Postscript after SpaceX's debut: Is a $2.1 trillion market capitalization still worth pursuing?

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Original article | Odaily Odaily( @OdailyChina )

Author｜Golem ( @web3_golem )

On June 12, local time in the United States, Musk did not travel to New York. Before SpaceX's stock (Nasdaq: SPCX) officially listed on Nasdaq, he chose to remain at the company's Texas headquarters, standing among a group of employees to remotely ring the opening bell.

At the ceremony, Musk once again extended SpaceX's story to even greater heights. He stated that the company's goal is to send humans to the Moon, Mars, and even further into interstellar space. After the bell-ringing ceremony, Nasdaq's live stream played Elton John's "Rocketman," adding a romantic touch to this most anticipated IPO in the history of space commercialization.

But the emotional phase ends there, and the battle in the capital markets begins. SpaceX's IPO was priced at $135, opened at $150 on its first day of trading, briefly rose above $176, and finally closed at $160.95, with its market capitalization temporarily fixed at $2.1 trillion.

Skipping $150, its market capitalization reached $2.1 trillion on its first day of trading.

SpaceX's IPO has been the focus of global attention since it filed its IPO application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company ultimately decided to issue approximately 555.6 million Class A common shares at a fixed price of $135, corresponding to a company valuation of $1.77 trillion.

In terms of equity distribution, Musk personally holds approximately 42%, Valor Equity holds approximately 7.3%, Google holds approximately 5%, other early venture capital firms collectively hold 10-12%, and employees and former employees hold 10-15%, while the shares publicly offered in this IPO only account for 4.2%. Although Musk and his surrounding interest groups hold the majority of SpaceX shares, their shares cannot be sold after the listing day. Musk and core investors such as Valor Equity have a 366-day lock-up period, and ordinary IPO shareholders (institutions and employees) will also be subject to a basic lock-up period of 180 days, meaning they cannot sell their shares until at least the end of 2026.

Therefore, on June 12, the day of its listing, the initial circulating shares consisted of only about 555.6 million Class A ordinary shares issued in the IPO. SpaceX is a typical "low circulating, high FDV" project. According to its valuation model, the circulating market value on the first day was about $75 billion, which is close to the amount of funds SpaceX originally planned to raise.

Investors who frequently participate in crypto projects are likely familiar with the high-control model. Therefore, during the subscription phase, market sentiment quickly turned FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Reports indicate that SpaceX received over four times oversubscription, with combined institutional and retail investor demand exceeding $250 billion. Retail investor subscriptions alone surpassed $100 billion, far exceeding the $75 billion offering size. Crypto players naturally participated in this feast, but unfortunately, most ended up with nothing. (Related reading: SpaceX On-Chain IPO Dream Shattered: A Trillion-Dollar IPO Feast, I Only Got 4 Shares )

It is worth noting that SpaceX's unusual plan to allocate up to 30% of its IPO to retail investors significantly lowered the barrier to entry for this tech extravaganza. Typically, such large IPOs only allocate 5% to 10% to retail investors. Although SpaceX ultimately gave only about 20%, it is still twice that of a typical IPO.

The reason for this is that SpaceX management believes retail investors will hold their stock for the long term, just as Tesla's core investor base is largely composed of retail investors. Essentially, they believe retail investors will buy into the dream Musk describes. However, this time, retail investors have proven much more rational than they anticipated. (Detailed explanation below)

Before SPCX officially began trading on Nasdaq, its pre-market price on Hyperliquid fluctuated between $170 and $175, corresponding to a company valuation of over $2.2 trillion. During the Nasdaq's opening auction, SPCX's initial opening price was indeed $172, approximately 29% higher than the IPO price, largely in line with pre-market expectations. However, an hour later, SPCX's opening price quickly fell, ultimately opening at $150, only about 11% higher than the IPO price.

According to Gate.com's US stock market data, SPCX eventually rose to around $176 during the day, ultimately closing at $160.95, a gain of approximately 19% over the IPO price, but only about 7.3% higher than the opening price. Its market capitalization on its first day of trading was $2.1 trillion. In retrospect, SpaceX's first-day performance was undoubtedly a success, making Musk the world's first trillionaire. However, this result was not particularly impressive, and it didn't even meet all market expectations.

In the pre-market pricing of SpaceX, not only did the pre-IPO platforms falter, but market predictions also proved inaccurate. Hours before SpaceX's IPO, the market generally expected its market capitalization to reach over $2.2 trillion, with Polymarket showing a probability of "SpaceX's IPO closing market capitalization exceeding $2.2 trillion" exceeding 65%, even peaking at 70%.

However, as the SPCX price opened relatively low, the probability of the event began to fluctuate wildly, and the SpaceX IPO's closing market capitalization eventually settled at around $2.1 trillion, and the event was declared negative.

Retail investors influence volatility, not price increases.

There is only one reason for this phenomenon: although the market is still willing to believe in SpaceX's narrative and the "Musk premium," SpaceX is still too expensive. As long as there is a good price, even the strongest belief can be sold.

SpaceX is the first mega-cap company in human history to debut on the capital market with a valuation of over a trillion dollars. On its first day of trading, its market capitalization surpassed tech giants like Meta and Samsung, becoming the ninth-largest company in the world by market capitalization. However, even the most avid retail investors know that SpaceX's current revenue simply cannot support its enormous valuation. SpaceX is currently not profitable, with a net loss of $4.9 billion for the full year of 2025 and a net loss of approximately $4.28 billion in Q1 of 2026.

Starlink is currently SpaceX's only profitable business. According to its prospectus, in 2025, Starlink generated $11.387 billion in revenue, accounting for 61% of SpaceX's total revenue, with an operating profit of $4.423 billion. It has over 10.3 million users worldwide and more than 9,600 satellites in orbit. In Q1 of 2026, it generated $3.257 billion in revenue and $1.188 billion in operating profit. However, this "cash cow" business is merely a sideline for SpaceX.

SpaceX's main business is space launches. As of the prospectus, the Falcon series rockets have launched over 650 times with a 99% success rate, and its reusable rocket booster technology has given it a significant cost advantage and technological leadership in the industry. However, SpaceX's largest external customer for its launch business is the US government, and it is still operating at a loss. In 2025, SpaceX's launch business suffered an operating loss of $657 million, a loss rate of 16.1%, and in Q1 2026, the operating loss surged to $662 million, a loss rate of 107%.

The huge losses are due to SpaceX's increased investment in Starship, but given the current technological and application scenario bottlenecks, Starship is still some distance away from true commercial mass production.

Besides these two businesses, SpaceX's still-developing space computing business is also included in its valuation. Compared to the mature Starlink and space launch businesses, Musk's claims about the space computing business are truly exaggerated.

SpaceX's plan, simply put, is to send GPUs into low Earth orbit and use solar power to provide cloud computing power for global AI computing clusters. In SpaceX's prospectus, Musk stated that SpaceX's goal is to deploy 100GW of AI computing capacity into orbit annually. Currently, the global AI industry's annual electricity demand is approximately 15-25GW, meaning that SpaceX's planned orbital computing system is theoretically sufficient to support an expansion of the global AI industry by about five times.

In case readers are unfamiliar with the concept of 100GW, the Three Gorges Dam currently has an installed capacity of approximately 22.5GW. This means that the scale of one of Musk's planned space computing centers is equivalent to 4.4 Three Gorges Dams operating at full capacity.

Furthermore, SpaceX explicitly stated in its prospectus that its future businesses (primarily AI-related) are expected to tap into a potential market of $28.5 trillion. To put this in perspective, China, currently the world's second-largest economy, is projected to have a nominal GDP of approximately $19.4 trillion in 2025. SpaceX's figure is equivalent to 1.47 times China's nominal GDP in 2025.

Reading this, you might wonder if it's an IPO prospectus or a science fiction story. Even the most FOMO-driven investors would have to cool down after seeing these numbers. Research firm CFRA gave SpaceX a "sell" rating after its IPO, with a target price of $115.

Besides the discrepancy between actual business performance and valuation, the excessively high proportion of retail investors in the IPO may also be a reason for the suppressed stock price of SPCX. Musk released 20-30% of SpaceX's IPO shares to retail investors. The higher the proportion of retail ownership, the greater the volatility. Retail investors can buy indiscriminately due to FOMO (fear of missing out), and they can also sell impulsively at the slightest fluctuation. Therefore, retail investors truly influence volatility, not the final price increase.

The next important time point in the game

Of course, whether you are about to go short or have already cashed out, the following three time points are particularly important for investors who are following SpaceX.

Approximately 15 trading days after the IPO (expected around July 6th-July 7th).

This is a crucial timeline because SpaceX is expected to be included in the Nasdaq 100 index directly after 15 trading days. In March, Nasdaq specifically amended its rules, previously requiring newly listed companies to wait three months to qualify for index inclusion, but now allowing for rapid inclusion after only 15 trading days of listing if certain conditions are met, and also removing the minimum 10% free float restriction. These new rules seem tailor-made for SpaceX and a host of other AI technology giants to follow.

If SpaceX is successfully included in an index, it means that over ten billion dollars globally will be passively invested in SpaceX stock, significantly supporting its share price. So, if it's known that SpaceX has a very high probability of being included in the Nasdaq in July, and top funds will be buying the stock, would you, as an investor, choose to buy now and then sell it to them at a higher price later?

On the other hand, some US pension funds and long-term insurance funds have already expressed their protests. In May 2026, three of the largest public pension fund management institutions in the United States (managing assets exceeding $1 trillion) jointly wrote to Musk, expressing concerns about the passive fund risks that might arise from the rapid inclusion of the company in indices after the IPO. In the same month, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (representing approximately 1.8 million teachers, healthcare workers, and public sector employees), wrote directly to the SEC, requesting a special review of SpaceX's IPO.

SpaceX Q2 financial report to be released (mid-August).

The second important timeframe is the release of SpaceX's Q2 2026 financial report in August. This will be SpaceX's first earnings report since its IPO. If the business shows no progress compared to its current state (and significant progress is unrealistic), its stock price may face further pressure. SpaceX's prospectus also stipulates that two days after the company releases its Q2 2026 financial report, eligible internal shareholders (employees, former employees, and some early investors) can sell a portion of their locked shares, up to a maximum of 20%. If the stock price rises by 30% from the IPO price at that time, and this criterion is met for 5 out of 10 trading days, an additional 10% can be unlocked.

This means that in August, the market will not only face the financial volatility brought about by SpaceX, but also the first large-scale unlocking of shares since its listing, presenting a huge challenge.