Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rallied after a multitrillion-dollar IPO last Friday, reaching a peak of over $222 Tuesday morning.
But then, like debris from an exploding Starship rocket, shares started to fall — retreating all the way back to around $200 by the close of the day.
And so far, the news has been no better on Wednesday morning, with shares smashing the $200 floor and sinking all the way to the high $180s by press time.
How investors see that jagged downward red line is a litmus test of their economic worldview. Despite the downturn, the company’s shares are still up roughly 20 percent since trading began on Friday. That’s impressive, but the rocky road since is likely a sign of years of drama to come; it also means that anybody who bought on Tuesday’s high has now experienced a galling short-term loss.
While it’s still far too early to tell if Musk’s space AI behemoth is headed for a prolonged downturn — we’re fully in uncharted and almost purely speculative territory here — its ongoing dip has once again reignited fears that the stock may be massively overvalued. As many critics have pointed out, SpaceX is far from demonstrating a path to profitability, instead burning through billions of dollars per year. The merger with Musk’s AI startup xAI, in particular, has raised eyebrows. The firm’s losses mounted considerably over the last couple years, with SpaceX’s IPO filing showing that the startup had lost a whopping $6.4. billion in 2025 — and that’s without getting into the AI venture’s seemingly endless PR headaches.
Musk’s grand vision for a million-strong megaconstellation of enormous data center satellites has also been met with plenty of skepticism. SpaceX still has to prove that it’s financially feasible — or even practically possible — to run solar-powered data centers in the Earth’s orbit.
If there’s one certainty, it’s that SpaceX’s investors are in for a wild ride, especially as the novelty starts to wear off — at least if the stock performance of Musk’s EV maker Tesla is anything to go by. More on SpaceX: SpaceX Stock Has Now Started to Fall