Written after SpaceX's debut: Is a $2.1 trillion market cap still worth chasing?

Original by Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Golem (@web3_golem)

On June 12, local time in the US, Elon Musk did not go to New York. Before SpaceX stock (Nasdaq: SPCX) officially began trading on Nasdaq, he chose to stay at the company's Texas headquarters, standing among his employees to complete a remote bell-ringing ceremony.

During the ceremony, Musk once again extended the narrative around SpaceX further into the cosmos. He stated that the company's goal is to send humans to the Moon, Mars, and even more distant stars. After the bell-ringing, Nasdaq's live channel played Elton John's "Rocketman," adding a romantic footnote to this most anticipated IPO in the history of space commercialization.

But that was the end of the sentimentality; the game of capital markets began immediately afterward. The SpaceX IPO was priced at $135. On its first trading day, it opened at $150, briefly surged past $176 during the session, and eventually closed at $160.95, with its market capitalization tentatively fixed at $2.1 trillion.

Opened at $150, First-Day Market Cap Settles at $2.1 Trillion

SpaceX’s IPO was a global focal point from the moment it filed its registration statement with the SEC. The company ultimately decided to issue approximately 555.6 million shares of Class A common stock at a fixed price of $135, corresponding to a company valuation of $1.77 trillion.

Regarding equity distribution, Musk personally holds approximately 42%, Valor Equity holds about 7.3%, Google holds about 5%, other early venture capital firms collectively hold 10-12%, employees and former employees hold another 10-15%, and the shares publicly offered in this IPO account for only 4.2%. Although Musk and his affiliated interests hold the majority of SpaceX shares, none of them can be sold on the first day of listing. The lock-up period for core investors like Musk and Valor Equity is 366 days, while ordinary IPO shareholders (institutions and employees) face a base lock-up period of 180 days, meaning they cannot sell until at least the end of 2026.

Therefore, on the listing day of June 12, the initial tradable float consisted solely of the approximately 555.6 million Class A common shares from the public IPO offering. SpaceX is a typical "low float, high FDV" project. According to its valuation model, the first-day circulating market cap was about $75 billion, closely aligning with SpaceX’s initially planned fundraising amount.

Investors familiar with the crypto space may not be strangers to high-concentration models. Consequently, during the subscription phase, market sentiment quickly descended into FOMO. Reports indicate SpaceX received over four times oversubscription, with total subscription demand from institutions and retail investors exceeding $250 billion. Retail investors alone submitted over $100 billion in subscriptions, far exceeding the $75 billion offering size. Crypto players naturally participated in this feast, but unfortunately, most came away empty-handed. (Related reading: SpaceX On-Chain Subscription Dream Shattered: In a Trillion-Dollar IPO Feast, I Only Got 4 Shares)

Notably, SpaceX unusually planned to allocate up to 30% of its IPO shares to retail investors, significantly lowering the barrier to participate in this tech feast. Typically, such large IPO projects only allocate 5% to 10% to retail investors. Although SpaceX ultimately gave around 20%, it was still double the conventional IPO allocation.

The rationale behind this is that SpaceX management believes retail investors will hold their shares long-term, much like Tesla’s core investor base today largely consists of retail investors. Essentially, they trusted that retail investors would buy into Musk’s vision. However, this time, retail investors proved more rational than anticipated. (Detailed explanation below.)

Before SPCX officially began trading on Nasdaq, the pre-market quote for SPCX on Hyperliquid fluctuated between $170 and $175, corresponding to a company valuation exceeding $2.2 trillion. During the Nasdaq call auction phase before the official open, the indicative opening price for SPCX was initially quoted at $172, up about 29% from the IPO price, largely matching pre-market expectations. However, one hour later, the indicative opening price rapidly declined, ultimately opening at a price of $150, an increase of only about 11% from the IPO price.

According to Gate's US stock data, SPCX eventually rose to around $176 during the trading session, finally closing at $160.95, up about 19% from the IPO price but only about 7.3% from the opening price. Its first-day market cap settled at $2.1 trillion. From the results, SpaceX's debut was absolutely a success, making Musk the world's first trillionaire. However, the outcome was not spectacular, and it even failed to meet the full market expectations.

In the run-up to SpaceX's pricing, not only did Pre-IPO platforms frequently stumble, but prediction market results also deviated significantly.

In the hours before the SpaceX IPO listing, the market generally expected its market cap to exceed $2.2 trillion. The probability of "SpaceX IPO closing market cap above $2.2 trillion" on Polymarket was still above 65%, briefly surging to 70%.

However, as SPCX's price opened "relatively low," this event probability began to fluctuate wildly. Ultimately, SpaceX's IPO closing market cap settled around $2.1 trillion, and the event was resolved as "No."

Retail Affects Volatility, Not Gains

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 simply too expensive. Given a good price, even the strongest convictions can be sold off.

SpaceX is the first supergiant in human history to land directly in the capital market with a "trillion-dollar valuation." On its first trading day, its market cap surpassed tech giants like Meta and Samsung to become the world's ninth-largest company. But even the most frenzied retail investors know that SpaceX's current revenue cannot support its massive valuation. SpaceX has yet to achieve profitability, posting a net loss of $4.9 billion for the full year 2025 and a net loss of approximately $4.28 billion in Q1 2026.

Starlink is SpaceX's only currently profitable business. Prospectus data shows that for the full year 2025, Starlink generated revenue of $11.387 billion, accounting for 61% of SpaceX's total revenue, with an operating profit of $4.423 billion. It has over 10.3 million global users and more than 9,600 satellites in orbit. In Q1 2026, Starlink achieved revenue of $3.257 billion and an operating profit of $1.188 billion. However, this "cash cow" business is merely SpaceX's side hustle.

Space launch remains SpaceX's main calling card. As of the prospectus disclosure, the Falcon rocket family has completed over 650 launches with a success rate of 99%. Its reusable rocket booster technology provides a significant cost advantage and technological leadership within the industry. However, SpaceX's largest external launch customer is the US government, and this business segment is still loss-making. In 2025, the launch business recorded an operating loss of $657 million, with a loss rate of 16.1%. In Q1 2026, the operating loss soared to $662 million, with a loss rate of 107%.

The massive losses stem from SpaceX's increased investment in Starship. However, based on current technological and use-case bottlenecks, true commercial mass production for Starship remains some distance away.

Beyond these two businesses, SpaceX's still unproven space computing business also factors into its valuation framework. Compared to the mature Starlink and launch businesses, Musk's claims regarding the space computing venture seem somewhat overblown.

Simply put, SpaceX's plan involves sending GPUs into low Earth orbit, using solar power to provide cloud computing power for global AI compute clusters. In the SpaceX prospectus, Musk stated that SpaceX's goal is to deploy 100GW of AI computing capacity into orbit annually. The current annual electricity demand of the global AI industry is roughly on the order of 15-25GW. This means SpaceX's planned orbital computing system could theoretically support an expansion of today's global AI industry scale by about 5 times.

Lest readers are unaware of what 100GW represents – the installed capacity of the Three Gorges Dam is approximately 22.5GW. This means the scale of a single space computing center in Musk's plan would be equivalent to 4.4 fully operational Three Gorges Dams.

Furthermore, in the prospectus, SpaceX explicitly stated that it expects the potential market (primarily AI-related businesses) to reach a staggering $28.5 trillion in the future. To put this in perspective, China, currently the world's second-largest economy, had a nominal GDP of approximately $19.4 trillion in 2025. The figure SpaceX proposes is equivalent to about 1.47 times China's nominal GDP in 2025.

Reading this, one wonders whether this is an IPO prospectus or a science fiction story. Even the most FOMO-driven investors would need to cool down after seeing these figures. Research firm CFRA issued a "Sell" rating on SpaceX shortly after its listing, setting a target price of $115.

Beyond the mismatch between actual business and valuation, the excessively large retail IPO allocation might be another reason suppressing SPCX's stock price. Musk allocated 20-30% of the IPO shares to retail investors. A larger proportion of retail shareholding inherently implies greater volatility. Retail investors can buy relentlessly due to FOMO but can also sell emotionally at the slightest fluctuation. Therefore, retail truly impacts volatility, not the ultimate gains.

Key Future Game Points

Of course, whether you are on the sidelines watching or have already cashed out, the following two time points are particularly crucial for investors focused on SpaceX.

Approximately 15 Trading Days Post-IPO (Estimated around July 6 - July 7)

This is the most important time node, as SpaceX is expected to be directly added to the Nasdaq 100 index after 15 trading days. In March, Nasdaq specifically modified its rules. Previously, newly listed companies had to wait 3 months to be eligible for index inclusion. Now, they can be rapidly included after just 15 trading days of meeting the conditions, and the previous restriction of a minimum ~10% public float has also been removed. These new rules seem tailor-made for SpaceX and the subsequent wave of AI tech giants.

If SpaceX successfully joins the index, it means tens of billions of dollars in global funds will be forced to buy SpaceX stock, providing significant support for its share price. So, if it's known that SpaceX has a very high probability of being included in the Nasdaq index in July, and top-tier funds will then have to buy this stock, as an investor, would you choose to buy in now and sell to them at a higher price later?

On the other hand, some US pension funds and long-term insurance funds have already voiced protests. In May 2026, three of the largest US public pension fund managers (with over $1 trillion in assets under management) jointly wrote to Musk expressing concerns about the passive capital risks from rapid post-IPO index inclusion. That same month, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (representing approximately 1.8 million teachers, healthcare workers, and public employees), directly wrote to the SEC requesting a special review of the SpaceX IPO.

SpaceX Q2 Earnings Report (Mid-to-Early August)

The second important time point is the release of SpaceX's Q2 2026 earnings report in August. This will be SpaceX's first performance report card since listing. If there is still no progress in the business compared to the current situation (realistically, major progress is unlikely), its stock price may face further pressure. Furthermore, the SpaceX prospectus also stipulates that two days after the company announces its Q2 2026 earnings report, eligible internal shareholders (employees, former employees, some early investors) can sell a portion of their locked-up shares, up to a maximum of 20% of their locked shares. If the stock price is 30% above the IPO price, meeting this standard for 5 out of 10 trading days, an additional 10% can be unlocked.

This means that in August, the market will not only have to contend with earnings volatility from SpaceX but also face the first major stock unlock since its listing, presenting a significant challenge.

Ultimately, whether we will "suffocate" for Musk's dream is yet to be seen. At least from the first day's performance, while the market chose to believe the story, it did not completely lose its senses. What determines SpaceX's fate next is its own actual performance.

Recommended Reading:

SpaceX On-Chain Subscription Dream Shattered: In a Trillion-Dollar IPO Feast, I Only Got 4 Shares