{"slug": "spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting", "title": "SpaceX stock has lost half its post-IPO peak value and Wall Street is starting to price its AI business at zero", "summary": "SpaceX stock has fallen nearly 50% from its post-IPO peak of $225.64 to about $113, and Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas estimates the core Starlink and launch business is worth about $136 per share, implying the market is assigning little or no value to SpaceX's AI segment, which posted a $2.47 billion operating loss in Q1 2026 on $818 million in revenue. The selloff follows a mixed Starship test flight and ahead of up to 911.5 million shares becoming tradable after August 4 earnings.", "body_md": "*SpaceX's first public-market stumble is now a test of how much patience investors still have for Elon Musk's biggest capital projects.*\n\nSpaceX came public at $135 a share in June and briefly traded like the market had decided rockets, satellites and AI data centers belonged in one enormous bet. Six weeks later, the stock is near $113. That is the problem. You can forgive a volatile debut when the story is early, but a drop of almost 50% from the June peak forces investors to ask what they actually own at this price.\n\nThe hard facts are no longer flattering. SpaceX said in its June 11 IPO pricing release that it sold 555,555,555 Class A shares at $135 each, with trading set to begin June 12 under the ticker SPCX. The company later said the underwriters exercised their option in full, lifting gross proceeds to about $85.7 billion. According to Nasdaq's own account of the debut, the stock opened at $150 and closed its first session at $160.95. It later reached $225.64. On July 27, Investopedia reported that SpaceX closed at $113.50 after touching $108.66 intraday.\n\nThat is not a normal victory lap.\n\nThe Starship story makes the selloff harder to dismiss as ordinary post-IPO noise. SpaceX scrubbed a Starship V3 launch attempt on July 16 after some Super Heavy booster engines failed to ignite, as Ars Technica and TechCrunch reported at the time. Then the company flew Starship again days later, and the result was mixed in the way public investors hate: the upper stage deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites and splashed down intact in the Indian Ocean, but the booster failed to make a controlled soft splashdown off Texas, according to AP and MarketWatch.\n\nYou don't need to be a rocket engineer to see why that matters. Starship is tied to NASA's Artemis lunar plans, to the larger Starlink V3 buildout, and to SpaceX's pitch that orbital data centers can become a real AI infrastructure business. A successful upper stage helps. A booster recovery failure still leaves the company short of the fast, cheap reusability that supports the valuation.\n\n## The AI value is now the argument\n\nThe numbers tell you why. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas has become the clearest marker for how Wall Street is trying to separate SpaceX's core business from the AI story wrapped around it. Barron's reported that Jonas keeps a $300 target on SpaceX and sees Starlink plus the launch business as worth about $136 a share on their own. At about $100, his math implies the market is giving little or no value to the AI business.\n\nFrankly, that is a useful warning even if you don't buy the target. SpaceX is not being valued only as a launch company. Its AI segment includes xAI, Grok, the X platform and data-center ambitions, according to Forbes' discussion of the company's IPO filings. Forbes also reported that the AI segment had $818 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2026 against $3.29 billion in costs and expenses, producing an operating loss of about $2.47 billion. The connectivity business, driven by Starlink, was the profitable part.\n\nThat split matters more than any slogan about the future. Starlink had 10.3 million customers across 164 countries, Forbes reported, while its average revenue per user fell from $99 a month in 2023 to $66 in the first quarter of 2026. More users and lower revenue per user can still make a good business, but only if the cost base behaves. SpaceX doesn't yet have that luxury in AI, where the spending is already doing the talking.\n\n## August 6 is the next hard date\n\nThe market also has a supply problem coming. Investopedia reported that up to 911.5 million SpaceX shares could become tradable starting August 6 after the company's first earnings report as a public company, scheduled for August 4. That doesn't mean every early holder sells. It does mean you shouldn't pretend the current float tells the whole story.\n\nFor employees and retail investors who bought near $135, the arithmetic is blunt. They are down about 16% from the IPO price based on the July 27 close. Anyone who chased the June high is down almost half. A company can recover from that. Meta did after its bruising 2012 debut. But recovery came after years of proof, not because investors agreed to keep paying for a story.\n\nThe broader IPO market should be watching. Business Insider recently cited Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok's warning that newly listed companies often struggle after IPOs when valuations are high and rates are not forgiving. OpenAI and Anthropic don't need SpaceX to trade perfectly before they list, but they do need investors to believe losses are attached to a business model with visible returns. SpaceX has just reminded everyone how quickly that belief can thin out.\n\nThe average analyst target still sits far above the market price. StockAnalysis.com lists a $236.71 average target and a buy consensus, while Investing.com shows the same average target with more buy ratings than holds or sells. Maybe those analysts are right. But you should notice the shape of the debate: less than two months after the largest IPO ever, Wall Street is no longer arguing about how high SpaceX can fly. It is arguing about whether one of its most promoted businesses is worth anything at today's price.\n\n**Also read:** [Stablecoin supply shrank at its fastest pace since Terra collapsed and volume hit an all-time record in the same month](https://startupfortune.com/stablecoin-supply-shrank-at-its-fastest-pace-since-terra-collapsed-and-volume-hit-an-all-time-record-in-the-same-month/) • [Japan's 7.1 earthquake hits Kumamoto as Asian chip stocks enter correction territory](https://startupfortune.com/japans-71-earthquake-hits-kumamoto-as-asian-chip-stocks-enter-correction-territory/) • [Gold slips to $4,044 as a firm dollar and Fed wait-and-see mode keep bullion in a tight range](https://startupfortune.com/gold-slips-to-4044-as-a-firm-dollar-and-fed-wait-and-see-mode-keep-bullion-in-a-tight-range/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting-to-price-its-ai-business-at-zero/", "published_at": "2026-07-28 13:51:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-28 14:14:24.561929+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-startups", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["SpaceX", "Morgan Stanley", "Adam Jonas", "Starlink", "Starship", "xAI", "Grok", "X"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/spacex-stock-has-lost-half-its-post-ipo-peak-value-and-wall-street-is-starting.jsonld"}}