More than 700 million shares are expected to become available in September, followed by more than 650 million in October.
By the end of the year, about 4.9 billion SpaceX shares will have become eligible for trading.
Musk's own shares remain locked up until June 2027, according to the current schedule.
The expanding supply has been a major factor in SpaceX's early stock performance.
Investors have been cautious about buying ahead of potential profit-taking by early shareholders, contributing to the stock's decline to around $105 in July, well below its IPO price.
Most of the company remains held by pre-IPO shareholders, with Musk owning about 48% of the stock and controlling more than four-fifths of the voting power.
Shares becoming eligible for sale do not necessarily mean shareholders will sell them.
Eligibility to sell does not mean shareholders will immediately sell.
Large insider transactions can attract investor attention and may be interpreted by the market as a signal about an investor's confidence in the company.
Some fund managers that have publicly backed Musk's vision may therefore be less inclined to sell.
Other shareholders could have stronger incentives to take profits. These include funds that owned SpaceX before its IPO but primarily invest in private companies.
For other investors, the decision may depend on the stock's price and the availability of alternative investment opportunities.
SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) faces its second post-IPO lockup expiration Thursday, with roughly 319 million shares becoming eligible for trading — the calendar-based tranche tied to the company’s 70th day as a public stock.
The release follows an initial wave of roughly 912 million shares that freed up two weeks ago, when the public float jumped from under 5% to above 12% of shares outstanding.
SPCX stock is moving. See the real-time price action here. Shares traded at $135.91 in early trading on Thursday, down 2.68% from Wednesday’s close of $143.34, keeping the rocket-and-satellite giant’s market cap near $1.83 trillion, per Benzinga Pro.
The move follows a stretch of relative strength. SpaceX shares climbed 4.17% to $145.84 on Monday after fresh 13F filings revealed several institutions building multibillion-dollar stakes, pushing the stock back above its $135 IPO price.
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Momentum has been choppy, though. Shares changed hands near $110.63 on Aug. 6, not far from a 52-week low of $104.83, even as the first unlock landed.
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Wall Street’s consensus rating on the stock remains a Buy, with an average analyst price forecast of $228 — well above current levels. Technical signals painted a more cautious picture heading into the first unlock when shares traded below key moving averages and RSI sat near 37.64.
A prior Benzinga analysis argued the unlock overhang may be overstated. Most newly eligible shares are held by executives, employees, and early investors — holders less likely to dump stock after a roughly 40% drop from the post-IPO high near $225.
Lockup expirations grant the ability to sell, not an obligation. Still, a limited public float can amplify swings in either direction, and the market already knows more supply is coming.
More tranches follow close behind. Roughly 319 million additional shares are due Sept. 9, with further releases pegged to Sept. 24, Oct. 9, and Oct. 24, before the full 180-day lockup expires Dec. 8.
Elon Musk‘s stake, the largest single block, stays locked until June 2027.
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Photo: Thrive Studios ID / Shutterstock
This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -4.67%), better known as SpaceX, has been a volatile stock since going public over two months ago. As of Wednesday afternoon, it was down by more than 38% from the all-time high of $225.64 per share it set a few days after its debut. However, investors aren't buying SpaceX stock for where it will be in a few months; they're buying it for where it will be by 2028 and beyond.
SpaceX has grand plans to create a space economy that could be worth trillions of dollars. But how much will all of that develop by 2028?
Image source: The Motley Fool.
SpaceX's current business isn't space-focused If you asked the average person how much of SpaceX's revenue comes from launching payloads into space, they'd probably assume a significant chunk, but they'd be wrong. If you look at the revenue split, SpaceX looks like a telecom company with an artificial intelligence (AI) side bet that launches rockets into space for fun.
SpaceX is building an incredible internet business that could help fuel and fund its space-related aspirations. During Q2, the revenue split from its divisions looked like this:
DivisionRevenueConnectivity$4.29 billionAI$2.56 billionSpace$960 million Data source: SpaceX.
Of those three divisions, only connectivity (which is mostly made up of its Starlink satellite internet service) generated an operating profit, producing $1.6 billion in operating income. That was nearly enough for the company to break even, as the other divisions' losses dragged it into the red.
By 2028, those other divisions could be profitable, but they'll still be chasing Starlink. During the quarter, the connectivity division's revenue rose by an impressive 32%. AI was the fastest-growing segment, with revenue skyrocketing 350% year over year. Meanwhile, its space division rose 29%.
Based on the current growth rates, SpaceX looks as if it will turn into an AI company over the next few years, and that's exactly where it's putting its dollars. SpaceX spent $18.4 billion on capital expenditures during Q2, with $15.8 billion going to AI compute infrastructure. That's a major increase in spending and shows where SpaceX believes its revenue growth will come from over the next few years.
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This could transform SpaceX into more of an AI company, but it's all in pursuit of its space exploration aspirations. Those ambitions will take a lot of money to pursue, and SpaceX is looking at generating those funds in any way possible.
But where will that lead the stock by 2028?
SpaceX is an expensive stock The odds that SpaceX can achieve its space goals by 2028 are fairly slim. It's more likely that its AI and connectivity business will continue expanding at a healthy rate. But even if SpaceX sustains its 92% growth rate over the next two years, the stock at its current levels will still be pricey.
SpaceX currently has a market cap of about $1.8 trillion, but its valuation is incredibly high. SpaceX isn't profitable, so we can only measure it based on sales. We don't have a full year's worth of results yet, so I'll value the company based on projected 2026 sales. Wall Street analysts estimate that SpaceX will generate $44.6 billion in revenue this year at the $1.8 trillion valuation, which values the stock at about 41 times sales. That's a very high price, and if SpaceX could snap its fingers and deliver a 50% profit margin, that would value the stock at 82 times forward earnings.
As a result, SpaceX has a huge valuation to grow into over the next few years. While it may disappoint some investors, I think SpaceX's stock will still be trading right around where it is now in 2028, due to the market letting the company grow into its lofty valuation. As a result, it's probably best to avoid it. There are far better stocks to invest in right now.
On June 12, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) and space infrastructure goliath, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) (SPCX -2.57%), rewrote Wall Street's record books. It practically tripled the largest-ever cash raise from an initial public offering (IPO), $85.7 billion, including the underwriters' overallotment, and vaulted to a nearly $3 trillion market cap within days after its debut.
But the sledding has been considerably more challenging for SpaceX in the months since its IPO. On a peak-to-trough basis, SpaceX retraced 55% from its all-time intra-day high, which is right in line with the average maximum year-one drawdown for high-profile, technology-driven IPOs over the last 14 years.
Image source: Getty Images.
The problem for SpaceX and its shareholders is that this bumpy ride may just be starting, courtesy of its accelerated share unlock schedule.
Nearly $47 billion in potential selling pressure is waiting in the wings Typically, when a company goes public, it establishes a 180-day share lockup period for its insiders (high-ranking executives, board members, and early investors). During this period, insiders are prevented from selling their shares and taking advantage of early IPO buzz.
Musk's company didn't stick to tradition. Its mile-long prospectus outlined a staggered and accelerated share unlock schedule over the first six months after its debut.
Great look at the SpaceX shares unlock schedule as well as the potential passive buying schedule from @JSeyff @FrancisSharoon Depending on the early post-IPO returns, this could really play with and disperse the returns of "passive" funds (which is why there's arguably no such... pic.twitter.com/KOuEkJlngF
-- Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 28, 2026 On Aug. 6, just two days after the release of SpaceX's first quarterly report, a whopping 911.5 million early release-eligible insider shares were authorized to be sold. SpaceX established several event- and time-based milestones that allow these early release-eligible insiders to dump their shares on retail investors.
Today, Aug. 20, marks the next share unlock milestone for early release-eligible insiders. Approximately 319 million shares can potentially be sold on the 70th calendar day after the company's IPO. Based on SpaceX's closing price on Aug. 17, this translates into nearly $47 billion in potential selling pressure hitting the tape.
Less than three weeks from now, on the 90th calendar day post-IPO, another 319 million shares can be sold by eligible insiders. Unlock periods shorten thereafter to just 15 calendar days, with 319 million share blocks becoming available on days 105, 120, and 135.
Image source: Getty Images.
But wait -- there's more What makes this insider unlock schedule so dramatic and noteworthy, aside from the company's nosebleed valuation, is that SpaceX didn't sell many shares at its IPO. Companies going public often sell between 10% and 25% of their outstanding shares. Despite SpaceX selling approximately 555.6 million shares, this represents less than 5% of its outstanding shares.
In other words, as each new share unlock milestone is reached, the company's float (i.e., tradable shares) can dramatically increase. While a small float buoyed SpaceX's shares when it gained fast-track entry into the Nasdaq-100, Russell 1000, and Russell 3000, a deluge of available shares, courtesy of eligible insider selling, can have the opposite effect.
While this potential fleecing of retail investors could remain problematic through mid-December, the bigger issue is that SpaceX has yet to prove it can meet otherworldly expectations.
-- Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) August 10, 2026 Musk's AI and space titan is trading at 43 times estimated 2026 sales, and history shows that no company at the forefront of a game-changing technology (let alone two) has been able to sustain a price-to-sales ratio above 30 for any extended period. SpaceX is also losing money and burning quite a bit of cash, courtesy of its AI data center expansion.
In other words, caveat emptor, current and prospective SpaceX investors.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -2.57%) held its initial public offering (IPO) on June 12. And by June 30, nine exchange-traded funds (ETFs) managed by Vanguard had already loaded up on shares.
Vanguard just updated its holdings. And as of July 31, seven of those nine ETFs bought more SpaceX, as the company is also known.
Here's why major ETFs will continue buying SpaceX, why their pace of buying could surge in August, and the Vanguard ETF to buy for investors looking to maximize their exposure to the company.
Image source: Getty Images.
The SpaceX buying spree cooled down The Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF (VTI +0.25%), which is the second-largest ETF in the world by net assets, holds by far the largest position in SpaceX among Vanguard's ETFs. But as you can see in the table below, it added only 53,439 shares in July -- a mere 0.3% increase over its June holdings.
Vanguard ETF
Shares, as of June 30, 2026
Market Value, as of June 30
Shares, as of July 31, 2026
Market Value, as of July 31
Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF
18,738,438
$3.202 billion
18,791,877
$2.036 billion
Vanguard Extended Market ETF (VXF +0.29%)
6,775,494
$1.158 billion
6,800,441
$737 million
Vanguard Morningstar Growth ETF (VUG +0.08%)
6,480,297
$1.107 billion
6,441,799
$698 million
Vanguard Morningstar Mega Cap Growth ETF (MGK +0.16%)
942,362
$161 million
934,175
$101 million
Vanguard Communication Services ETF (VOX +0.71%)
632,077
$142 million
842,835
$91 million
Vanguard Russell 1000 Growth ETF (VONG -0.32%)
757,638
$129 million
768,123
$83 million
Vanguard Morningstar Large-Cap ETF (VV +0.15%)
689,533
$118 million
692,706
$75 million
Vanguard World Stock ETF (VT +0.40%)
441,613
$75 million
447,193
$48 million
Vanguard Russell 1000 ETF (VONE +0.29%)
87,520
$15 million
88,261
$10 million
Data source: Vanguard.
Two of the nine Vanguard ETFs that bought SpaceX in June slightly reduced their share counts in July -- the Vanguard Morningstar Growth ETF and the Vanguard Morningstar Mega Cap Growth ETF.
The biggest increase came from the Vanguard Communication Services ETF, which boosted its share count by 33%. This is also the ETF with the highest percentage weighting in SpaceX, at 1.5%. Whereas the Total Stock Market ETF is so huge that its SpaceX position is just 0.09% of the fund.
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SpaceX buying could jump in August Given that SpaceX is one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world, investors may have expected it to account for a larger share in major ETFs. But there are two key reasons that didn't happen.
The first is that SpaceX didn't begin unlocking shares until two days after it reported second-quarter 2026 earnings on Aug. 4. So, although July represents the first full month SpaceX was public, the supply of shares was virtually unchanged since its IPO. The fact that many Vanguard ETF holdings barely budged shows they entered large positions within weeks of SpaceX going public, then hit the pause button.
So right off the bat, a key takeaway for investors is to expect the same kind of lightning-fast accumulation of shares in planned blockbuster IPOs, such as Anthropic and OpenAI -- followed by a lull until more shares are unlocked.
Second, SpaceX's falling stock price could have also been a contributing factor to the slowdown. The shares fell 37% in July as investors braced for the first wave of share unlocks that lets insiders and early investor sell shares and the company's first earnings call since going public. This is why the market value of the company across all nine Vanguard ETFs declined month over month, even in the funds that increased their share counts. However, the stock has completely turned the corner and is up about 25% in August as of Aug. 19.
SpaceX is weighted in ETFs at a multiple of its float -- which are the shares available for trading on the Nasdaq. The float will increase as more shares hit the Nasdaq, and if the stock price rises. So far in August, the stock has staged a rapid recovery, even after 20% of Early Release Eligible Shares were unlocked. Another 7% of Early Release Eligible Shares will be unlocked on Aug. 21.
SpaceX will become a top holding in this ETF At this rate, I would expect passively managed funds, like the nine Vanguard ETFs discussed, to gobble up SpaceX in August. But the fund with the largest percentage weighting in the company will likely remain the Vanguard Communication Services ETF.
I correctly predicted that Vanguard would classify SpaceX in the communications sector, given that the majority of its revenue comes from its Starlink network of low-Earth-orbit satellites and its ownership of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and xAI. The communications sector is unique because it includes legacy media companies, stodgy telecommunications giants, and entertainment companies. But it also holds some major growth stocks, including Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Netflix.
As of Aug. 19, SpaceX has a market cap of $1.8 trillion, which puts it in second place in the fund behind Alphabet's $4.2 trillion market cap but ahead of Meta Platforms, which has a $1.4 trillion market cap.
Investors looking for an ETF in which SpaceX is likely to pole-vault into a top holding in the coming months may want to take a closer look at the Vanguard Communication Services ETF.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition as it works to catch up to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the AI race, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Cognition CEO Scott Wu disputed the report soon after it published, writing on X that the story was inaccurate and that Cognition “is not for sale,” adding that the two companies haven’t been in talks.
The report comes a few days after SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, another AI coding startup, whose deal closed last week.
SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI company, xAI, earlier this year. It then went public in a blockbuster IPO in June, with its market capitalization rising to nearly $2.3 trillion at its peak.
SpaceX has sold investors on its AI ambitions, which include eventually building data centers in space. But the xAI business remains relatively early-stage and has fallen behind competitors.
It’s also had to contend with its chatbot Grok’s penchant for controversy, including last year’s “MechaHitler” incident and this year’s nonconsensual sexual imagery scandals, as it tries to win over enterprise customers.
Last week, Musk told SpaceX’s employees that in about “four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value” of the company, but achieving that feat will require SpaceX to pull in much more revenue from AI.
AI-assisted coding has emerged as one of the clearest ways to monetize the technology. Anthropic’s meteoric growth, fueled in large part by Claude Code, is proof of that. Bringing Cursor into the fold was part of that equation, and the companies were already working together before the acquisition closed. This month, Cursor and SpaceX jointly released Grok 4.6, a new model that scores higher on benchmarks for coding and complex multi-step agentic tasks.
Adding Cognition and its coding agent Devin — along with an enterprise customer base that includes Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and Goldman Sachs — would have given SpaceX another way to deepen its push into AI coding and compete for enterprise customers.
Bloomberg reports that the deal talks are no longer active, but that the companies are still discussing working together — potentially with Cognition using SpaceX’s computing capacity, which the company is selling to other AI players like Anthropic until it needs that capacity for itself. Wu didn’t address this specific claim in his denial.
Cognition remains one of the largest independent AI software coding startups that hasn’t yet been gobbled up by a major AI model maker. The company in late May raised a $1 billion round at a $25 billion post-money valuation, and Bloomberg reports it’s now in early talks for a new round of funding at a $40 billion valuation.
Cognition made headlines last year when it acquired the remaining assets of competitor Windsurf after Google DeepMind acqui-hired the startup’s CEO and top research in a $2.4 billion deal for talent and licensing rights.
After the merger, Cognition laid off 30 employees and offered buyouts to the remaining 200 Windsurf employees. Those who decided to stay faced strict operational expectations, like a more than 80-hour workweek and six days in the office.
That sort of wartime work ethic wouldn’t be out of place in a Musk company. Musk has said he works up to 120 hours a week and often sleeps on office or factory floors.
SpaceX and Cognition did not respond to requests for comment.
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Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch where she covers the business, policy, and emerging trends shaping artificial intelligence. Her work has also appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and other publications.
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SpaceX approached Cognition AI Inc. about a potential acquisition to gain ground in the AI race, according to people familiar with the matter. Ed Ludlow has more on "Bloomberg The Close.
Eli Lilly (LLY +4.46%) is the most valuable healthcare stock on the U.S. markets, with a valuation north of $1.1 trillion. Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SPCX -2.57%), also known as SpaceX, is worth significantly more at $1.8 trillion.
There is, however, a substantial disconnect in value. Eli Lilly's strong growth, financials, and dominance in the GLP-1 space justify the stock's rising value over the years. SpaceX, however, is fueled mainly by hype and long-term expectations. The overall business is deeply unprofitable.
The stocks could be heading in different directions from here on out. Could Eli Lilly become more valuable than SpaceX by the end of 2026?
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX's stock could continue falling, while Eli Lilly may rise higher Although SpaceX stock has only been trading publicly for a couple of months, it's already been highly volatile. It's bounced off lows of around $104 that it hit a few weeks ago, when the panic around its lockup expiration appeared to rattle the space stock. But with the company still generating significant losses and its cash burn potentially accelerating in future periods, another disappointing quarter later in the year could send it back into a free fall. Plus, there may still be a wave of insider selling that drags the stock lower. That may happen, particularly if the markets appear shaky later on.
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Eli Lilly, meanwhile, has been picking up steam and is up around 25% in the past six months. It hit a new all-time high on Wednesday, and yet it may not be terribly overpriced; it's trading at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 34, based on analyst projections of future growth. Given the company's growth and revenue rising 48% in its most recent quarter, a premium may well be justified for the healthcare giant, as it is not only growing fast but also highly profitable.
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Will Eli Lilly soar past SpaceX by the end of the year? For Eli Lilly to catch up to SpaceX, it would need to rise by more than 60% before the end of the year. I don't see that happening. There's no catalyst out there that's likely to trigger that kind of a sharp uptick.
However, its valuation may still end up higher than SpaceX's if the space company experiences a significant decline in value. If it were to decline by around 40% to about $84 per share, it would be right around Eli Lilly's market cap. Or, alternatively, SpaceX stock falls by a smaller amount while Eli Lilly rises.
I do think that in the long run, Eli Lilly will end up more valuable than SpaceX, but the wheels would have to come completely off SpaceX's stock for that to happen before the end of 2026. I think the gap is too wide for Eli Lilly to be the more valuable company by the end of the year. But I do think that the healthcare stock is the far better buy right now.
It's hard to know what to think about Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -2.77%), aka SpaceX.
First, it had its IPO in June at $135 a share, though it opened its first day of trading at $150. Then, the next few days, it soared to over $225 a share. After that, it plunged to just $108 a share. Now it's back at around $144 a share -- above its IPO price, but still below where it opened. With all these shifts in momentum, it's hard to predict where it might be trading at the end of this year, let alone three to five years down the line.
Investors should be thinking about their stocks as long-term investments, not fixating on day-to-day price moves. So, is SpaceX likely to be a millionaire-maker stock for buy-and-hold investors who pick up shares in now?
Image source: Getty Images.
Growth at a price SpaceX is almost certain to grow its top line. The big questions are, how much and how fast?
Its Starlink service is growing by leaps and bounds, signing up 1.7 million net new subscribers in the second quarter alone. Its flagship rocket launch service is growing, too... but its expenses are growing nearly as rapidly as its revenue.
The problem for SpaceX is that even if it manages to grow its revenue really fast -- much faster than it ever has, and much faster than anyone not named Elon Musk seems to think is even possible -- its top line would still only be a fraction of what companies with similar market caps take in. And those companies already have positive net incomes. SpaceX would also need to transition from a money-losing operation into a massively profitable one.
CompanyMarket CapTTM RevenueTTM Cash from OperationsTTM Net Income Meta Platforms (META +1.43%)$1.4 trillion$228.3 billion$130.3 billion$68.1 billionBroadcom (AVGO -4.12%)$1.8 trillion$75.5 billion$33.6 billion$29.3 billionSpaceX$1.9 trillion$20.7 billion$9.9 billion($6.4 billion)Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM -0.05%)$2.1 trillion$142.8 billion$88.2 billion$71.8 billion Data source: YCharts. TTM = trailing 12-month.
If that significant and profitable growth doesn't materialize, will investors stick around? They might. Tesla (TSLA +3.37%) investors certainly stuck around through multiple rounds of broken promises from Musk to ultimately triumph when his vision of an independent electric car company became a reality.
But Tesla didn't get a trillion-dollar valuation until it already had a $50 billion revenue stream and positive net income. SpaceX has the valuation without the revenue or the profitability. Should we expect the stock to grow as the business does? Or are years worth of hoped-for growth already baked into the share price?
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Ultimately, it seems unlikely that investors will want to keep their money tied up in SpaceX stock just so they can wait for it to grow into its current valuation, when there are plenty of fast-growing companies with existing revenue lines that are less richly valued. That doesn't bode well for the stock over the long term. While Musk still might pull off another triumph, SpaceX seems unlikely to be a millionaire-maker stock anytime soon.
John Bromels has positions in Meta Platforms, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Broadcom, Meta Platforms, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Key Takeaways SPCX is combining AI models, computing and satellite connectivity into an integrated AI infrastructure push.SpaceX booked $6.7B in cloud-services revenue and sees Cursor supporting a $100B-plus 2026 revenue run rate.SpaceX plans AI compute satellites as early as 2028 while expanding its Colossus data center platform. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX - Free Report) is focusing on AI monetization efforts to spur its growth engine. The company is aiming to evolve into a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company by combining advanced AI models, large-scale computing capabilities and satellite connectivity under one umbrella. SpaceX’s AI segment combines Grok, X, cloud services and Colossus infrastructure with its broader launch and connectivity platform.
The company recently contracted $6.7 billion of cloud-services revenue over six months beginning in October. The pending $60 billion Cursor acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026 and would add enterprise software distribution and engineering integration. Management believes that the deal, together with Cursor, supports a path to more than $100 billion of annualized revenue run rate by December 2026. In addition to a firmer footing in the enterprise AI market, the acquisition gives SpaceX exposure to a high-growth software business while strengthening its AI capabilities. The buyout adds a widely adopted developer platform that could complement the company's growing technology portfolio.
The company plans to deploy AI compute satellites as early as 2028, effectively creating space-based data centers capable of delivering large-scale computing capacity. This initiative leverages SPCX's leadership in satellite deployment while addressing the growing demand for AI computing resources. Alongside its satellite ambitions, SpaceX continues to expand its Colossus data center platform, strengthening its position in AI infrastructure.
Other Tech Firms Focusing on AIMicrosoft Corporation (MSFT - Free Report) is striving to maintain its competitive edge in AI with the introduction of the Agent Store, which creates a new marketplace for AI-powered workplace assistants. The platform features more than 70 agents and provides developers with monetization opportunities through Microsoft 365 Copilot integration. Developers have adopted the Azure AI Foundry application and agent development hub at more than 70,000 enterprises and digital-native companies. Microsoft's Azure AI Agent Service has been utilized by more than 10,000 organizations to build, deploy and scale agents.
Amazon.com, Inc.’s (AMZN - Free Report) expansion of its Bedrock platform has positioned it as a frontrunner in the enterprise AI race. Amazon Bedrock has emerged as a game-changing, fully managed service that offers enterprises seamless access to high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies. The platform's recent developments, including automated reasoning checks and multi-agent collaboration capabilities, address critical challenges in AI adoption while opening new revenue streams for Amazon's cloud division.
SPCX’s Price Performance, Valuation and EstimatesSpaceX has plunged 10.9% since its IPO against the industry’s growth of 118.8%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, SPCX trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 23.31, above the industry tally of 8.04.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SPCX’s earnings for 2026 has been raised 71.7% over the past 30 days.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
SpaceX currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
SpaceX stock SPCX continued to decline Wednesday as investors weighed a new milestone for Chinese rocket maker LandSpace alongside another large batch of shares set to become eligible for sale.
SpaceX shares were down around 3% at the time of writing after closing about 2% lower on Tuesday.
LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket, marking the first ground recovery of an orbital-class booster by a private Chinese company.
At the same time, roughly 319 million SpaceX shares held by early investors and employees are scheduled to become eligible for sale on Aug. 20.
The developments come as SpaceX stock remains above its $135 initial public offering price but below its post-IPO peak.
Shares closed their first trading day at $161.11, about 19% above the IPO price, before climbing to a post-IPO high of $225.64.
The stock subsequently gave back much of those gains ahead of its first quarterly earnings report before recovering as investors refocused on growth across SpaceX's core businesses.
The latest batch of shares adds to a substantial amount of SpaceX stock becoming available for trading following the company's June IPO.
SpaceX sold about 556 million new shares at $135 each, raising about $75 billion, excluding the underwriters' overallotment option.
That represented a small portion of the roughly 13.2 billion shares outstanding.
SpaceX has used a laddered approach to its post-IPO lockups, with shares becoming available at multiple intervals rather than through a single large unlock.
About 912 million shares became available for trading on August 6, while another 319 million are scheduled to unlock on August 20.
More than 700 million shares are expected to unlock in September, followed by more than 650 million in October.
By the end of the year, about 4.9 billion SpaceX shares will have become available to trade.
The expanding supply has been a major factor in the stock's early trading.
Investors have been cautious about buying ahead of potential profit-taking by early investors, contributing to SpaceX's decline to around $105, well below its IPO price.
LandSpace's successful Zhuque-3 landing also puts renewed attention on SpaceX's competitive position in reusable rockets.
Reusable rockets have been one of SpaceX's key advantages in the commercial launch market.
The 216-foot Zhuque-3 can carry about 14.2 metric tons to low Earth orbit, compared with about 22.8 metric tons for SpaceX's Falcon 9.
SpaceX also retains a significant experience advantage, having completed hundreds of booster landings since 2015.
LandSpace has now completed its first orbital-class booster recovery.
The milestone nevertheless shows that competitors are developing the ability to recover orbital-class rockets, potentially narrowing one of the technological advantages that has supported SpaceX's position in commercial launches.
UBS remains bullish on SpaceXEarlier in the week, UBS reiterated a Buy rating and $210 price target on SpaceX.
Analyst John Hodulik cited the company's position as a major cloud provider and frontier model.
UBS expects SpaceX shares to continue trading on demand for tokens, given leverage in the model.
UBS models 3 million US Starlink subscribers currently, rising to 6 million by the end of 2027 and 20 million by the end of 2031.
Harvard University's endowment, known as Harvard Management, just disclosed a $2.2 billion investment in Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -4.28%) , commonly known as SpaceX.
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Harvard's endowment, officially named Harvard Management, is the largest in the world with an estimated value of about $57 billion.
SpaceX is far and away the largest single stock holding for the fund. Other large holdings include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cerebras Systems. The fund's equity holdings come to about $4.3 billion and include many large technology companies. Interestingly, the fund also holds about $101 million in Bitcoin, via the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.
Publicly traded stocks make up just a small portion of the fund, while investments in private equity and hedge funds made up about 72% as of fiscal 2025.
Image source: Getty Images.
The fund posted a return of about 12% last year and has done relatively well in recent years, including a 33.6% gain in 2021. It suffered a historic 27.3% loss in 2009, about $11 billion, due to the global financial crisis. Harvard's investments were tied up in illiquid assets like private equity and real estate, which lost significant value during the crisis. It took the fund seven years to recover from that loss.
Matthew Benjamin has positions in Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Microsoft, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and iShares Bitcoin Trust. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Retail has really been crowding the SpaceX trade in these earlier days, and where there’s been no shortage of twists and turns for those hyper-volatile shares of Space Exploration & Technologies (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction), I do think that investors must, at the very least, attempt to gauge the ambitious narrative to determine if today’s prices (less than $10 above the IPO price of $135 per share) are, in fact, a decent, or, at the very least, a fair deal.
Of course, you’ve probably heard about how outrageously expensive the shares are. But, at the same time, the hyper-growth story is equally explosive. However, whether or not that’s enough to justify today’s sticker price remains the big topic of debate on Wall Street.
What’s the fair price to pay for SpaceX? As analyst projections and price targets are coming in from all over the place, from a high of $800.00 to as low as the double digits (really, who can blame them, since a lot of SpaceX stock’s value comes from some pretty out-there growth drivers that might be a profound success, or they might fall flat). Before you subscribe to the bull camp or the bear camp (Morningstar’s sober price target of $62.00 entails a more than halving the shares if they’re to hit its estimate of fair value), I do think it’s worth hearing out the bear and bull camp theses and targets.
If you’re not a hyper-growth investor and are more inclined to go for classical, easy-to-predict firms with steady cash flows, you’re probably going to find shares of SpaceX will be wildly expensive, perhaps close to the most expensive stock on the market.
But if you’re a believer in Elon Musk and think the man will stop at nothing to win the AI race and the corporate space race, perhaps there are ways to justify that seemingly hefty multiple. Even if it’s still hard to gauge what an appropriate price is to pay for one of the biggest new mega-cap tech titans to land in recent memory (actually, of all time), perhaps it’s worth checking in to see what the top hedge funds are doing with the name.
The smart money has been buying (more like nibbling) Surprisingly, the smart money crowd has not been waiting around to punch their ticket to Elon Musk’s $1.89 trillion space and AI titan. Whether that gives you the confidence and green light to punch your ticket, though, remains the big question.
With big names, including the great David Tepper, Daniel Loeb, and Chase Coleman, all doing some buying last quarter, you’d be in some pretty good company by buying in at these levels. Indeed, nobody wants to get left behind once Elon Musk’s firm finally does blast off. But at the same time, there’s a lot of work to do, and I’m not so sure SpaceX can soothe investors with the hefty CapEx, which I think can only move higher from here.
Whenever a heavyweight champ like David Tepper picks up some shares, it only makes sense to follow suit. But, at the same time, investors should be cautious since the hedge fund buying has been relatively tame. When it comes to the overall portfolios, second-quarter buying activity has barely moved the needle, with new positions accounting for far less than 1% of overall portfolios.
In my view, that screams nibbling a bit today is the move as one looks to add more on weakness, which might not be all too far off. Given the recent pressure on shares, it will be interesting to learn whether or not hedge funds added to the dip that took shares several dollars below the IPO price.
Whether you look at analyst price targets, institutional buying activity, the retail frenzy, or Dr. Michael Burry’s reluctance to short the stock, it’s going to be hard to stay sidelined if there’s another shot to buy at the IPO price in this second half.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
SpaceX(SPCX -4.28%) spent $18.37 billion on capital projects in the second quarter. It booked $7.81 billion of revenue. For every dollar of that, about $2.35 went out for data centers, chips, satellites, and rockets. That ratio was deliberate.
What makes the arithmetic possible is the balance sheet June's initial public offering (IPO) built. SpaceX ended the quarter with $93.5 billion of cash and equivalents, up from $24.7 billion at the end of last year.
The offering raised about $85.7 billion in net proceeds, and a debut bond sale in late June raised $25 billion more, most of which repaid a bridge loan.
So the money exists. How long does it last at this pace of spending, and what takes over when it runs low?
Image source: Getty Images.
A year ago, SpaceX spent $2.8 billion on capital projects in a quarter. In this year's first quarter, it spent $10.1 billion. Last quarter's $18.37 billion was a more than sixfold jump from a year earlier, and nearly double the quarter before.
Of the latest total, $15.83 billion went to artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, the data centers and chips behind the company's expanding cloud platform. The rockets and satellites SpaceX is known for accounted for about $2.5 billion combined.
Sure, revenue is climbing fast too, up 92% year over year to $7.81 billion, with AI segment revenue up 247% year over year to $2.6 billion on new cloud computing contracts. But spending is climbing faster. The gap between capital outlays and revenue widened to about $10.6 billion last quarter, from about $5.4 billion in the first quarter.
A narrow profit baseCash flow tells the cleanest story. Through the first half of 2026, SpaceX's operations produced about $3.5 billion of cash, while capital spending ran $28.5 billion.
In other words, the business funded about 12% of its own build-out. The balance sheet funded the rest.
The profit base underneath is, I'd argue, narrower than the revenue growth makes it look. Starlink's connectivity segment produced $1.7 billion of operating income last quarter, up 79% year over year, and it remains the only segment running at a profit. The AI segment cut its operating loss to $1.3 billion, 49% smaller than the first quarter's, and swung to positive non-GAAP (adjusted) EBITDA of $1.1 billion. Companywide, the net loss narrowed to $541 million from $1 billion a year earlier.
Set the cash against the spending, and the arithmetic is quick. At the second quarter's pace, $93.5 billion covers about five quarters of capital projects. Add what operations currently generate, and it stretches to just under six.
The pace is designed to riseThose five quarters assume the pace holds, and the company's own capacity targets say it can't for long.
After all, SpaceX ended June with 1.4 gigawatts of computing capacity, up from 1 gigawatt three months earlier. On the Aug. 4 earnings call, the company said it expects more than 2 gigawatts by the end of 2026, and closer to 10 gigawatts than 5 by the end of 2027. Building toward that means capital expenditures grow before long.
Management's defense is that the AI spending pays back unusually fast.
"All capex is not the same," said chief financial officer Bret Johnsen on the call. "Specifically on the AI compute side, we're able to deploy capital in such a way that we're getting less than a one-year payback."
And to be fair, there is contracted revenue behind the claim. SpaceX signed $14.1 billion of cloud services agreements during the quarter.
Johnsen said the company added another $6.7 billion of cloud contracts in the first weeks of the current quarter, and that SpaceX expects to reach a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of the year -- a target that counts the newly acquired Cursor along with the cloud deals. If deals keep landing at that rate, the gap the balance sheet has to cover could shrink quickly.
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But if they don't, the alternatives are more borrowing or more stock, and SpaceX is already using both: it sold $25 billion of bonds in late June, and it paid for Cursor, the AI coding company, entirely in newly issued shares -- a $60 billion deal that closed Aug. 14.
Ultimately, the IPO bought time, not a finished transition. The stock, around $146 as of this writing, values SpaceX near $1.9 trillion -- roughly 60 times its annualized second-quarter revenue. A valuation like this arguably treats the shift to self-funding as nearly done.
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Daniel Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners disclosed on Aug. 14 a SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) stake that dominates its entire reported equity book: 126,042,232 shares valued at $21,535,575,760, representing 61.91% of its disclosed portfolio as of the June 30 snapshot. For context, D1’s next largest disclosed holding, Maplebear (NASDAQ:CART), sits at 3.07% of the book. That gap is the story.
What the Filing Actually Discloses This is a first disclosure of SpaceX, not evidence Sundheim bought aggressively last quarter. SpaceX only began trading publicly in June 2026, so a crossover fund like D1 almost certainly held these shares privately long before the IPO forced them onto a 13F. The filing tells us Sundheim carried that pre-IPO conviction straight through the listing rather than trimming into the listing.
Peer filings for the same quarter frame just how unusual the weighting is. Gavin Baker’s Atreides Management reported SpaceX at 32.58% of portfolio, itself an aggressive concentration. Philippe Laffont’s Coatue disclosed 18,561,780 shares flagged as a genuine new position. Brad Gerstner’s Altimeter came in at 3.09%, and Alex Sacerdote’s Whale Rock at 0.21%. The counterpoint: Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI-dedicated Situational Awareness fund filed no SpaceX position at all, concentrating instead in Sandisk, Micron, Bloom Energy, and CoreWeave. Not every sophisticated AI-focused manager wanted this name.
The Underlying Thesis The bull case rests on treating SpaceX as an AI holding company wearing an aerospace jersey. The AI Investor Podcast’s SpaceX deep dive argues that within the next year, the majority of revenue will come from renting data centers on Earth, and that Musk’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor is a direct bet on that transition. The Q2 numbers back the framing. AI segment revenue reached $2.56 billion, up 247% year over year, Starlink hit $4.29 billion with subscribers doubling to 12.0 million, and total revenue grew 92% year over year to $7.81 billion.
The podcast also flagged a technical setup worth remembering: only 4% of shares trade, and the number of ETFs holding the stock jumped from four to 120 in days around the IPO. Forced passive demand met a tiny float. Sundheim was on the right side of that mechanic.
What This Means for a Retirement Investor Do not confuse disclosure with endorsement of the trade at today’s price. Sentiment has since turned defensive. The composite prediction-market read is bearish at 35.22, and shares trad around $143.06, well off the post-IPO high of $211.39. Analysts still carry a $227 target with 27 Buy ratings, but Q2 also showed a $541 million net loss and $18.37 billion in single-quarter CapEx.
The verdict: the filing is worth studying. A 61.91% single-name weight reflects a hedge fund’s professional risk budget and sits far outside a typical retirement allocation. What the disclosure actually tells us is that one of the sharper crossover investors carried unusually large conviction through the IPO window. That is a data point for sizing rather than a signal to concentrate a retirement book behind him.
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