It launched with more fanfare than anything Wall Street had seen in years. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, priced at $135, and within days had shot to an intraday peak of $225.64. The market cap briefly crossed $2.25 trillion. Elon Musk briefly became the world’s first trillionaire.
Then the air started coming out.
As of July 9, SPCX is trading around $153 — more than 32% off that June high, and hovering just above its IPO opening price. The stock hit an all-time low of $145.20 on July 8. Morgan Stanley initiated with an Overweight rating and a $300 price target. The stock dropped 7% the same week those initiations hit. That’s the kind of disconnect that makes you pay attention.
So what’s actually going on here?
Part of it is mechanical. SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, triggering an estimated $5.4 billion in passive buying from index-tracking funds — into a public float that started around ~5% of the company’s market cap. Most of that forced buying was front-run and already priced in by the time the inclusion went live. Classic buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news. The pattern isn’t new.
The deeper question is whether the business justifies any of these numbers.
SpaceX raised about $75 billion at pricing — and approximately $85.7 billion after underwriters fully exercised the over-allotment option. The company reported $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 — up 33% from the prior year — and posted a net loss close to $5 billion. That puts the stock at roughly 100 times trailing sales at current prices. Even the bulls acknowledge that’s a lot to ask the fundamentals to grow into.
What they’re buying isn’t just the rockets. On February 2, 2026, SpaceX completed its acquisition of xAI. Starlink just crossed about 10.3 million subscribers — roughly double the ~5.0 million it reported for 2025.
The TAM SpaceX cites in its IPO filing is $28.5 trillion, with AI accounting for most of it. SpaceX has disclosed a major compute deal with Anthropic that includes payments of $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, which the companies have described publicly as part of a broader partnership that also contemplates potential orbital compute capacity. When that deal fully flows through reported results, it may reset how analysts think about the revenue trajectory.
Still. The valuation is the conversation you can’t avoid. At over $2 trillion market cap on roughly $19 billion in trailing revenue, SpaceX needs to accelerate growth significantly just to justify where it currently sits — let alone where Morgan Stanley’s $300 target implies it’s going.
The next real catalyst is August 6. That’s when SpaceX reports its first quarterly earnings as a public company. It’s also when the earliest lock-up release window begins: SpaceX’s prospectus outlines staggered lock-up terms, including an early release for certain shares starting after Q2 2026 earnings. The supply-demand math shifts meaningfully on that date. That’s why every analyst, trader, and retail investor with a position is watching it closely.
Slight tangent, but it matters: this isn’t just a SpaceX story. The company’s IPO was explicitly framed as the first of a wave of AI-related public offerings. Goldman Sachs called the SpaceX debut a proof of concept — evidence that capital markets are willing to finance the AI buildout at scale. How SPCX handles its first earnings cycle may set the tone for everything that follows it.
There’s a credible bull case here. There’s also a credible bear case. What’s certain is that the market is still figuring out the right price for a company this ambitious, this early-stage in its public life, and this expensive on any conventional metric.
August 6 is where the story starts to sharpen.
Disclaimer: This editorial is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All figures are sourced from publicly available financial data and analyst reports. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing in equities involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.
