As Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock opened Monday, July 13, at a new lower low since hitting the all-time high (ATH), analysts at TrendSpider, an AI-powered market analysis platform, signaled a bearish outlook.
In an X post on 12, the platform noted that the SpaceX stock price chart could be in the early phase of breaking out of a descending triangle. The analyst at TrendSpider argued that SPCX stock has fallen below the horizontal support of the falling wedge, signaling a downtrend.
SpaceX stock price chart. Source: TrendSpider After closing Friday trading at $145.30, SpaceX stock traded around $143.77 during Monday’s pre-market trading session. As such, sellers of SPCX stock have been outnumbering existing buyers, thereby increasing post-IPO (Initial Public Offering) selling pressure.
The analyst supported the bearish technical breakout by citing the company’s low revenue relative to its market capitalization. Notably, SpaceX recorded $18 billion in revenue and a market capitalization of approximately $1.9 trillion at press time.
Meanwhile, the analyst argued that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) posted revenue of $747 billion in 2025 and had a market cap of about $2.6 trillion at the time of reporting.
Wall Street’s SpaceX stock price forecast 2026 Despite the near-term bearish outlook for SpaceX stock, 27 Wall Street analysts surveyed by TipRanks have set an average price target of $245.96 over the next 12 months. The majority of these analysts assigned a Buy rating for SpaceX shares, thus the average ‘Strong Buy’ rating.
SpaceX stock price forecast. Source: TipRanks Although the company’s midterm technicals have signaled a potential further correction, Wall Street analysts have pointed out its strong fundamentals. For instance, the company was added to the Nasdaq-100 index, which tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq.
Additionally, SpaceX’s AI ventures, including its recently acquired Cursor, have helped the company attract investors seeking exposure to AI stocks. As such, SpaceX stock could rebound in the long haul, fueled by increased revenue from its AI segment.
In a dazzling display of market enthusiasm last month, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. Debuting at $150 per share, SpaceX was instantly propelled into the ranks of the world's most valuable companies.
The historic event reflected genuine excitement over the company's ability to lower the cost of putting satellites into orbit through reusable rocket technology, its expanding Starlink constellation, and an emerging role in the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape.
Supported by synergies from xAI and Cursor, these factors painted a picture of a company uniquely positioned to dominate not only launch services but also the data and connectivity layers that underpin modern society.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX's post-IPO reality check Within a month of going public, SpaceX's stock has now slipped below its $150 debut price, and the company's market capitalization has contracted by roughly $1 trillion from its highs. At the post-IPO peak, SpaceX commanded a $2.9 trillion market value -- a valuation that was undoubtedly stretched relative to its current revenue and inconsistent profitability.
Much of the selling pressure stemmed from a sober reassessment of the company's business model, which features heavy capital expenditures (capex) required to increase Starship production and Starlink deployments. Some investors also have doubts about the speed and scale at which the company can complement existing product lines with meaningful AI-driven revenue.
SPCX Market Cap data by YCharts
This fueled a typical post-IPO pattern: Momentum investors and day traders who had piled into the IPO for a quick pop began locking in gains, amplifying downward pressure and leaving unsuspecting investors holding the bag.
Tailwinds pointing toward a recovery in SpaceX stock The same dynamics that fueled SpaceX's original surge could be the recipe for a credible path to recovery. SpaceX's vertically integrated model -- managing rocket design, manufacturing, launch cadence, and satellite production -- gives the company an edge when it comes to cost discipline and product iteration speed. This reduces the need to rely on external suppliers and accelerates the timeline for routine, low-cost heavy-lift capability with Starship.
Recent AI-focused agreements with Anthropic, Google Cloud, and Reflection further strengthen the bull case. These partnerships carry more than headline value; they provide tangible validation that established AI developers recognize the value of collaborating with SpaceX.
By combining Starlink's global, low-latency network with AI model deployment and edge computing, these collaborations help counter the notion that SpaceX cannot evolve into a serious player in AI infrastructure. Instead, they position the company as a core connectivity backbone for distributed AI workloads.
Against this backdrop, AI is becoming a natural extension of SpaceX's core segments: advancing space exploration through intelligent autonomy, expanding connectivity through low-orbit satellites, and ultimately reshaping telecommunications networks that legacy terrestrial carriers struggle to replicate.
How should you approach investing in SpaceX stock?
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Investors weighing a position in SpaceX stock should exercise measured patience rather than hoping for a quick rebound. Although the pullback from its post-IPO highs has created a more attractive entry point, sentiment rarely reverses on a dime after such a dramatic retreat.
Operational milestones will be required before broader investor confidence returns, especially from institutional capital. These catalysts are more realistically recognized during the course of several quarters than in mere weeks.
Adopting a multiyear investment horizon makes the most sense. During this time frame, the compounding effects of lower launch costs, global broadband expansion, and AI-enabled services have a better chance of materially increasing revenue and expanding profit margins. The prudent way to invest in SpaceX stock is through dollar-cost averaging, committing capital across market cycles rather than attempting to time a bottom and going all-in. This strategy mitigates the inherent volatility that comes with investing in a high-growth, capital-intensive business.
Short-term traders will likely continue driving price swings. In the long run, however, the current environment favors disciplined investors who remain focused on SpaceX's gradual transformation over those who make speculative bets on an imminent turnaround.
Three members of the U.S. House of Representatives purchased SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) shares within days of the company’s record-breaking initial public offering (IPO).
The trades occurred as the stock surged following its market debut, drawing interest because of the lawmakers’ committee assignments and SpaceX’s extensive business ties with the federal government.
Notably, SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, pricing shares at $135 and raising about $75 billion. The stock surged to close near $192.50 on June 15 and briefly climbed as high as $225 in the following days.
Now the Congress trade disclosures show that Rep. Daniel Meuser reported a dependent child’s purchase of between $15,001 and $50,000 in SpaceX stock on June 15 at an average price of $192.50.
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On the same day, Rep. John McGuire bought between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of shares at the same price.
Three days later, Rep. Gilbert Ray Cisneros Jr. purchased between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of SpaceX stock at an average price of $185.
The purchases came just days after SpaceX’s historic IPO, when strong investor demand pushed the stock well above its $135 offering price.
SpaceX stock trades source of interest The trades are of interest because all three lawmakers serve on committees with oversight of areas relevant to SpaceX.
For instance, Meuser sits on the House Financial Services Committee, while McGuire and Cisneros are linked to the House Armed Services Committee.
SpaceX is a major U.S. government contractor through its launch business and Starlink satellite network, both of which have growing defense and national security applications.
While the STOCK Act permits lawmakers to own and trade individual stocks if transactions are disclosed, critics argue that investments in companies affected by federal policy can create potential conflicts of interest.
The purchases were made near SpaceX’s early post-IPO highs. Since then, the stock has been volatile as investors reassess its valuation, growth outlook, and upcoming insider share unlocks. By press time, SPCX was valued at $145.
SpaceX one-month stock price chart. Source: Finbold SpaceX’s market debut pushed its valuation into about $2 trillion, making it one of the world’s most valuable public companies.
However, analysts have cautioned that sustaining those levels will depend on continued growth in launches, Starlink, and future space ventures.
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Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) joined the Nasdaq-100 index on July 7. If you own the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ +0.31%) or the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM +0.32%), you now own a piece of it too.
SpaceX has gotten a lot of attention since its initial public offering (IPO). But now that it's getting added to major market indexes, the most important step is assessing its impact.
What might surprise many people is that, despite its massive $2 trillion market cap, the stock isn't nearly as influential in the Nasdaq-100 as you might think. And that's perhaps the biggest takeaway from this story.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX isn't even a top-20 holding in the Nasdaq-100 The reason SpaceX has only a relatively minor influence on the index is the distinction between total market capitalization and free-float market capitalization.
Free-float market cap takes into account only the shares that are publicly available. For SpaceX, that's about 5% of the total shares available. Most companies only have a percentage of their total shares publicly tradable, but SpaceX has less than average.
By total market cap, SpaceX would rank as one of the 10 largest companies in the world. But because the Nasdaq-100 uses free-float market cap, it's only the 21st-largest holding in the index, between KLA and Texas Instruments. Its weight is 1.25%.
SpaceX won't have a meaningful impact on the Nasdaq-100 If you're buying either the Invesco QQQ ETF or the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF expecting a significant stake in SpaceX, you're probably going to be disappointed.
Even a major rally or crash in the stock market likely won't be felt in the index. The one thing to potentially be mindful of is the volatility of the stock. The IPO price was set at $135. It initially traded at around $150 when it went public, reached as high as $225, and is now back down to around $149.
There's a lot of noise in the trading behavior of this stock. From investors trying to get their hands on shares for the first time to the fund industry buying millions of shares to track their underlying indexes, volatility in SpaceX could be higher than average for a while until things settle a bit.
The next big milestone will be next summer when the stock becomes eligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.42%). While there will be another wave of buying if and when that happens, expectations should be tempered on that day as well. The S&P 500 is also free-float, market-cap-weighted, and might receive an even smaller allocation there.
David Dierking has positions in Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends KLA and Texas Instruments. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) has become one of the market's most closely watched stocks after its rapid entry into the Nasdaq-100 index on July 7. Shares are trading close to $149 (as of July 10), still above its $135 IPO price, but nearly 34% below its post-IPO high of $225.60.
This share price pullback has not ended investor interest in SpaceX, but it has changed the debate. Investors are now weighing the company's artificial intelligence (AI) compute opportunity, Starlink satellite internet network's room to expand in satellite communications, and progress on the next-generation reusable rocket system, Starship, as they assess where the stock could trade by the end of 2026.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX has growth drivers for its revenue SpaceX is already demonstrating impressive financial momentum. Revenue rose 33% year over year to $18.7 billion in 2025. But the company still reported a net loss of $4.9 billion after merging with money-losing xAI.
Starlink remains the key growth engine, supported by roughly 10.3 million users and 9,600 satellites. But AI infrastructure is also becoming the next major catalyst. Alphabet has agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs and related computing resources. Anthropic has also signed a major compute-access deal with SpaceX, securing use of SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center. Reuters reported that SpaceX's two deals are worth about $26 billion annually if fully realized.
Although not all the AI revenue from these deals is expected to materialize in 2026, it still gives investors a reason to value SpaceX based on future revenue potential rather than solely on 2025 sales.
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SpaceX's valuation will fall, but remain expensive At the end of 2026, investors will likely be looking toward SpaceX's expected 2027 revenue, since the stock's valuation depends on how quickly Starlink, AI compute, and Starship can expand the company's sales base.
SpaceX's market capitalization is close to $2 trillion. Analysts' 2026 revenue estimates range from $34.3 billion on the low end to $43.2 billion on the high end, with a base case estimate of about $38.9 billion. Hence, SpaceX is already trading at roughly 51.4 times base case 2026 sales. By the end of 2026, that multiple will most likely compress, as post-IPO excitement usually cools and investors demand evidence of execution. But it also does not need to collapse if SpaceX continues to show progress in Starlink, AI infrastructure, and Starship.
A reasonable base-case assumption is that SpaceX's sales multiple compresses by about 20% to 25% from today's 51.4x 2026 sales multiple. That gives a forward price-to-sales (P/S) multiple range of roughly 38.5 to 41 times expected 2027 sales.
Analysts expect SpaceX's 2027 revenue to range from $54.8 billion to $85 billion, with an average estimate of $72.4 billion. Applying a forward sales multiple of 38.5 to 41 times to the 2027 base case revenue estimate yields an implied market capitalization of about $2.79 trillion to $2.97 trillion. Using roughly 13.1 billion shares outstanding, that points to a share price in the range of $213 to $227 at the end of 2026.
Hence, $220 is a reasonable base case estimate. It assumes that while SpaceX's valuation multiple compresses, revenue growth offsets the pressure enough to lift the share price.
What's going on with Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) stock? The space stock was the largest initial public offering (IPO) ever when it went public less than a month ago, and instead of the projected $75 billion raised, underwriters were able to use their 15% overallotment because there was so much interest. SpaceX ended up raising $86.7 billion.
But after all of that hyper-interest and an initial run-up, SpaceX stock is now trading below its market open price of $150 as of this writing.
That might seem like an opportune time to buy in if you couldn't get in at the beginning. But now might be the worst time to buy shares. Here's why.
Image source: Getty Images.
Why is SpaceX stock falling? SpaceX hasn't released any new information about its operations since the IPO, so any movement is likely related to investor sentiment or macroeconomic factors. Both of these are likely coming into play.
Some investors who were lucky enough to get IPO shares or bought in the first few days might be pocketing their gains. Given how high the demand for the stock was, it would be a simple move.
However, the tech industry as a whole has been under pressure over the past week, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 are both roughly flat since the beginning of June. Now, about a month after the IPO, SpaceX is another tech stock that's going to act, more or less, in line with other tech stocks when there's macroeconomic news or volatility.
So far, the thesis to wait for now is connected to a hesitant tech market. But there's more, specifically related to SpaceX.
Since it's only been a month since the IPO, the stock is still in what's known as the lockup period. Insiders, who own the 95% or so of the stock that hasn't been released on the market, are restricted from selling for obvious reasons: Releasing such a massive amount of shares at once could create major instability, especially for a stock as hyped-up as SpaceX.
Most lockup periods end 180 days after the IPO, but SpaceX has a staggered lockup period. The first stage ends after the second-quarter earnings release. While that date hasn't been announced yet, it's likely to be in the beginning of August. At that time, 911.5 million shares, or 6.8% of the total, will become eligible for sale by insiders. That's more than is already on the market.
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If the stock surpasses the IPO price by 30% for five out of the 10 days post-release, another 455.8 million shares can be sold. In total, that would be 10.2% of the stock, or more than double the 4.1% that's on the markets today.
Not all of the stock will be sold, and the way it looks right now, it's unlikely the 30% threshold will be met. However, if there's high trading activity at that point, it certainly could be.
The more likely scenario is that the stock is driven down by all the new shares. Which means it could get a lot lower than today's price, and investors should wait it out.
Just three companies in the world have market capitalizations above $3 trillion, and another three are within shouting distance of that milestone. Microsoft has a market value of roughly $2.8 trillion, while Amazon and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing sit at $2.6 trillion and $2.3 trillion, respectively.
Just behind them sits Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%), which is currently worth about $2 trillion. However, following the company's historic initial public offering last month, SpaceX (as the company is also known) briefly touched a market value of nearly $3 trillion before the stock entered a sharp correction.
For investors, SpaceX offers a compelling case study in both volatility and valuation potential. For it to get back to $3 trillion would require not only significant revenue acceleration, but also a compelling growth narrative that supports the premise that it could outpace its more established technology peers.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX stock has been on a roller coaster SpaceX's limited history on the public market has been defined by extreme swings. Shortly after its IPO, the stock experienced a dramatic run-up, moving from $150 at the start of its opening trading day to an intraday high of $225.64 just a couple of days later.
SPCX data by YCharts.
However, since reaching this peak almost three weeks ago, shares have been on a fairly steady descent: From that high point, the company has shed almost $1 trillion in market value in less than a month. This rapid sell-off reflected the typical pressures that come to bear on high-growth companies as macroeconomic conditions shift and investors begin asking pointed questions about the realistic timelines for major projects.
Ultimately, SpaceX's stock trajectory illustrates how quickly sentiment can pivot for a business operating at the intersection of satellite communications, reusable rocketry, and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. However, the same market forces that compressed SpaceX's valuation could swiftly reverse course when fresh catalysts emerge.
Investors who bought the dip in SpaceX stock are essentially betting that the company's underlying progress will eventually reassert itself in the share price.
What catalysts does SpaceX have? For the company to justify a $3 trillion valuation, it would have to both scale up revenue and sustain a healthy price-to-sales (P/S) multiple. To achieve both of these goals, I think SpaceX must build on its recently announced AI infrastructure partnerships with Anthropic, Alphabet's Google Cloud, and Reflection -- three contracts that carry a combined value of up to $82 billion. By doing so, the company would further prove that it can diversify its revenue streams more widely beyond Starlink internet subscriptions and government rocket launch contracts.
When you pair the AI infrastructure opportunity it aims to pursue with a credible path to sustained profitability through Starlink's expanding subscriber base and its rocket operation's improving launch economics, the narrative may gradually shift from SpaceX's speculative future ambitions to its demonstrated earnings power.
If SpaceX can generate annual revenues of $100 billion while maintaining a P/S multiple of 30, its implied market cap would reach the $3 trillion threshold. The combination of top-line growth, a proven path to sustained profitability, and a valuation multiple re-rating is what separates companies that merely recover from sell-offs from those that surge to new highs afterward.
Can SpaceX leapfrog Microsoft? Microsoft is much closer on paper to a $3 trillion market value than SpaceX is. However, the former has struggled throughout much of 2026 to maintain investor enthusiasm.
Competition for its Azure cloud computing unit from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud, as well as concerns about what returns on investment it will accrue from its enormous AI-related capital expenditures, have tempered investors' growth expectations for Microsoft. SpaceX, by contrast, offers a unique combination of potential tailwinds through Starlink (its established revenue engine), transformative upside from the commercialization of Starship as a launch vehicle, and fresh exposure to the AI infrastructure supercycle.
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If SpaceX can deliver a steady cadence of new AI capacity deals while reporting consistently positive earnings, the market could easily reclassify the company as a higher-growth alternative to legacy big tech. Smart investors understand that capital often flows toward the stories with the steepest perceived slopes rather than the ones closest to the finish line. In that context, SpaceX could swiftly close the gap to $3 trillion before Microsoft does simply because valuation expansion is more available to a still-maturing, high-momentum business than it is to a mature incumbent.
Realistically, however, I think it's a stretch. For SpaceX to achieve that outcome would require near-flawless execution across multiple programs. It would have to successfully scale up its AI infrastructure, deliver sustained Starlink profitability, and make continued progress toward readiness for Starship, and do it all in a compressed time frame. That would also have to occur in the absence of any major setbacks -- operationally or on the macroeconomic level.
While the ingredients for a rapid re-rating of the stock technically exist, they depend on many tailwinds aligning simultaneously. For this reason, I think the idea of SpaceX becoming a $3 trillion company anytime soon is more aspirational than probable.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%), better known as SpaceX, just joined the Nasdaq-100 index. That's a big deal because now every investment vehicle that tracks the index has to own shares of SpaceX. This creates a bit of a buying spree, as these indexes have to buy the stock, which can send share prices skyrocketing in some instances.
However, that hasn't been the case as SpaceX's stock declined over the past few days. But can that turn around? Let's take a look.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
The catalyst is over Because of how these indexes are structured, if SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100, the next day, every investment vehicle that tracks this index must own shares. So, it's a one-time catalyst. Now that it has occurred and the stock barely budged, SpaceX is back to being its own catalyst.
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One red flag is that it's now trading below its $150-per-share debut price, which could be a great buying opportunity or cautionary tale. On the caution side, it could indicate that significant hype has now died off, and further decline could be coming. If you're more bullish, then you might see this as a prime buying opportunity for one of the hottest stocks on the market.
So, where am I on SpaceX?
I think there are far better investment choices than SpaceX. Investors will learn a lot more about SpaceX when it reports quarterly earnings, because all investors now have to go off of its 2025 results. It generated $18.7 billion in revenue during 2025, growing at a 33% pace. At a $1.95 trillion market cap, the stock is valued at a very high 104 times sales. Most of the time, companies valued at 104 times earnings are considered expensive, but since SpaceX isn't profitable, it doesn't even have earnings to value the stock with.
Sky-high expectations are already baked into SpaceX's stock price, and it doesn't look like a compelling investment option. The company will need to grow at a strong pace for several years to reach the valuation it's priced at now, and until I see positive confirmation that it will, I'm shifting my focus to other stocks.
Another catalyst that hasn't occurred yet, but is coming, is increased selling pressure. After the lockup period is over, inside investors will be allowed to sell shares, which could trigger a massive sell-off as selling pressure outweighs demand. The lockup period is tiered over the next year, and until a year has gone by, I think there could be increased volatility in the stock as supply and demand sort themselves out.
SpaceX is already a massive company, and I think investors can afford to stay patient and wait for more information on its business state and for the lockup period to end before taking a position in SpaceX.
The noise of SpaceX's (SPCX 4.51%) recent initial public offering is finally quieting down -- mostly. And, in light of all the hype surrounding this name as it prepped its IPO, you may be a bit disappointed with its performance so far.
Here's how it's fared for whom.
No one's doing great Whether or not you're happy here largely depends on when and how you bought into your stake.
If you were one of the lucky few to directly participate in SpaceX's initial offering at a price of $135 per share, the stock's current price near $152 would mean your $5,000 investment would be worth about $5,590 now, up a little more than 12% since the June 12 IPO.
Most people weren't picked to participate in the actual public offering, though. They were forced to buy their stake in the open market at the market price. If you jumped in that same day, you paid somewhere in the ballpark of its first exchange-traded price of around $150. If that's you, your $5,000 trade is roughly breaking even, at $5,066.
Image source: Getty Images.
Of course, some people stepped into this then-rallying ticker a couple of days after its IPO, which turned out to be the worst possible time to do so. SPCX peaked at a high of $225.64 on June 16. If that was you (and it was someone), your $5,000 investment is now worth around $3,370, down nearly 33%.
Almost no one is doing especially well with SpaceX, regardless of when they got in.
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Nothing unusual, and it's not over yet Those are the numbers. The thing is, none of them really matter just yet.
Sure, anybody who bought it obviously expects SpaceX shares to move higher in the future. As veteran investors can attest, though, erratic post-IPO performance isn't particularly unusual. It could take several more months to fully squeeze out all the speculative forces at play here.
Then there's the phased-out lockup period. Employees and early stakeholders will only be allowed to sell some of their shares after second quarter results are released in early August, with progressively more shares freed up at staggered dates over the three months following that report. Other major shareholders won't be able to sell their stock until early next year, and Musk isn't able to sell any until June of 2027. Selling these shares could put downward pressure on share prices, although it's possible that most insiders and early investors will opt to stick with their positions.
It would also be naïve to pretend the market isn't going to pass conclusive judgment (even if the rhetoric suggests otherwise) on this fast-moving company until at least a couple of reported quarters are in hand, proving whether or not it's moving in a direction and at a pace that justifies the stock's premium price. Don't be surprised to see indecision in the meantime.
In other words, while SpaceX's post-IPO performance so far is lackluster, it's far too soon to worry about it. This won't be a conventional investment prospect for at least a year. In the meantime, trading it is largely an exercise in figuring out how the crowd will feel about the stock just a few days from now.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) pulled off the largest IPO in history last month, opening at $150 per share and ending the day at $161, with a market value of $2.1 trillion. The stock has been highly volatile since then, rising to a high of about $225 before eventually declining below its opening price. SpaceX's shares are currently worth $145 apiece. Should investors buy the stock at current levels?
When expectations meet reality IPOs tend to generate significant enthusiasm because they offer the opportunity to invest in promising companies early. Imagine buying shares of Amazon (AMZN 0.73%) on the day it went public. Even a relatively modest investment in the e-commerce leader then would be worth a small fortune today. Not every company is Amazon, but SpaceX could deliver similar -- or even better -- returns over the long run, provided the corporation's ambitious vision materializes.
Image source: the Motley Fool.
SpaceX is looking to revolutionize and commoditize space travel through its pioneering work with reusable rockets. The company's next-gen rocket, Starship, is fully reusable and has a much greater capacity than its previous ones. This could unlock several opportunities for SpaceX, including space tourism, as Starship significantly reduces the cost of space travel. SpaceX could also substantially improve its most important business, Starlink, which offers internet connectivity through Low Earth Orbit satellites. Starlink was SpaceX's only profitable segment last year, and the company recently requested regulatory approval to send 100,000 of its Gen3 Starlink satellites into orbit.
Considering the company has just over 10,000 satellites in orbit right now -- and the fact that it is looking to operate these new satellites in very low Earth orbit -- this could improve Starlink's internet speeds and potentially allow it to target customers outside of those in rural and other underserved areas it has focused on so far. Clearly, there is a large opportunity ahead for SpaceX, and we haven't even mentioned the company's artificial intelligence opportunity, which it sees as its largest addressable market across its entire business.
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Despite all that, there are reasons to be skeptical of SpaceX's prospects. For one, SpaceX is spending significant sums to make its ambitions a reality. That means the company may not turn a profit anytime soon, which is fine, provided it can pull off its vision. But there will be significant challenges, including growing competition in the space industry and risks to the company's ability to innovate, execute, and remain the leading company in the space sector.
Factors such as regulatory delays related to Starship -- which is central to its future -- and slower-than-expected development timelines may sink the stock. Further, SpaceX will also face increased competition in its Starlink business. These are just some of the problems it may encounter. In the meantime, SpaceX is the only $2 trillion (or more) company that isn't consistently profitable, which suggests its valuation already reflects significant success. For all those reasons, the stock still isn't a buy, even below its opening price. Perhaps once it falls much further, its shares will become attractive.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) -- commonly known as SpaceX --is a highly controversial space stock.
Some experts believe the company will transform multiple industries, leading to hefty gains for long-term shareholders. Other experts, like Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder of GMO LLC, strongly believe SpaceX will "fail to deliver anything like its promises in the prospectus."
SpaceX's growth ambitions hinge on its ability to scale not only its rocket and satellite launches but also its fledgling AI business. More than 90% of the company's claimed growth potential outlined in its IPO prospectus deals exclusively with AI opportunities.
Can AI growth justify SpaceX's current $2 trillion valuation? At least one major investment bank thinks so.
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Here's how AI growth can help SpaceX's stock price soar I expect SpaceX to use the majority of its IPO proceeds, as well as the $25 billion raised in a follow-on bond offering, to invest heavily in scaling its AI business. That means building more compute infrastructure, chip manufacturing facilities, and orbital data centers.
How big will SpaceX's AI business get long-term? Goldman Sachs recently revealed its expectation for SpaceX's AI division to grow its revenue 100-fold by 2030. Admittedly, SpaceX's AI revenues totaled only $3.2 billion last year. But hitting $322 billion in sales by 2030 would be quite an impressive feat.
Image source: Getty Images.
Goldman Sachs was one of the underwriters of SpaceX's IPO. So it's not surprising to see the bank issue an optimistic forecast. But if Goldman Sachs' prediction comes true, just how high could SpaceX's stock price soar?
It's difficult to know just how the market will value a scaled AI business like SpaceX's. But Nvidia's (NVDA +4.03%) valuation of 19.7 times sales gives us at least a window into what's possible. At that valuation, SpaceX would be worth somewhere around $6.3 trillion. A $500,000 investment today, therefore, would end up being worth around $1.6 million by 2030.
The math likely won't work out as cleanly as demonstrated, however. SpaceX remains a money-losing business, a reality that will likely force it to issue more stock in the coming months and years. Plus, there's no guarantee that the market will price SpaceX stock the way it does Nvidia stock today. There are clear differences between the businesses, and some investors worry that we're in the midst of an AI bubble, which may be overinflating the valuations of AI stocks.
Still, if Goldman Sachs' prediction comes true, it's not hard to justify SpaceX's current valuation of $2 trillion. Just remember that there will be plenty of execution, financing, and timing risks involved.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%) entered the Nasdaq-100 index on July 7, and investors will hope it provides additional support for an already successful initial public offering (IPO). But what does the index inclusion really mean, and what can SpaceX investors expect in the future?
Where next for SpaceX? The Nasdaq-100 index inclusion does matter. It triggers forced passive buying of the stock by funds (including exchange-traded funds, or ETFs) that track the Nasdaq-100 index. In addition, many actively managed funds may invest only in stocks listed in the Nasdaq-100 index, and others may require holdings in SpaceX stock to meet their fund's weighting requirements. All of this is likely to provide some support for the share price.
Image source: Getty Images.
While this will occur, investors also need to be mindful of periodic bouts of selling as SpaceX's lock-up expiry dates approach. Digging into the company's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings makes it clear that the potential for periodic supply hitting the market is real. For reference, around 639 million shares were sold at IPO, and SpaceX has 13.17 billion shares outstanding.
Lock-Up Expiry Date
Shares
Notes
Two days after the next earnings release
Up to 911.5 million
N/A
Two days after the next earnings release
Up to 455.8 million additional shares
Contingent on the share price being more than 30% of the IPO price of $135 "for at least five of the 10 consecutive trading days ending on, and including, the First Earnings Release Date, the second full trading day immediately after the First Earnings Release Date."
Aug. 20
Up to 319 million
N/A
Sept. 9
319 million
N/A
Sept. 10
59.1 million
Shares held by "affiliates"
Sept. 24
328.4 million
N/A
Oct. 9
328.4 million
N/A
Oct. 24
328.4 million
N/A
Two days after the third-quarter earnings release
Up to 1.3 billion
N/A
Dec. 8
Up to 328.4 million or up to 797.6 million
The lower figure is released as outlined, and the upper figure is not
Data source: Space Exploration Technologies SEC filings.
As you can see, significantly more shares could come to market than were sold at IPO, and that could prove more impactful than the Nasdaq-100 listing.
Lee Samaha 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.
Wall Street analysts are setting bullish price targets for SpaceX (SPCX 4.51%) stock.
*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of July 8, 2026. The video was published on July 10, 2026.
Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. offers an attractive buy opportunity after the pullback from its post-IPO high, now trading near $152. My investment thesis on SpaceX depends on near-monopoly launch economics, Starlink's cash engine, and emerging AI infrastructure. The upcoming float unlocks, starting after 2Q earnings on August 6, which creates a real supply overhang but also defines the $145–$155 accumulation zone.
Predicting where any stock will trade four years out is guesswork, and that goes double for Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%), the newly public company most people know as SpaceX. Still, since it now trades on the open market at around $150 per share, it's worth walking through what a $5,000 stake might become by 2030, and, more important, what would have to go right or wrong for it to get there.
At roughly $150, $5,000 would buy about 33 shares. Every scenario that follows starts with that same handful of shares. The difference is what the market decides they're worth once Starlink, Starship, and the company's space-based computing ambitions play out.
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The bull case: about $26,000 The optimistic path runs through Starlink. The satellite broadband unit already generates most of SpaceX's revenue, and in a strong scenario, that business, paired with a successful Starship rocket, could push company revenue toward $60 billion to $70 billion by 2030. If that happens and investors keep paying a premium multiple for the company, the stock could reach the $800 range that the most bullish Wall Street analyst covering it -- Brian Gesuale of Raymond James -- has floated. That would turn $5,000 into roughly $26,000.
The base case: about $10,000 A more measured path assumes that Starlink keeps growing and Starship matures, but that the sky-high valuation cools as the company shifts from story to steady business. In that scenario, the share price could roughly double to around $300 over four years, which works out to growth of nearly 15% per year.
A $5,000 investment would then be worth close to $10,000. That would still be a strong result, and it's probably the most realistic one if SpaceX's execution stays on track.
Image source: Getty Images.
The bear case: about $3,300 The downside risks are real. SpaceX could encounter more delays and difficulties in getting its Starship rockets ready for commercial use. Rival satellite networks such as Amazon's Kuiper could put pressure on Starlink's pricing. The company's orbital data center plans could take more time and money than promised to bring to fruition. Any of these issues would give investors a reason to stop paying a premium for a company with a market cap in the trillions. If the stock drifts down toward $100, an initial $5,000 stake bought now would shrink to about $3,300, a loss of roughly a third, and there's room for it to fall further in a harsher outcome.
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The width of the gap between the bear and bull numbers here, $3,300 versus $26,000, is the real message. It shows how much of SpaceX's value rests on things that haven't happened yet -- and that may not. The single biggest swing factor is how Starlink performs: If the satellite broadband service keeps scaling profitably, the base and bull cases stay in play; if its growth stalls or competition bites into its profit margins, the bear case takes over.
Given that this company is so early in monetizing its biggest bets, those who open positions would be best advised to view them as long-term holdings, and keep their investment to a smaller size that reflects the potential for a wide range of outcomes. I would also use dollar-cost-averaging to gradually build any investment in SpaceX.
For years, the only way to own a piece of Elon Musk's rocket company was to be an insider or a venture fund. That changed in June, when Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%), better known as SpaceX, became publicly traded.
Now that anyone with a brokerage account can buy in, a fair question follows: What could a modest $2,000 stake actually turn into?
What $2,000 buys in SpaceX today SpaceX opened its first day of trading at $150, and after a volatile debut period in which it surged to a high of $225.64 in just a few days, it has retreated back toward that opening price. Today, it again trades at around $150 per share. At that price, $2,000 would buy about 13 shares. That is the starting point for every scenario below, and it is worth remembering that the stock has already swung hard in its first weeks, a sign of how much disagreement exists about what the company is worth.
Image source: Getty Images.
The analyst community leans bullish. Six major banks began coverage with buy-equivalent ratings on the stock, and the consensus 12-month target sits near $210.
If SpaceX reached that level, a $2,000 investment would grow to roughly $2,800 -- a gain of about 40% in a year. Morgan Stanley is even more optimistic, pairing an overweight rating with a $300 target that would push the same stake to around $4,000. These figures are opinions rather than promises, but they help explain why the stock has drawn such a crowd.
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Here is the part that gets lost in the target prices. SpaceX's rocket launch business is real and profitable, yet the company's towering valuation is predicated on several major things that have not happened yet: mass Starlink revenue, a working Starship economy, and Musk's ambitious plan to build and deploy vast numbers of AI data center satellites in orbit. Buy the stock, and you are paying today for outcomes that may arrive years from now, if they arrive at all.
The risks behind the return Not everyone on Wall Street is convinced. The firm CFRA Research has put a sell rating and a $115 price target on SpaceX stock, based on the view that too much of the company's story is still speculative. If it's right, a $2,000 position opened today will shrink to about $1,530 a year from now -- a loss of about 23%. Newly public stocks also face nearly inevitable selling pressure as their insider lockup periods expire, and a market cap in the trillions leaves a company with little leeway to disappoint investors without consequences for the share price.
A $2,000 investment in SpaceX is less a bet on rockets than a bet on which version of Musk's company wins out: the steady rocket launch provider, or the trillion-dollar space-and-AI empire the bulls imagine. The range of possible outcomes here is unusually wide, so anyone buying would do well to size their position to reflect that uncertainty.
Investors who bought SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock at its initial public offering (IPO) price one month ago have seen a modest gain despite significant volatility since the company’s market debut.
In this line, a $1,000 investment made at SpaceX’s IPO price of $135 per share on June 11, 2026, would now be worth approximately $1,076, reflecting a gain of about 7.6% based on the closing price of $145.30.
SpaceX 30-day stock price chart. Source: Finbold The return comes after a turbulent first month of trading for the aerospace giant, whose highly anticipated public debut became the largest IPO in history.
SpaceX raised about $75 billion in its IPO, debuting with an initial valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion.
Investor demand was strong, with shares opening near $150 and closing their first trading day around $161, lifting the company’s market capitalization above $2 trillion.
The rally continued in subsequent sessions, with SPCX reaching intraday highs near $225 before pulling back due to broader market weakness and profit-taking.
Despite the decline, the stock remains above its IPO price, leaving early investors in profit even as shares trade well below their post-listing peak.
While early IPO participants are still profitable, investors who purchased SpaceX stock at the close of its first trading day have experienced a different outcome.
A $1,000 investment made at the first-day closing price of approximately $161 would now be worth about $902, representing a decline of nearly 10% over the same period.
SpaceX stock fundamentals Investor interest in SpaceX remains tied to several key growth drivers. The company continues to dominate the commercial launch market through its Falcon rocket program while rapidly expanding its Starlink satellite internet business, which has become a major revenue contributor.
At the same time, investors are closely monitoring progress on Starship, the company’s fully reusable spacecraft designed to dramatically reduce launch costs and support future missions to the Moon and Mars.
Additional growth expectations are linked to potential artificial intelligence infrastructure projects and broader space-based communications initiatives.
However, these opportunities come with execution risks. SpaceX continues to invest heavily in next-generation technologies, and any delays in major programs could weigh on future performance.
The stock’s first month as a public company has already demonstrated how quickly investor sentiment can shift when expectations are exceptionally high.
With the company expected to report its first earnings results as a public entity later this year, investors will be looking for evidence that SpaceX can translate its technological leadership into financial performance capable of supporting its multi-trillion-dollar valuation.
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SpaceX (SPCX 4.51%) has been public for less than a month, and the stock has already made a round trip, surging after its June IPO before sliding about 34% from its high to a recent price near $148. That leaves the company valued at close to $2 trillion.
For a business still losing money, that is an extraordinary price. So the interesting question isn't what the stock does next week. It's where it could reasonably sit in five years, and what would have to happen for today's buyers to be rewarded.
Let's take a look.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
What decides the outcome Almost everything about SpaceX's future comes down to three things.
The first, and by far the most important today, is Starlink. The satellite internet service crossed 10 million active customers earlier this year and generated more than $11 billion in revenue in 2025, about 61% of the company's total. Starlink is the profit center that makes the rest of SpaceX's ambitions affordable, and its growth over the next five years is key to the bull case for the stock.
Its pricing power is largely untested, though. As competition from other satellite and ground networks grows, SpaceX may eventually have to choose between adding subscribers and protecting the prices that keep Starlink profitable.
The second engine is Starship, the giant reusable rocket meant to slash the cost of reaching orbit. If SpaceX can ramp its launch cadence and drive costs down, it strengthens everything else. Cheaper launches mean more Starlink satellites, more commercial payloads, and more government contracts. But Starship is capital-intensive and still has plenty to prove.
The third is the wild card: the company's artificial intelligence (AI) and Mars ambitions. SpaceX acquired the AI start-up xAI earlier this year, and its AI segment generated $818 million or revenue and a $2.5 billion operating loss in Q1. Layer on the enormous long-term cost of a Mars program, and you have real drains on the cash Starlink throws off.
The point is that the bull case and the bear case run on the same facts. Starlink funds the ambitions, and those ambitions could either compound SpaceX's advantages or swallow its profits.
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What the numbers would have to do So put some math to it.
SpaceX generated about $19 billion in revenue over the past year, growing more than 30%. Suppose it keeps compounding at roughly that pace for five years. That would take revenue to around $70 billion by 2031, an impressive result, and probably closer to a best-case than a floor.
Now the harder part. To simply hold a $2 trillion valuation on $70 billion of revenue, SpaceX would need to earn a healthy profit on those sales, something it doesn't do today. Even at a 20% net margin, which would be excellent for a capital-heavy space and satellite business, that is roughly $14 billion in profit. Against a $2 trillion market capitalization that's still well over 100 times earnings five years out.
In other words, even a strong five years might only justify today's price, not beat it. And that is the optimistic path. If Starlink's growth slows as it saturates its wealthiest markets, or if Starship and xAI keep swallowing cash, revenue could land well short of $70 billion -- and the stock with it.
For the shares to deliver real returns from here, then, Starlink's economics have to scale even faster, or xAI and Starship have to turn from cash drains into profit engines. That is a demanding set of assumptions. It isn't impossible -- SpaceX has a habit of doing what skeptics called impossible -- but it leaves very little room for error.
So, where will SpaceX stock be in five years?
I won't pretend to know. The honest answer is that the range of outcomes is unusually wide. My best guess is that the business will be dramatically larger in 2031, and the stock still might not have done much, simply because so much growth is already priced in. That doesn't make SpaceX a bad company. It makes it a richly valued one. If I owned it, I'd keep the position small and treat the next five years as a bet on execution I can afford to be wrong about.
Members of the U.S. Congress buying a stock usually isn't a big deal. It happens all the time. However, some transactions by politicians are noteworthy -- especially for investors.
That's the case with two recent transactions involving Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 4.51%), better known as SpaceX. There's bipartisan interest in SpaceX, with Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Penn., and Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., becoming the first members of Congress known to have disclosed investments in the space stock. Is this a bullish signal for other investors thinking about buying SpaceX?
Image source: Getty Images.
Not just any congressional trades Rep. Meuser disclosed a purchase of SpaceX stock on June 15, 2026, only three days after the company's record-setting IPO. The congressman's regulatory filing revealed that his dependent child bought between $15,001 and $50,000 of the stock. Rep. Cisneros bought between $1,001 and $15,000 of SpaceX shares on June 18.
There are no yellow flags with either of these transactions, by the way. Both members of Congress complied with disclosure requirements. Neither has been accused of trading on information that isn't public or violating any law. Cisneros issued a statement to CNBC emphasizing that he doesn't personally manage his investments. The California Democrat said that he and his wife use "outside financial advisors who have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain a diverse portfolio."
The interesting thing about these two representatives, though, is their committee assignments. Meuser is on the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees securities and exchanges. Cisneros serves on the House Armed Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Defense.
SpaceX has around $22 billion in contracts with U.S. government, with the Defense Department ranking as one of its fastest-growing government customers. NASA is the company's largest federal customer, with roughly $15 billion in contracts.
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What history shows In 2004, Alan Ziobrowski, Ping Cheng, James W. Boyd, and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski published a detailed analysis of stock investments made by U.S. Senators between 1993 and 1998. They found that a portfolio that copied senators' buy transactions beat the market by 85 basis points per month, while a portfolio that mimicked their sales beat the market by 12 basis points per month.
Importantly, though, that study was based on data before the implementation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012. This legislation banned members of Congress, as well as the President, Vice President, and all federal employees, from using nonpublic information to which they have access through their official positions for personal financial profit. The STOCK Act also mandated financial disclosures.
You'll sometimes see reports about individual members of Congress achieving outsize returns from their investments. However, a 2022 analysis by William Belmont, Bruce Sacerdote, Ranjan Sehgal, and Ian Van Hoek concluded that "House and Senator stock returns are consistent with random stock picking."
Similarly, Vishaal Baulkarna and Pawan Jain published research in 2025 analyzing two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that sought to replicate trades of members of Congress. They determined that "neither ETF significantly outperforms the market on a risk-adjusted basis."
The Unusual Whales 2025 Congress Trading Report found that only 32.2% of congressional portfolios outperformed the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.42%) last year. The reported stated, "This success rate effectively mirrors the professional financial world." The conclusion: "In 2025, Congress proved to be no better than the average money manager."
Not necessarily a bullish signal The bottom line for investors considering SpaceX stock is that congressional buys aren't necessarily a bullish signal. At least on an overall basis, members of Congress haven't consistently beaten the market with their stock picks. Buying SpaceX just because two representatives did, therefore, probably isn't a smart move.
The ETF seeks to track the performance of the Bloomberg Space Economy Index, reflecting the price and yield of the benchmark before fees and expenses.
• First Trust Bloomberg Space Economy ETF stock is testing key support levels. What’s pressuring FSPC?
The launch comes as asset managers increasingly position space as a long-term investment theme extending well beyond rocket launches. Commercial and government space infrastructure now underpins critical services ranging from GPS navigation and weather forecasting to financial transactions, military communications and satellite broadband.
First Trust said the new ETF is designed to provide diversified exposure to multiple segments of the evolving industry, rather than relying on a handful of high-profile aerospace companies.
Bloomberg Index Services noted that its index uses a data-driven methodology intended to capture how the modern space economy operates, while First Trust said the fund offers investors broad access to a sector where the eventual long-term winners remain uncertain.
Key features of the First Trust Bloomberg Space Economy ETF (FSPC):
–Objective: Seeks investment results that generally correspond to the price and yield, before fees and expenses, of the Bloomberg Space Economy Index.
Space Domain Awareness Launch and Space Transportation Satellites and Communications Space Data and Artificial Intelligence –Portfolio construction: Selects up to 50 companies based on revenue exposure to the space economy and market capitalization.
–Index maintenance: Quarterly rebalancing and reconstitution.
–Investment rationale: Designed to provide diversified exposure across multiple areas of the commercial space ecosystem as the industry continues to evolve.
–Benchmark provider: Bloomberg Index Services, with sector classifications supported by Bloomberg Intelligence.
Photo: Shutterstock AI Generator
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Shares of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) are trading at $148 and change on Friday afternoon, essentially back where they opened one month ago. That flat tape looks dull on the surface, but against the rest of the space sector, it’s the best performance in the group.
SpaceX priced its debut at $135 but commenced trading at $150 on June 12, and has since round-tripped to basically the same price. That’s disappointing, no doubt, but SpaceX’s peers fared worse over the past month.
The market cap of Elon Musk’s space company sits at $1.96 trillion, making SpaceX one of the largest listings ever and by far the biggest name in the sector. That scarcity value may have helped to shield SPCX stock from the broader sector rotation.
Peers Sold Off, SpaceX Held the Line It’s been a challenging month for the space sector overall. Speculative, high-beta space names have been hit with profit-taking and cooling risk appetite over the past four weeks, though SpaceX evidently refused to participate on the downside.
Over the trailing month, Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) is down 45%, Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) is down 40%, and Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB | RKLB Price Prediction) is down 22%. AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) is down 16%, and Planet Labs (NYSE:PL) is down 15%.
The takeaway isn’t that SpaceX rallied, since it actually popped and dropped. Being flat versus the opening price still counts as a win in this hard-hit sector.
The Space Sector Proxy Confirms the Rotation The Procure Space ETF (NYSEARCA:UFO) is down 10% over the same month, though it did cushion the space sector group’s drawdowns with satellite operators and aerospace specialists. The UFO ETF is a narrow, volatile thematic fund with concentration risk, though it’s not leveraged. The fund’s top holdings include Planet Labs at 6% and Rocket Lab at 5%, both of which weighed on the UFO ETF.
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The VIX Volatility Index at 15.84, down 20% over the past month, tells the rest of the story as broad market fear has faded. The space selloff isn’t a macro panic; it’s a sector-specific reset in the frothiest corners of the market, and SpaceX’s institutional shareholder base and scarcity value have buffered it.
Bull Case Versus Bear Case for SpaceX The bull case on SpaceX rests on its dominant launch position, Starlink connectivity across 164 countries, the xAI/Grok integration adding an AI leg, and heavy institutional demand at the trillion-dollar level. Reddit’s contrarian squeeze narrative around a third of tradable shares betting against it hasn’t gone away, either.
The bear case is straightforward: SpaceX stock has already given back its debut pop. SpaceX’s valuation is rich even before considering peer-group weakness, and the sector-wide selloff signals fading risk appetite that could still weigh on the share price. Polymarket participants currently assign an 88% probability that SPCX stock closes lower today, though month-end pricing pins 97% confidence above $110.
What to Watch Investors can watch for whether SpaceX shares hold the $145 support level through next week. A break below that, especially with peers still bleeding, would suggest that the sector rotation is finally reaching the biggest name.
Given how high-beta these stocks are, investors should consider keeping their position sizes modest until the space complex stabilizes. The peer group’s steep declines show how quickly sentiment can turn in this corner of the market.
For now, SpaceX’s flat performance stands out as a relative victory. Whether that resilience holds through the next leg of the rotation will define the setup heading into late summer.
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SpaceX SPCX shares fell more than 2% on Friday, extending a volatile stretch that has erased the stock's post-IPO gains as investors continue debating whether Elon Musk's AI and space ambitions justify one of the world's richest valuations.
The stock traded around $148, below its $150 listing price, after briefly soaring to a record closing high of $201.80 on June 16 following its blockbuster market debut.
The sharp swings come as Wall Street publishes its first wave of research following SpaceX's record-setting IPO, with analysts offering differing views on the company's long-term potential.
Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham was among the most outspoken critics, describing the IPO as a potential landmark market bubble in a recent interview with Morningstar.
Grantham argued that much of SpaceX's valuation rests on aggressive assumptions about artificial intelligence despite what he described as the company's relatively weak competitive position in AI software.
He also questioned projections around orbital AI infrastructure and broader space-related opportunities outlined in the IPO prospectus, arguing they require technological advances that remain highly speculative.
Grantham said the stock could continue rising in the near term because of strong investor demand and index-related buying, but maintained that the valuation would ultimately have to be supported by fundamentals.
Musk remains bullishMusk, however, has continued to raise expectations.
Responding to comments on X this week, the SpaceX chief executive said the company could eventually become "worth more than the rest of Earth" if it achieves its long-term goals.
The remarks add to a series of ambitious projections from Musk, who has previously argued Tesla could become more valuable than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined.
Several Wall Street firms have also outlined aggressive long-term scenarios for SpaceX, driven largely by expectations for Starlink, reusable launch systems, and future AI infrastructure businesses.
Raymond James currently has one of the Street's highest published price targets at $800 per share, while Citi's bull-case scenario values the company at roughly $12 trillion.
SpaceX also faces growing competition overseas.
China on Friday successfully landed the booster stage of its reusable Long March-10B rocket, marking the country's first successful recovery of an orbital-class reusable booster.
The milestone places China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. alongside SpaceX and Blue Origin among the small group of organizations to demonstrate reusable rocket landing capability.
While SpaceX remains the clear global leader in reusable launch technology, China's latest achievement highlights the increasing pace of competition in the commercial space industry as governments and private companies race to lower launch costs and expand access to orbit.
SpaceX's pullback follows an explosive start to life as a public company, with the stock surging more than 30% in its first few trading sessions before reversing sharply.
The combination of lofty valuation expectations, ambitious long-term projections, and limited public trading history has left the shares particularly sensitive to shifts in investor sentiment.
With Wall Street still establishing coverage and investors trying to assess the company's AI, satellite, and launch businesses under one public valuation, analysts expect trading to remain volatile in the months ahead.
"The nerd in me loves this company," says Keith Snyder regarding SpaceX (SPCX), though he's cautious as an analyst. He says the company's current growth projections don't match the current valuation, calling it an "Elon Musk premium.
Two notable trends continue to bolster the capital markets landscape.
Of course, investor appetite for businesses in artificial intelligence (AI) remains robust. The view is that this is a groundbreaking technology that will have a meaningful impact on the economy.
Additionally, the market is captivated by anything Elon Musk is working on. His grand visions drive excitement.
These factors created the perfect backdrop for the most anticipated initial public offering (IPO) ever. On June 12, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 2.14%) went public. It raised $86 billion, after underwriters exercised their greenshoe option. The company currently sports a massive $2 trillion market capitalization. And the stock has traded 13% up from its opening price (as of July 9).
The hype is hard to overstate. But how will SpaceX's shares perform over the 12-month period following its IPO? Investors can try to glean insights by looking at the five largest previous deals.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
A wide range of industries The five largest IPOs prior to SpaceX are ranked by the amount of capital raised. The list includes Saudi Arabian Oil ($26 billion raised in 2019), Alibaba Group ($22 billion in 2014), SoftBank Corp. (not the investment holding company) ($21 billion in 2018), NTT DoCoMo ($18 billion in 1998), and Visa ($18 billion in 2008). Investors will notice that these deals come from different industries. Whether it's energy, technology, communication services, or financial services, no single sector dominates.
Their subsequent 12-month performances are a mixed bag. Saudi Aramco shares were down by a single-digit percentage. Alibaba's stock price tanked 30%. SoftBank's shares were up about 10%. NTT Mobile soared 68%. And Visa's stock was essentially flat one year later.
These figures are all over the place. It's telling that these companies were able to raise such massive amounts of capital. However, the timing of their IPOs, as well as their competitive positions, management teams, and financial performance, all weighed on their respective stocks' performances.
Based on these volatile numbers, investors can't come to a definitive conclusion about where SpaceX shares will be trading 12 months after its IPO. It's really a toss-up at this point.
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Sky-high valuation creates significant downside risk History isn't guaranteed to repeat, of course. But these huge IPOs do provide investors with a clear lesson in regard to the blockbuster public market entrance from Elon Musk's enterprise. SpaceX, whose $86 billion capital raise is more than three times the next largest, could see its stock price surge over the next year. It could also fall precipitously.
Investors shouldn't focus on the next 12 months, though. Anything can happen, as a time frame this short is heavily dependent on shifting market sentiment. This is unpredictable. No one has any clue where the stock will be in June 2027.
The best perspective to have is a long-term view. The smartest investors are asking where SpaceX could be in five years and beyond. Even after investors adopt a longer time horizon, the company's future remains extremely uncertain.
SpaceX does possess some notable positive traits. For starters, its vertically integrated business model has reduced launch costs, giving the company a big advantage. SpaceX commands more than 80% of the commercial launch market, according to research from The Motley Fool, as its launch cost per kilogram has fallen significantly over time.
Starlink is a successful endeavor, providing internet access to 10.3 million consumer subscribers (as of March 31) around the world. During the first three months of 2026, the connectivity segment (mostly made up of Starlink) generated $1.2 billion of operating income on $3.3 billion in revenue.
Valuation introduces a huge headwind, however. The stock trades at more than 51 times consensus analyst estimates for 2026 revenue. This is an astronomical price tag that bakes in a gargantuan earnings stream at some point in the future.
To say that SpaceX needs to execute flawlessly in the coming years would be an understatement. Not only that, but the ultimate goal of developing cheap interplanetary travel and establishing a civilization on Mars might not even be possible.
This space stock is best avoided. However, there are certainly bold investors out there who will continue to buy Elon Musk-led businesses.
Key Takeaways SpaceX's launch scale and Starlink growth underpin its vertically integrated infrastructure platform.Starlink reached 10.3 million subscribers and generated $7.2 billion in 2025 adjusted EBITDA.Starship remains in testing, while AI posted a $1.2 billion adjusted EBITDA loss in 2025. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX - Free Report) is not a simple launch-services story. It combines reusable rockets, satellite broadband and artificial intelligence assets into one vertically integrated infrastructure platform.
That breadth creates a wide opportunity set, but also makes the stock harder to value. Starlink is already showing scale, while Starship and AI still require proof that investment can translate into durable returns.
SpaceX Has Three Growth EnginesSpaceX operates through Space, Connectivity and AI. The Space segment designs, manufactures and launches reusable rockets and spacecraft, with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy serving commercial, civil, international and government missions.
Connectivity is built around Starlink Consumer Broadband, enterprise and government solutions and mobile services. The AI segment expanded after the Feb. 2, 2026, xAI acquisition, bringing Grok, X and the COLOSSUS compute clusters into the platform.
SPCX Launch Scale Sets the FoundationLaunch scale remains SpaceX's clearest moat. As of March 31, 2026, the company had completed about 650 orbital launches, including roughly 620 Falcon 9 flights and 11 Falcon Heavy flights. Falcon 9 had a mission success rate of more than 99%, while Falcon Heavy had a 100% success rate. That cadence matters because lower-cost internal launch capacity helps SpaceX deploy Starlink satellites, support future mobile services and prepare for Starship V3, which is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
SpaceX Is Turning Starlink Into Cash FlowStarlink is the cleanest operating proof point in the story. The network had about 9,600 satellites in low Earth orbit and roughly 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries and other markets as of March 31, 2026.
SpaceX reported median residential peak-hour download speed of 225 Mbps. Segment adjusted EBITDA reached $7.2 billion in 2025 and $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2026, showing that satellite broadband has moved into recurring revenue and meaningful cash generation.
AT&T Inc. (T - Free Report) provides a terrestrial fiber and wireless benchmark for the connectivity side of the debate. Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ - Free Report) offers a second large-network comparison as investors weigh how satellite broadband may complement or pressure traditional coverage models.
SPCX AI Ambitions Add Long-Term OptionalityAI broadens SpaceX's long-term narrative beyond rockets and broadband. The platform includes Grok, X and compute infrastructure through COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II, with about 550 million monthly active users across Grok and X as of March 31, 2026.
The opportunity is still early. The AI segment generated $3.2 billion of revenues in 2025, but adjusted EBITDA was negative $1.2 billion, reflecting a multi-year investment cycle tied to consumer AI, enterprise AI, compute services and future orbital AI compute.
The planned Anysphere acquisition adds another software angle. The all-stock deal, valued at $60 billion, is aimed at strengthening SpaceX's position in enterprise AI through the developer platform behind Cursor, but the transaction still depends on closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
SpaceX Signals Point to a Wait-and-See ViewThe bottom line is that SPCX has rare infrastructure advantages, but the stock's signal is mixed rather than clearly bullish. Starlink is scaling, Falcon launch reliability is established and AI adds optionality, yet Starship remains in testing and capital needs remain elevated.
The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). That rank points to a more balanced near-term setup, which fits a company where earnings estimate trends do not yet present a stronger short-term case.
The Style Scores send a similar message. SPCX has a VGM Score of D, with a Value Score of F, Growth Score of C and Momentum Score of A. Momentum is favorable, but weaker value and combined style readings suggest investors may want clearer evidence that newer platforms can generate returns before treating the stock as more than a wait-and-see story.
You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Key Takeaways SPCX served 10.3M Starlink subscribers across 164 markets with about 9,600 low-Earth-orbit satellites.SpaceX plans V3 satellite launches in 2H 2026, each designed for one Tbps of downlink capacity.SpaceX added xAI, Grok, X and COLOSSUS, while AI posted negative $1.2B adjusted EBITDA in 2025. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX - Free Report) gives investors exposure to reusable launch, satellite broadband and AI infrastructure in one public stock. That mix makes the company visible as markets look for durable growth themes.
The harder question is whether trend exposure will convert into dependable returns. SpaceX still must execute across capital-heavy platforms where technology, regulation and monetization all matter.
SpaceX Benefits From Broadband Demand GrowthDemand for reliable connectivity remains central to the SpaceX story. Starlink served about 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries and other markets as of March 31, 2026, supported by roughly 9,600 satellites in low Earth orbit.
The Connectivity segment spans Starlink Consumer Broadband, Enterprise Solutions, Government Solutions and Starlink Mobile. That breadth matters because satellite broadband is moving from niche coverage into recurring consumer, commercial and government markets.
AT&T Inc. (T - Free Report) highlights the telecom industry’s interest in extending coverage beyond terrestrial networks. Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ - Free Report) offers a similar context, as wireless carriers look to satellites to reduce coverage gaps.
SPCX Is Pushing Capacity Higher With V3SpaceX expects to begin deploying V3 broadband satellites on Starship in the second half of 2026. The plan is important because V3 satellites are designed to deliver one Tbps of downlink capacity per satellite.
Higher capacity could support more users, heavier data consumption and broader enterprise and government use cases. It also ties Starlink’s next growth phase to Starship, making launch progress a key input for the broadband story.
SpaceX Links AI to Real InfrastructureSpaceX’s AI strategy reflects a wider shift in which AI depends on more than software models. Compute clusters, power, networks, data and distribution are becoming part of the competitive equation.
The company completed the xAI acquisition on Feb. 2, 2026, adding Grok, X and COLOSSUS compute infrastructure to its platform. SpaceX reported about 550 million monthly active users across Grok and X as of March 31, 2026.
That gives the company a path to monetize consumer AI, enterprise AI, compute services and future orbital AI compute. Still, AI is early for SpaceX and has not yet established itself as a consistent earnings driver.
SPCX Trend Story Still Needs ExecutionTheme alignment is not enough by itself. Starship remains in testing, even though it is central to V3 satellite deployment, Starlink Mobile V2, AI compute satellites and longer-term space ambitions. AI also brings financial drag. The AI segment generated $3.2 billion of revenues in 2025 but posted segment adjusted EBITDA of negative $1.2 billion, reflecting its earlier stage and heavy investment needs.
Regulatory and deal execution are additional variables. Spectrum transactions, launch approvals and international permissions can influence how quickly SpaceX turns technology road maps into commercial scale.
SpaceX Scores Show Momentum Over ValueThe bottom line is that SpaceX tracks several attractive trends, but the stock’s current profile still argues for patience. The company has rare assets, yet investors need clearer evidence that newer platforms can scale with improving returns.
SPCX currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). That ranking fits a stock where the long-term opportunity remains visible but the near-term signal is not strong enough to support an aggressive stance.
The Style Scores reinforce that mixed read. SPCX has a Momentum Score of A, but that sits beside a Value Score of F, Growth Score of C and VGM Score of D. Momentum investors may see favorable trading action, while value- and balanced-style investors have less support from the current scores.
You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 12: Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, speaks via video before the ringing of opening bell at the Nasdaq Marketsite at the launch of the company's initial public offering (IPO) on June 12, 2026 in New York City. SpaceX is set to begin trading under the ticker SPCX following what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in history. Elon Musk, who also serves as chief executive of Tesla, could become the world's first trillionaire. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it plans to raise $75 billion by selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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SpaceX stock has lost a quarter of its value since peaking on June 16 following the company’s initial public offering. Due to equity investors’ faith in CEO Elon Musk the company was valued at $1.8 trillion while its actual business – which burns billions in cash – strikes fear in the hearts of debt-holders, according to the New York Times.
The equity is built on a conglomerate of unrelated business lines. As I wrote in May, SpaceX consists of a satellite-internet cash cow forced to subsidize a money-losing AI lab with Musk holding 85% of the votes and aiming at a huge bonus tied to colonizing Mars. Meanwhile the company’s investment-grade (Baa1/BBB+/BBB) debt trades like junk.
Wall Street analysts have not reached a consensus on where the stock will go next. CFRA’s price target – citing the risk SpaceX will fail to achieve its goals for Starship revenue, AI data centers in space, and making money from its chatbot xAI and the former Twitter (X) – implies SpaceX shares will drop another 23%. Raymond James believes the company’s total addressable market is $30 trillion – $1.5 trillion more than does Musk – and envisions SpaceX shares soaring 433%.
Why SpaceX Stock Fell 25%The root cause of SpaceX’s stock price decline was the gap between the high valuation of its shares at the IPO and the low profit potential of the company’s business units. In addition, a few post-IPO financial moves further spooked investors.
The IPO price was managed to achieve a first-day pop. Only about 5% of SpaceX shares were sold to the public and shares were valued at an exorbitant 94 times sales. Record retail demand – 30% of total which was three to six times the usual allocation – and buying by index funds helped propel the shares, according to the New York Times.
One valuation expert said SpaceX was embarrassingly overvalued. The $28.5 trillion total addressable market cited in the IPO prospectus prompted NYU Stern valuation professor Aswath Damodaran to say "the prospectus was written by Grok," reported CNBC. The IPO valuation was 27% too high based on his discounted cash flow analysis and the TAM estimate was a "hallucination" he "would be embarrassed to even put out," he added.
Given SpaceX’s money-burning business model, it is no surprise that S&P projects the company will generate negative free cash flow through 2029. That’s because SpaceX reported a 2025 net loss of $4.937 billion. It gets worse – in the first quarter of 2026, its net loss was $4.276 billion the company spent $7.7 billion on AI capital expenditures.
SpaceX’s equity allocation is a significant risk for retail investors. Elon Musk holds the vast majority of the voting shares. Also important – a whopping 44% of the shares could be dumped by insiders in September – which may pressure the stock price.
On top of that, two significant events took place after the IPO. These included:
The $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor/Anysphere – which was announced June 16 and diluted SpaceX shares by roughly 4%.A surprise $25 billion bond sale on June 22 and 23 which exposed repayment deadlines.The latter offering – which prompted traders to price the bonds at junk levels – has not gone over well. "The biggest, most sophisticated investors in the world see a harder road to success than Musk touts and demand to be compensated accordingly," noted Bloomberg. “Traders told Bloomberg they couldn’t recall another deal where prices sank that quickly,” added the New York Times.
The Bull And Bear Cases For SpaceXDespite all this, the bull case prevails on Wall Street. That’s because 27 analysts set an average 12-month price target of $245.96 – suggesting 61.6% upside.
The bull case is a torrent of words at odds with cash flow reality. SpaceX is a vertically integrated platform — dominant launch, the largest satellite-internet network, and a call option on AI infrastructure and Mars — with Starlink's cash flywheel funding it all.
Raymond James analyst Brian Gesuale wrote "just as railroads, electric grids, and the Internet reshaped prior economic eras," SpaceX is "building the foundational platform for the next generation of industrial capacity."
The pessimists would avoid SpaceX shares. These include GMO’s Jeremy Grantham who called its offering possibly "the craziest IPO in human history" and said he’d only be interested "at 10 cents on the dollar." Paul Krugman likened the company to a "Ponzi scheme."
The one reasonable hope for SpaceX bulls is if the company reports consistently better than expected results — such as a clear and compelling path to profitability in its money-incinerating Launch and AI units.
Otherwise, those who bought into Musk’s reality distortion field may lose money on SpaceX stock.
Elon Musk may have pitched a future where space powers AI, but Wall Street analysts say SpaceX's near-term value remains firmly tethered to Earth, where it is building out the infrastructure underpinning the AI boom.
While Elon Musk’s other trillion-dollar company drew the bulk of attention, SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) was not the only exciting technology stock to hit the public markets in June 2026.
Specifically, the quantum computing company Quantinuum (NASDAQ: QNT) launched on June 4 with an initial public offering (IPO) price of $60 per share, which turned into $68 already at the morning bell but then dipped to $60.38 by the evening.
At press time in the July 10 pre-market, however, QNT equity is worth substantially more: $74 following a 0.67% extended session rally from $73.51 at the latest close.
Under the circumstances, $1,000 invested at either the IPO price or close to the June 4 closing bell would have turned into $1,233.30 for $233.30 in profits, simultaneously making it a superior investment to SpaceX stock.
QNT stock price chart. Source: Google Still, despite offering a strong performance in its first month, given it is 30.66% above its day-one price, Quantinuum has been on a slow downtrend in recent weeks and is 14.74% under its all-time high (ATH) of $86.79.
Wall Street sets Quantinuum stock price target for the next 12 months Elsewhere, QNT shares might simultaneously be the best quantum computing stock to buy in 2026. Along with impressive initial performance indicating the equity was somewhat undervalued from the get-go, Wall Street experts see substantial room for growth in the coming 12 months.
Indeed, Quantinuum is overall regarded as a ‘Strong Buy,’ with a singular ‘Hold’ recommendation – issued by Morgan Stanley’s (NYSE: MS) Joseph Moore with a $78 price forecast on June 29 – and no ‘Sell’ ratings.
Furthermore, the quantum computing stock is, on average, expected to climb 34.34% to $98.75 in the next 12 months.
Wall Street sets QNT stock price target for the next 12 months. Source: TipRanks Examining the specific stock price targets, Rosenblatt analyst John McPeake is responsible for the Street high estimate of $155 – a 110.86% predicted climb from the latest close and 109.50% from $74 at press time.
Along with being a popular company operating in a now government-backed sector, Quantinuum made itself into a top 2026 quantum computing stock with recent scientific and engineering achievements.
Notably, the firm is responsible for Helios – a machine touted as the world’s most accurate commercial quantum computer.
Lastly, and despite the recent achievement and strong market performance since the IPO, quantum computing has, thus far, been akin to the phenomenon of quantum superposition in that it has been perpetually impressive in its achievements and underwhelming in outcomes while, despite the promise, so far evidently failing to produce world-changing breakthroughs upon scrutiny.
Quantinuum could change the reading, thus solidifying its position as the best quantum computing stock to buy in 2026, but investors should be aware that it could find itself stuck in a type of limbo for years to come.
Despite the initial hype and the rapid rocketing to the all-time high (ATH) of $225.64, investing in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock close to the equity’s public launch would have, at best, turned into a middling trade by press time on July 10.
Specifically, shares of SPCX have been gravitating toward their initial, June 12 morning price of $150 through the last week, with the previous regular session leaving them at $152.16 and the Friday morning pre-market pacing them at $150.08.
Under the circumstances, purchasing $1,000 worth of SpaceX stock close to the company’s first opening bell at $150 would have led to only $0.53 in gains by press time and a position worth $1,000.53.
Making the same trade several hours later at the June 12 closing bell – and the price of $160.95 – would have seen the holdings diminish by 6.75% to $932.46 for a $67.54 loss.
SpaceX stock price one-week chart. Source: Google Still, investors who managed to fill their orders at the SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) valuation of $1.77 trillion and share price of $135 would still be in profit. Specifically, a $1,000 IPO trade would have grown to $1,111.70 for $111.70 in profits.
Notably, the situation at press time on July 10 stands in stark contrast with the equity’s performance a week after the SpaceX launch. Indeed, a $1,000 investment in SPCX shares made at IPO was worth as much as $1,370 by Friday, June 19.
SpaceX stock 2026 bull case Elsewhere, SpaceX shares find themselves in an uncertain position in early July.
On the one hand, the company boasts overwhelming Wall Street confidence, exemplified by an overall ‘Strong Buy’ rating from institutional analysts, estimated 2030 and 2040 revenue in trillions of dollars, and even a high $800 12-month price target assigned by Raymond James: a 440% predicted upside.
Similarly, the company is deeply embedded with the government via a series of long-standing and expanding contracts and has also taken to wearing multiple hats by acquiring an artificial intelligence (AI) business in the form of xAI and a social media business in the form of X.
Along with the wealth the novel technology is expected to bring to the firm, both according to several major institutions and to the pre-IPO SpaceX regulatory filing, Starlink satellite internet remains a major source of revenue and, arguably, prestige.
Lastly, Elon Musk’s newer public company also benefits from an uncommonly friendly environment, with Nasdaq being only one of several major entities that have allowed SPCX shares into its indices far faster than usual.
Simultaneously, however, the more bearish outlook for the stock appears to be prevailing in the firm’s first month in the markets.
To begin with, despite the fast-track inclusion into the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, index fund buying activity appears to have so far failed to enable a SpaceX launch above $150.
The setup also brings the long-standing concerns regarding the firm’s valuation into focus. At its press time, market capitalization of $2 trillion, it is the seventh-largest company on the planet, even though its revenue in the most recent known quarter was below $5 billion and despite the firm operating at a loss during the period.
Valuation concerns are further compounded by the company, despite being best-known for its rockets, identifying its largest sales opportunity – and the largest total addressable market valued in tens of trillions – in its AI-related business.
Notably, though executives, analysts, and other observers remain highly optimistic about AI, the technology is yet to generate meaningful sales or profits and, arguably, yet to demonstrate capabilities sufficient to justify the past and expected capital expenditures.
Leaked financials of OpenAI – the biggest company in the industry – provide a stark example, considering that the revenue growth between 2024 and 2025 was far outstripped by the rise in costs and remains overshadowed by the firm’s vast commitments and funds raised.
Finally, along with fast-track inclusion into indices such as the Nasdaq-100, SpaceX is also notable for how swiftly most insiders will be permitted to sell, creating a potential near-term downside risk for the shares of SPCX.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.38%), or SpaceX for short, recently became the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. And at a market cap of about $2 trillion, it's already one of the world's most valuable companies. Its hefty valuation has led to the company's inclusion in several market indexes, including the popular growth and tech-focused Nasdaq-100.
Although companies don't typically join major indexes so soon after their IPOs, SpaceX is a special case due to its size and high profile. It's one of only a few publicly traded space companies and has immense upside in artificial intelligence (AI) following its merger with xAI earlier this year.
Here's what SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 actually means for investors right now.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Indexes create demand through passive buying It's significant anytime a company joins an index, especially a popular one such as the Nasdaq-100. Now that it has added SpaceX, every index fund that tracks it must buy the stock in proportion to its weight in the index. Despite SpaceX's huge market cap, it won't represent much of the Nasdaq-100 at first.
The index weighs stocks based on their float, the number of shares publicly available to investors. The company went public with a very small float, making only about 4% of its total shares available to the public when it began trading.
As a result, SpaceX will initially account for only about 1% of the Nasdaq-100. That may change as lockups expire over the next 180 days, and the float grows as more shares enter the market.
It's unclear whether that can overcome a steep valuation SpaceX's inclusion in the index is generating buying demand for the stock, but it's not a given that it will be enough to drive up the share price. In fact, the stock actually tumbled nearly 7% on its first day in the index. Investors should be wary of the stock's high valuation, which could continue to drag on its performance.
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Even though the shares have fallen back to around $148 after an initial surge to $225, SpaceX still has a huge market cap of $1.95 trillion. That values the business at more than 100 times its 2025 revenue of $18.6 billion. That's an extremely difficult ratio to sustain without blistering growth to keep investors willing to pay such high prices to own the stock.
SpaceX does have ample growth potential over the next decade and beyond. But some of its ambitions, such as putting AI data centers into orbit, won't happen right away. It wouldn't surprise me to see the stock continue to slide as investors weigh its valuation against the company's near-term growth outlook.
China's Long March rocket blasted off in a historic launch on Friday. VCG/VCG via Getty Images SpaceX is flying high off the back of a record-breaking IPO, but China looks determined to bring Elon Musk back down to Earth.
China successfully landed the booster stage of its Long March-10B reusable rocket on Friday, the first time it has launched and partially returned a reusable orbital rocket safely to Earth.
It means that China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, which built the rocket, joins Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin as the only organizations to have successfully landed a rocket booster.
长征十号乙运载火箭成功实现一子级可控回收，是全球首次运载火箭网系回收BREAKING｜WORLD‑FIRST ACHIEVEMENT! #China's Long March 10B carrier #rocket lifted off from the Hainan commercial space launch site at 12:15 pm on Jul. 10. Approximately six minutes after the separation of the… pic.twitter.com/J3mZGuD9Lk
— Beijing Evening News (@BeijingEvening) July 10, 2026 Local media reported that the Long March rocket's first stage touched down on a barge around six minutes after launch and was captured by a large net — reportedly the world's first ever "net-based recovery" of a rocket.
Landing a first-stage booster, rather than letting it burn up on reentry, is a key milestone in building reusable rockets, which significantly lowers launch costs. SpaceX landed its first booster in 2015 and has since launched and successfully recovered its Falcon 9 rocket hundreds of times.
In 2024, SpaceX wowed the world by catching the nearly 400-foot-tall superheavy booster — which is used to propel its next-generation Starship rocket into orbit — with the chopstick-like arms of its "Mechazilla" launch tower.
Blue Origin scored its first booster landing last November, with the first stage of its towering New Glenn rocket successfully landing on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
Bezos' rocket company has suffered setbacks since then, with New Glenn exploding on the launchpad in May.
Landing a booster is a significant step toward China's ambition of catching up with SpaceX, which launches far more material into orbit than any other country or company.
China's reusable Long March rocket can't carry as much into orbit as SpaceX's Falcon 9. Ding Yi/VCG via Getty Images The Asian superpower is also attempting to build a rival to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, with state-backed company SpaceSail launching around 200 satellites into orbit since 2024.
That's well behind Starlink, which has an estimated 10,000 satellites in low-earth orbit. China's Long March rocket also lags behind SpaceX's Falcon 9, with a max payload capacity of 16 tons compared to the Falcon's 25 tons and Starship's planned 100+ tons.
In a post on X in October, however, Musk said that China's reusable rockets were catching up with SpaceX's workhorse rocket — even if they were still some way behind the cutting edge.
"They have added aspects of Starship, such as use of stainless steel and methalox, to a Falcon 9 architecture, which would enable it to beat Falcon 9," he wrote.
"But Starship [is] in another league," Musk added.
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Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.60%) was a stock market winner right out of the gate. The industrial and tech giant, more commonly known as SpaceX, soared 19% on its first day of trading -- and that was after the company completed the world's biggest initial public offering. After the exercise of an overallotment option, the company raised a total of more than $85 billion.
Investors rushed to get in on the operation itself -- it was greatly oversubscribed -- and scooped up shares of SpaceX in its early days on the stock market. The stock reached an intraday high of more than $225 on June 16, representing a 50% increase from its opening price of $150 on June 12 and a 67% increase from its IPO price of $135.
But, in recent days, the stock has pulled back. In fact, SpaceX stock just made a particularly startling move, closing at $148 on July 8, a level that is below the company's debut price. Is SpaceX a stock to avoid or a no-brainer buy on the dip? Let's find out.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX takes center stage SpaceX attracted a great deal of attention even prior to the announcement of its IPO, as investors speculated about when such a move would come. And the company truly took center stage once it filed for an operation and details emerged.
Why so much excitement? SpaceX operates in businesses that surely appeal to growth investors: rocket launches, satellite-based internet services, and artificial intelligence (AI). On top of this, Elon Musk leads SpaceX -- he's known for innovation and high ambitions, qualities that please many investors.
SpaceX has delivered certain successes, such as completing the most rocket launches of any company last year and growing its satellite internet subscriber base from 2.3 million to more than 10 million in just three years. In SpaceX's prospectus, it revealed an AI win: Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion on a monthly basis through 2029 for access to compute capacity.
What investors also may like about SpaceX is the vertical nature of its business. The company's strengths in one business may be applied to the other businesses. For example, SpaceX's rockets will be used to launch materials into space for the connectivity and AI businesses. This reduces costs, streamlines operations, and offers SpaceX more control over many aspects of its development.
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SpaceX and risk So, what's not to like about this market giant? It's important to note that SpaceX comes with a certain amount of risk, as the company itself highlighted in its prospectus. Certain major goals are linked to the development of new technologies that haven't been fully proven -- and if a certain technology doesn't work out, that may delay a goal or make it impossible to achieve.
Such goals include developing AI data centers in space at scale, manufacturing AI chips at scale, and establishing a lunar economy, the company said. These and other initiatives "involve significant technical complexity, unproven technologies or technologies that do not exist, and such initiatives may not achieve commercial viability," according to the prospectus.
Meanwhile, to attempt to reach these goals, SpaceX must invest significantly. Last year, capital expenditures reached $20 billion, exceeding the company's $18 billion in revenue. And I would expect this trend to continue as the technologies involved are complex, requiring financial investment and time.
All of this shows us that SpaceX is an exciting company that could offer high growth, but success isn't guaranteed. Many of the elements that investors may be counting on are still in development stages. And all of this equals risk.
Consider your investing strategy So, after SpaceX's startling move, dropping below its debut price, are we looking at a no-brainer buying opportunity? Or is SpaceX a stock to avoid? There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer -- and a lot depends on your investment strategy.
If you're a cautious investor, the answer is clear: SpaceX is a stock to avoid as it comes with too much risk.
If you're a middle-of-the-road investor, it may be a good idea to pick up SpaceX shares on the dip -- but not necessarily this dip. Instead, even investors who don't mind some risk would be better off waiting for at least one earnings report for additional clues about the company's progress. I don't think this dip will be the last, so there should be other opportunities.
Finally, if you're an aggressive investor and eager to get in on the SpaceX story, you may consider picking up a few shares at this level, but only as part of a well-diversified portfolio.
The obvious question about Grok 4.5 is whether a model priced at a fraction of its rivals delivers a fraction of the performance.
The answer, on the published evidence, is that the pricing is not the point.
SpaceX Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) released the model on Tuesday, its first since absorbing xAI and agreeing to buy the coding tool Cursor for $60 billion.
Elon Musk described it as Opus-class, referring to Anthropic's flagship family, but faster, more token-efficient and lower cost.
Where it sits
The benchmarks tell a mixed story rather than a triumphant one.
On SpaceXAI's own published charts, Grok 4.5 beats Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on two of four coding benchmarks and loses on the other two.
Anthropic's Fable 5 leads most of those charts outright.
Independent evaluation from Artificial Analysis places Grok 4.5 fourth on its GDPval index for real-world agentic knowledge work, behind the latest Claude releases, with an Elo rating of 1543.
So it is not the most capable model available, and SpaceXAI's own data does not claim otherwise.
Why the price is not the story
Grok 4.5 costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, against $5 and $25 for Opus 4.8.
But the sharper number is consumption, not price.
On one software engineering benchmark, Grok 4.5 completed tasks using an average of about 15,900 output tokens against roughly 67,000 for Opus 4.8, a gap of more than four times.
Tokens are the units of text a model processes and generates, and they are what customers actually pay for.
A model that charges less per token and uses far fewer of them compounds the savings twice over.
Artificial Analysis put the cost at $0.49 per completed task and described the model as sitting clearly on the frontier for performance against cost.
That is the answer to the value question: not half the model for half the price, but a slightly weaker model at a substantially lower total cost per job done.
What makes it different
Grok 4.5 was trained differently from most coding models.
Rather than learning only from static code, it absorbed real developer session data from Cursor, including debugging traces, multi-file changes and the corrections users made when the tool got things wrong.
That gives it a signal about how software actually gets fixed, not merely how it looks when finished.
It runs at about 80 tokens per second, supports a 500,000-token context window, and is built on a 1.5 trillion-parameter foundation trained across tens of thousands of Nvidia chips.
Its strengths, per the launch material, cluster around long-running agentic tasks: building applications end to end from a single prompt, working across multiple code repositories, and operating inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
It also topped a legal benchmark from Harvey, suggesting the training mix reaches beyond engineering.
The catch
Vendor benchmarks are vendor benchmarks, and independent testing is still thin.
Grok 4.5 is unavailable in the European Union until mid-July, and the Cursor acquisition has not yet closed.
Whether developers switch will depend on how the model behaves on their own work, not on cost per task in a chart.
This week, a wave of equity research reports from sell-side analysts was released on Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.60%). The big takeaway is that Wall Street is overwhelmingly bullish on SpaceX stock.
With so many banks publishing their first formal reports on SpaceX and coming to the same optimistic outlook, it begs the question: Does Wall Street know something retail investors don't?
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Why were so many reports for SpaceX stock published on the same day? When a company completes its initial public offering (IPO) and its shares begin trading, a quiet period begins. This window typically lasts between 25 and 40 days after the newly public company begins trading. During the quiet period, the investment banks that underwrote the IPO are prohibited from issuing forward-looking statements, promotional material, or equity research analysis.
The rule exists to prevent the same institutions that helped price and sell the IPO stock in question from immediately hyping the deal or leaking material information that could influence market sentiment. Analysts working for the lead underwriters must remain silent because any positive research they publish too close to the offering could be viewed as an extension of the marketing effort rather than independent analysis.
Once the quiet period ends, these banks are free to initiate coverage. In the case of SpaceX, this is exactly what just happened: A cluster of reports appeared on the same day because the calendar restriction had been lifted.
Image source: Getty Images.
What does Wall Street think of SpaceX stock? The table below summarizes the ratings and stock price targets analysts recently issued for SpaceX.
Bank NameRatingPrice Target ($)Implied Upside / Downside (%)MoffettNathansonNeutral$131(11%)WedbushOutperform$19028%StifelBuy$19028%CitiBuy$20035%MizuhoOutperform$20035%Goldman SachsBuy$20538%UBSBuy$21042%RBC CapitalOutperform$22552%JPMorgan ChaseOverweight$22552%Wells FargoOverweight$23055%Bank of AmericaBuy$23559%BernsteinOutperform$23961%MacquarieOutperform$25069%Deutsche BankBuy$25572%Morgan StanleyOverweight$300103%Raymond JamesStrong Buy$800440% Data Source: Yahoo! Finance
Among the firms in the table, all gave Buy or Buy-equivalent ratings on SpaceX stock, except one. Unsurprisingly, longtime Tesla supporter and former Wedbush analyst Dan Ives is bullish on SpaceX. The price targets primarily range between $190 and $300, with notable outliers at Raymond James and MoffettNathanson.
SpaceX's bullish thesis converges on three interlocking growth drivers. First, Starlink is shifting from primarily consumer broadband toward enterprise and telecommunications customers. This could unlock higher-margin contracts with government agencies, airlines, maritime operators, and large corporations that require reliable global connectivity.
Second, SpaceX is positioned to support the acceleration of AI infrastructure buildouts by delivering additional capacity to hyperscalers. So far, SpaceX has signed $82 billion in infrastructure deals with Anthropic, Google Cloud, and Reflection AI.
Third, operational improvements in rocket reusability and launch cadence in the Starship program stand to dramatically lower costs to orbit. These efficiencies can help expand SpaceX's addressable market for both satellite deployment and crewed missions.
Taken together, these variables paint a picture of a company transitioning from a high-burn, capital-intensive launch and satellite operator into a diversified technology enabler with multidecade tailwinds.
Understanding the limits of analyst price targets Wall Street analysts tend to have meaningful access to the C-Suite at large companies. By contrast, retail investors usually have a tough time getting past the Investor Relations department. With this in mind, many Wall Street analysts have access to information that most investors do not. However, they are strictly prohibited from issuing reports based solely on that information.
This is all to say that even if Wall Street does know certain things that most investors do not, the price targets above are still just opinions -- not guarantees. These price targets rest heavily on modeling assumptions about revenue growth, profit margins, and discount rates that can shift quickly. Blindly chasing the most optimistic targets or treating the consensus opinion as a certainty ignores the fact that the stock market tends to price in best-case scenarios before they actually materialize.
Investors who rely solely on these reports risk overlooking valuation discipline, balance-sheet risk, and the possibility that even accurate long-term narratives can produce stomach-churning short-term drawdowns. While the end of the quiet period gives investors a clearer picture of professional sentiment around SpaceX stock, these views are just one data point among many.
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2026: A Space Stock Odyssey
Stock Market Mixed As Chips Rise While Small Caps, Dow, SpaceX Struggle; Ned Davis On Cash SpaceX (SPCX) could be among the companies that transform the aerospace industry into something much more mundane — but lucrative — for broader investors. The Elon Musk-led company could lead a shift in space companies from specializing in aerospace and transportation to becoming critical data-infrastructure providers. "There's a common thread in these industries, and data is that thread," said Andrew…
Grantham on SpaceX IPOIn a recent podcast appearance, GMO co-founder Grantham called SpaceX "the craziest IPO in the history of man."
The legendary investor shared his thoughts on SpaceX, the company’s lack of profitability, and its early inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 with Morningstar on "The Long View" podcast.
"$1.7 trillion for a company that’s rolling in red ink when 90% of the projection are on the AI of their currently third-rate AI offering who’s getting kicked around the block by Anthropic and OpenAI and so on," Grantham told Morningstar. "Just amazing."
The investor said JPMorgan and others are recommending SpaceX stock to clients, and there will be early demand thanks to the Nasdaq changing its rules.
"For one thing, it’s Nasdaq has cheated and changed the laws of the land so that they can squeeze it into the Nasdaq index despite the fact it has no earnings, etc. What that means is there’ll be a lot of people who have to buy it for any index that is Nasdaq-y."
Grantham said this means there could be more demand than sellers for SpaceX stock.
Benzinga reached out to the Nasdaq and SpaceX for comment and did not hear back at the time of publication.
Nasdaq Changes Rules, S&P 500 Stays Mostly FirmThe index company also changed its 10% minimum float rule to a 3x weighting boost for low-float stocks.
As of Thursday, SpaceX is the 21st-largest holding in the Invesco QQQ Trust, accounting for 1.25% of assets.
Nasdaq President Nelson Griggs previously told Bloomberg that no rules were broken by changing the rules of the Nasdaq 100. SpaceX ultimately chose to list on Nasdaq rather than the New York Stock Exchange, a decision that some believe may have been influenced by Nasdaq’s change to its index rules.
With its large market capitalization and early inclusion in the Nasdaq-100, billions of dollars in SpaceX shares were needed for ETFs and mutual funds. This also means that investors who avoided the SpaceX IPO may now have exposure to the large space stock through ETFs and mutual funds they hold in their accounts.
The S&P 500 eased its float requirements for inclusion in the index but failed to approve fast-track rules or a change to its profitability rule. To be included in the S&P 500, a company has to be profitable in the most recent quarter and profitable by the sum of the last four quarters combined.
SpaceX does not currently meet the profitability requirements.
The S&P 500 also has a 12-month requirement before a public stock can be added.
Freedom Capital Markets Chief Market Strategist Jay Woods was among those who argued against allowing SpaceX early entry into the S&P 500.
Woods said the listing criteria for stocks in the S&P 500 matters.
“This isn’t bureaucratic red tape. It is the product of decades of hard lessons about what makes an index durable, reliable, and trustworthy for the trillions of dollars benchmarked against it,” Woods previously said.
Photo: Shutterstock
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SpaceX Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) released Grok 4.5, the company's first major update to its AI model built in collaboration with Cursor, targeting coding and agentic workflows as the company pushes further into the enterprise AI market.
The 1.5 trillion parameter model was trained on tens of thousands of GB300 GPUs and builds on Grok 4.3, which launched in April 2026.
SpaceX said Grok 4.5 delivers performance close to Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT 5.5, while offering lower pricing and greater token efficiency.
Grok 4.5 is priced at $2 per 1 million input tokens and $6 per 1 million output tokens, compared with $5 and $25 for Opus 4.8, $10 and $50 for Fable 5, and $5 and $30 for GPT 5.5.
SpaceX said the model uses approximately 16,000 tokens per SWE-Bench Pro task, versus 67,000 for Opus, a roughly 4.2 times improvement in efficiency. The company reported sizeable gains across agentic and coding benchmarks compared with Grok 4.3, along with continued advances in knowledge and reasoning tasks.
The release comes as SpaceX targets what UBS estimates is a $23 trillion enterprise AI total addressable market. UBS said SpaceX is entering the enterprise market from a relatively low base but is building momentum through an expanding product portfolio and improving customer adoption.
OpenAI is expected to release GPT 5.6 in the coming days, a launch UBS said should raise the competitive benchmark across AI labs and underscores the importance of continued model advancement.
UBS rates SpaceX shares Buy with a $210 price target, based on a sum-of-the-parts approach valuing the Space segment at 24 times 2028 estimated revenue, Connectivity at 30 times 2028 estimated EBITDA, and AI at 28 times 2028 estimated EBITDA.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +3.10%) hasn't been trading publicly for a full month yet, but it has already been through plenty of price swings. Since its initial public offering (IPO) on June 12, the stock price has traded as low as $147.11 and as high as $225.64.
As of the close of trading Tuesday, it was back down to $149.47.
Image source: Getty Images.
Early SpaceX returns On June 12, SpaceX went public at $135 per share, but it opened trading at $150. For nearly all retail investors, that would have been the first price at which they could have picked up shares, and plenty of them attempted to. But many of those investors had difficulty filling their entire orders. On the day, the stock price climbed as high as $176.52, but it closed at $160.95
Given the significant variations in the prices investors paid for their shares on that day, we'll use the first-day closing price of $160.95 to calculate potential returns.
With online brokers like Robinhood Markets allowing fractional investing, investors no longer need to buy full shares of companies; they can invest in dollar amounts instead. A $1,000 investment in SpaceX at $160.95 per share would give an investor a little more than six shares.
Based on SpaceX's closing price of $149.47 on Tuesday, July 7, that $1,000 investment would now be worth roughly $926 -- a 7.4% decline.
But for investors, what's more important than where a stock has been is where it's headed. And some analysts recently offered fresh views on that topic.
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Analyst outlooks Despite the choppy trading early on, the good news for shareholders is that a fresh wave of analyst price targets suggests upside ahead. According to Barron's, the average 12-month price target among 15 new analyst ratings is roughly $250 per share. That stock price would give SpaceX a market cap of $3.3 trillion.
If that $250 price target is reached from the July 7 closing price of $149.47, that would represent a gain of more than 62%.
However, it's worth keeping in mind that each price target is merely an analyst's estimate. Looking at all of them as a group can give investors a sense of the potential range of where a stock could trade in the next year or so, but there are no guarantees that it will reach those prices within that time frame. Also, because of its diverse business units and its speculative space operations and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure build-outs, SpaceX is not the easiest company to value.
SpaceX's long-term story is still playing out SpaceX believes it has a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with $26.5 trillion of that potential coming from AI. Part of its path toward capitalizing on that opportunity will involve establishing AI infrastructure and commercializing an orbital constellation of data center satellites.
The company will face plenty of challenges as it attempts to make those things happen, but if SpaceX executes successfully, it could produce gains for long-term shareholders. However, investors will need to give it more time to turn its ambitious visions into reality.
Following a quiet period for IPO underwriters, Wall Street firms were out with a bevy of largely bullish stock initiations on Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +3.10%), or SpaceX. But one certainly stood out from the rest. Raymond James, which was an underwriter on the IPO, started coverage of the stock with a "strong buy" rating and a whopping $800 price target.
Now it's worth noting that early analyst ratings of recent IPOs tend to be bullish. After all, the firms that are underwriters on an IPO make a lot of money, and they aren't going to get a lot of new business if they start coming out bearish on a recent IPO with which they were associated. The industry can try to set up the biggest "ethical walls" it wants, but you can guarantee that big new IPOs are getting an initial bullish rating from underwriting firms.
However, Raymond James certainly took this to another level with a price target on SpaceX light-years above any other Wall Street firm. Analyst Brian Gesuale centered his bullish thesis on SpaceX becoming "the foundational platform for the next generation of industrial capacity" across various industries.
The core argument of his thesis is that his next-generation massive reusable rocket, Starship, will make space transportation so cheap that it will help create new industries that don't yet exist. This includes things like using the rocket to fly cargo across Earth in under an hour, mining asteroids, and building AI data centers and factories in space.
Gesuale projects that SpaceX will generate more than $837 billion in revenue in 2031 and $696 billion in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). He said his $800 target is based on a 27x exit multiple applied to his discounted cash flow projections.
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Don't buy the hype In my view, Raymond James' $800 price target on SpaceX is trying to bolster a speculative stock with more hopes and dreams. First, Starship has to demonstrate that it can be launched routinely and reused to dramatically reduce launch costs and increase payload capacity. But that is just step one.
Earth-to-Earth cargo transportation in under an hour is an interesting concept, but there would be many safety, regulatory, and infrastructure obstacles to overcome, and the economics of such a business are uncertain. I don't believe this will be up and running in the next five years, and it would be hard to imagine the U.S. and China suddenly working together to build the infrastructure needed for this work.
AI data centers in space are something multiple companies are pursuing, given that they can be powered by solar and have access to nearly endless sunlight, but, once again, there are major hurdles to overcome. Eliminating the impact of cosmic radiation on AI chips is a big one, as is finding a way to cool systems in the vacuum of space. Then there is the whole cost of building and servicing an orbital data center.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Asteroid mining, meanwhile, would require breakthroughs in robotics and extraction, and it may not be economically viable. AI factories also seem like a niche that likely may not really be necessary.
At $800, SpaceX would be an over $10 trillion company. The stock is not valued based on any of its current businesses, as it generated just $19 billion in revenue last year and posted an operating loss. Its Starlink business is a solid, growing recurring business, although it is set to see increased competition. Meanwhile, SpaceX's mobile Grok app has been losing market share, according to Apptopia data.
Not only is Raymond James' $800 target likely highly unrealistic, but it also wouldn't surprise me if the space stock is lower over the next year, as it faces multiple lock-up expirations that will release more shares into the market.
The quiet period has ended for underwriters of SpaceX's IPO, and analysts are starting to publish their views on Elon Musk-led company. William Blair's Louie DiPalma launched coverage with a bullish rating, citing the company's growing advantage as rival Blue Origin turns to outside investors.
We’ve talked before about the hot IPO summer, but with SpaceX just launched to public markets and Anthropic and (maybe) OpenAI soon to come, it can be easy to miss the sheer scale of what’s happening.
We got a good reminder of it in Wednesday’s NCVA-Pitchbook Venture Monitor report. Not surprisingly, all of the money in private markets is flooding into AI — but one particular figure stood out. Taking the measure of the pending OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs, the report drops this nugget: “Along with the SpaceX IPO, these exits will generate more value than all U.S. VC-backed exits since 2000.”
That’s quite a claim, and when you add up the numbers, it’s hard to disagree. SpaceX has already gone public at a $1.77 trillion valuation, and with both Anthropic and OpenAI pushing into the trillions it’s likely the trio together will land somewhere north of $4 trillion. By comparison, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission counted just $70 billion in U.S.-based IPO proceeds last year.
Careful readers will notice a few caveats in the language. It doesn’t include non-U.S. companies like Alibaba, and we’re measuring “value created” as opposed to strictly liquid cash. A lot of the major tech developments happened at companies that had already gone public (the iPhone, the debut of Android, and the launches of YouTube and Instagram), so they wouldn’t be captured in the IPO figures.
Still… that was a pretty eventful 25 years. Among other things, that period saw IPOs from Google (2004), Tesla (2010), and Meta (2012), which are now among the most valuable companies in the world. During the same period, LinkedIn, Slack, and WhatsApp were all acquired for more than $20 billion. Uber’s $84 billion IPO seemed like a lot of money in 2019, but it’s less than 5% of what SpaceX just drummed up.
One factor here is that companies are staying private for longer. The Google of today probably would have delayed its IPO and gone public at a higher number. Another factor is the capital-intensive nature of AI training, which has pushed labs into intense fundraising and inflated valuations. But the sheer scale of the public offerings is still way beyond anything the industry has ever done, and is already pushing the financial infrastructure to its limit.
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Russell Brandom has been covering the tech industry since 2012, with a focus on platform policy and emerging technologies. He previously worked at The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at 412-401-5489.
CNBC’s Leslie Picker walked Squawk Box viewers through one of the most mechanically consequential trading events of 2026: the rebalance that will force index funds to absorb billions in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) stock, whether their managers like the valuation or not. Picker’s framing was blunt: “Index funds tracking the Nasdaq-100 will have to start buying space stock whether they want to or not.”
The scale is what makes this unusual. Picker noted that “there are more than $800 billion in assets that directly track the Nasdaq 100, more than half of which is from Invesco QQQ,” and cited JPMorgan’s estimate that approximately $4.3 billion in forced purchases will hit SpaceX before it officially joins the composite. Her framing of the historical precedent was direct: “We’ve never seen something like this happen, though, at this scale so quickly after an IPO.” You can watch CNBC’s original coverage of the inclusion decision here.
Why is the Rebalance So Lopsided? Nasdaq changed its rules months ago to fast-track mega-cap listings into the index after just 15 trading days, provided the company sits inside the top 40 by market cap. SpaceX cleared that bar easily. The company debuted on June 12 at $150, spiked above $176 in early trading, and now carries a market cap of roughly $2 trillion. Shares last traded at $148.34.
Picker was careful to temper the reciprocal concern about selling pressure on existing index members: “SpaceX’s weight in the Nasdaq-100 will be very small at first, less than 1%, and these funds will have to sell a little bit from the other constituents in the index to make room, but the impact will be spread out over the other names, so it shouldn’t be noticeable.”
The company underneath the flows For readers new to the ticker, SpaceX is now a three-legged business. It launched more than 80% of the world’s mass to orbit in recent years, operates the Starlink broadband network of approximately 9,600 satellites serving customers across 164 countries, and folded in xAI’s Grok model after an early-2026 acquisition. Trailing twelve-month revenue sits at $19.3 billion per SpaceX’s most recent SEC filings, with a diluted EPS of -0.68 and an EV/Revenue multiple near 111x. Analyst consensus price target stands at $188.57, with seven buy or strong-buy ratings against one sell.
The float problem that amplifies everything Only 281 million shares of the 7.57 billion outstanding are currently in the public float. That tiny denominator is why a viral r/investing post titled “A Third of SpaceX’s Tradable Shares Are Now Betting Against It. The Squeeze Math Is Wild” has drawn 889 upvotes since late June. Reddit sentiment across investing communities has swung back to bullish at a weekly score of 65.21, focused almost entirely on the collision between the $4.3 billion mechanical bid and a constrained supply of tradable shares. Our earlier coverage of the debut, SpaceX Soars 26% in Record $75 Billion Debut, walks through how the float ended up this thin.
Whether SpaceX’s valuation ultimately proves justified is almost beside the point for the next several trading sessions. The immediate story is about market structure, not fundamentals. Billions of dollars in index-tracking capital are set to buy the stock automatically, while a relatively small public float limits the available supply of shares. That combination doesn’t guarantee higher prices, but it does create conditions that can amplify volatility in either direction. Once the rebalance is complete, investors will likely shift their focus back to the factors that matter over the long term—SpaceX’s ability to grow revenue, execute on Starlink and xAI, and eventually deliver profits that support its premium valuation. Until then, the mechanics of the index may matter just as much as the business itself.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and SpaceX didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
The SpaceX IPO made CEO Elon Musk a trillionaire and could make investors in the company richer in years to come if the story can play out, Grantham said in an interview on Morningstar’s "The Long View" podcast.
"Supply and demand being what it is, it’s hard to imagine the price won’t go up, and perhaps it will go up a lot," Grantham said.
The GMO co-founder and chief investment strategist said the SpaceX IPO is a "landmark historical event."
"It will be amazing, by the way, if it doesn’t collapse, because it will need such massive developments on AI that our entire lives are totally different."
Grantham said SpaceX is "the craziest IPO in the history of man," an event that had everyone lining up telling investors to buy.
"In 50 years, they’ll be telling and writing stories about SpaceX and they’ll be quoting you paragraphs from the prospectus, and you will be laughing at it."
The Elon Musk AbilityThe British investor said that Musk is good at creating perceived value for his companies, which allows him to sell stock and reinvest in them.
"You’re so good at propaganda that instead of the price falling because of the dilution, it doesn’t, and very quickly it’s multiples of fair value once again."
Grantham mentions the greater fool theory when talking about Musk in the interview and his ability to get investors. This theory involves making money by buying overvalued assets, regardless of fundamentals, and later selling them at higher prices to "greater fools."
"The cohort that invested in Musk were proven right."
Grantham said time will tell if the theory works with SpaceX.
"Whether they can pull it off with $1.7 trillion worth of hype about AI – put it this way: If AI is actually going to be so good that the $1.7 trillion is cheap."
The investor said we should hope this is just AI hype, because if it’s not, the technology could put lives at severe risk.
"I wouldn’t wish it on our species at all."
Image via Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Rocket Lab Corporation (RKLB +0.34%) has accomplished what few aerospace companies have done. It successfully completed one of the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF) tactically demanding space missions from start to finish, demonstrating how its vertically integrated approach allows it to move far faster than traditional aerospace companies.
The company announced yesterday that it has now completed every part of the VICTUS HAZE mission that required it to design, build, and launch a spacecraft for the USSF within 24 hours of the official Notice to Launch.
More importantly, it carried out a complex orbital operation in just 59 hours to demonstrate a rapid threat-response scenario, involving the spacecraft approaching and monitoring a target satellite. In short, Rocket Lab met all the deadlines set by the USSF and delivered all phases of the tactically responsive mission in record time.
Image source: Getty Images.
The space race’s new competitive advantage: speedOn June 19, Rocket Lab launched the mission with its Pioneer spacecraft in a record 16 hours and 42 minutes since receiving the launch notice. Following the launch, Rocket Lab’s operational team activated and verified all of Pioneer’s control systems for altitude, power, and communications, comfortably beating the mission's 72-hour operational requirement.
Following this, the spacecraft successfully performed the task at hand — a complex rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO).
In layman’s terms, this is a series of precision orbital maneuvers to locate, monitor, approach, and photograph a target satellite, completing the demonstration in just 59 hours, a good 25 hours before the Space Force's deadline of 84 hours.
Vertical integration drives this competitive advantagePerhaps the most important takeaway from the VICTUS HAZE mission is that Rocket Lab completed virtually every aspect of the mission internally.
Traditionally, rocket programs divide responsibilities among multiple contractors. Rocket Lab has turned that thinking on its head. The company designs its own spacecraft, manufactures key hardware and space software, conducts its own launch operations, and subsequently commissions and continues in-orbit operations.
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By controlling a significant portion of its supply chain, Rocket Lab avoids many of the delays that come from relying on external vendors. The company’s integrated approach, where engineering, manufacturing, launch operations, and spaceflight control systems all operate under one roof, facilitates rapid decision-making and optimizes its systems, all in pursuit of speed.
This integrated approach is increasingly important as governments demand faster execution and greater operational flexibility.
Speed is now a strategic assetThis kind of responsiveness is becoming increasingly valuable as military planners prepare for a future where satellites may need to be replaced quickly or deployed during an active conflict. Defense agencies are increasingly viewing space not as a static environment, but as an operational domain requiring the ability to respond within hours instead of weeks.
Rocket Lab has now shown that it can achieve precisely this.
An even more valuable relationship in the worksThis mission should help solidify Rocket Lab's value to the U.S. military, as it establishes its ability to help meet national security needs quickly and effectively.
VICTUS HAZE is a Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) mission by the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command (SSC) via SSC's Space Safari Program Office, along with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), two groups working together to develop and deploy new military technologies and systems at a rapid pace.
Furthermore, the mission isn’t over. The Pioneer spacecraft is expected to remain in orbit for several more months as it conducts more complex operations under Space Force orders, thus providing further opportunity to show its operational capabilities.
Rocket Lab and SpaceX demonstrate differing capabilitiesThe latest mission obviously raises the question: How does Rocket Lab differ from SpaceX (SPCX +0.75%)? Should investors view them as direct competitors?
The answer is quite simple: both companies are increasingly pursuing different strengths. While SpaceX dominates the heavy-lift launch market with the Falcon 9 and Starship rockets, Rocket Lab has carved out a niche in responsive, smaller launch services and integrated space systems.
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SpaceX’s ultimate ambition is to explore deep space, as well as deploy large-scale commercial ride-share missions. Rocket Lab, on the other hand, distinguishes itself in its speed and integration for low Earth orbit missions.
The ability to offer end-to-end space solutions opens an entirely new space economy for investors to capitalize on. While the Electron rocket handled this mission, Rocket Lab’s upcoming Neutron rocket aims to expand into larger national security and commercial missions.
More than just a record-breaking launchRocket Lab is essentially defining how the combination of vertical integration, rapid execution, and operational expertise is the new competitive advantage. As space turns into the new frontier for national security, the need for responsive space capabilities should continue to grow.
Rocket Lab isn’t just positioning itself as another launch provider competing with SpaceX, but as a fully integrated space and defense systems company. Eventually, the market will value the company as a capable end-to-end space solutions provider that unlocks value for investors.
Two months before the massive $86 billion raise from the Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.58%) IPO, former Apple analyst and co-founder of Deepwater Asset Management Gene Munster said in an investor note that SpaceX was "the only entity in the world building sovereign AI."
That phrasing does not imply that Munster thinks SpaceX's AI will rule everything, but rather that the company is building and owning all the artificial intelligence software and hardware it would require in such a way that essentially no other company could bottleneck its progress.
Munster is bullish on the company for this reason, and he said recently that SpaceX should be a "core tech holding" for investors. So, should investors follow his opinion and buy SpaceX now?
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX is doing something not even Google has pulled off Munster's definition of sovereign AI in SpaceX's case is an infrastructure consisting of its rocket launch capabilities, its Grok AI model, its Starlink satellite broadband service, and its planned Terafab semiconductor foundry. That combination of assets gives SpaceX an AI edge that not even Alphabet can match (since the Google parent can't launch its own orbital data centers into space).
As Munster said in the investor note, Alphabet must rely on the chip manufacturing capabilities of Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor (also known as TSMC), and it doesn't have an in-house rocket launch operation:
Google still relies on external fabrication (Broadcom/TSMC), doesn't own last-mile network delivery, and lacks a launch vehicle to deploy infrastructure off-world.
SpaceX's potential advantage over its AI competitors hinges on a couple of important things, though. First, it will have to achieve its goal of drastically reducing launch costs with its Starship rocket compared to its Falcon rockets. Second, it will have to work out all the complexities of getting a constellation of data center satellites operational in a commercially viable way.
No company has orbital data centers right now, and even with the advantages it has from being able to launch its own rockets to deploy such satellites, there's no guarantee SpaceX will be able to get orbital data centers to work or that they'll be cheap enough to be useful.
What's more, SpaceX has barely broken ground on the Terafab site where it aims to build the semiconductors for its data centers. The idea is that once that foundry is churning out silicon at scale, SpaceX won't have to rely on leading chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor and Broadcom, which have many large customers, and whose production can get bottlenecked when demand is high (as it is now).
The Terafab project will include most of what SpaceX will need for its data centers, including chip design, wafer fabrication, and even memory processors. That latter category of chips is important, as AI software has massive memory demands, and a shortage of memory chips has led to soaring prices.
But SpaceX will still rely on other companies during the Terrafab setup, most notably Intel, which is helping it set up and build its fabrication infrastructure. And even if the Terafab project works well, there's no guarantee that its orbital data center plans will succeed.
For reference, analysts at Morningstar say SpaceX couldn't launch commercially scalable orbital data centers until 2028 at the very earliest, "even in the most optimistic scenario."
Still, Munster argues that if SpaceX can get them to work and they're efficient, no other company will have the AI infrastructure advantage that it will have.
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Even with all of SpaceX's potential, I think it's too early to buy the stock. The biggest reason for this is that SpaceX just went public and will likely remain very volatile for at least the next year.
Jeffries' research over the past 20 years shows that companies that go public with market caps of $10 billion or more average returns of only 3.5% one year after their IPOs.
What's more, SpaceX shares are trading at a hefty premium, with a price-to-sales ratio of 110. The tech sector average is just 9.
Meanwhile, the company is ramping up its spending -- capital expenditures were $10 billion in the first quarter, nearly a third of what SpaceX spent last year. And it incurred nearly $5 billion in losses last year.
The point is that SpaceX stock is expensive, pursuing the company's ambitious goals will be extremely costly, and most mega-IPOs prove disappointing in their first years on the market.
Even if Munster's bull case does eventually pan out, waiting on the sidelines is likely the best move for now. I recommend watching the company over the next year or so to see how well it progresses toward its goals before making a decision on whether or not to buy SpaceX stock.
