SpaceX IPO临近：一场藏在指数基金里的世纪收割
Original title: The SpaceX IPO Will Be the Theft of the Century
Original author: Lawrence Fossi
Original compilation: Peggy, BlockBeats
Editor's note: In the author's view, the SpaceX IPO is not an inspiring story of a "commercial space giant entering the public market," but a meticulously designed wealth transfer. The article first questions SpaceX's core valuation foundation: whether it's the heavier Starlink satellites, orbital data centers, NASA's Artemis mission, or the lunar and Mars colonization narrative, almost everything depends on a much more mature version of Starship than what currently exists. However, in the author's opinion, the technological realization of Starship remains highly uncertain, and the xAI and data center stories have also failed to truly support its massive valuation.
The sharper part lies in the financial structure. The author argues that adjustments by Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and FTSE Russell to their index inclusion rules could allow SpaceX to quickly enter major indices with low free float, forcing massive passive index funds to buy in at high valuations. This provides an exit window for early private investors, insiders, and long-term capital providers, while ordinary 401(k) and IRA retirement account investors passively assume the risk. This is what the article calls the "Rikishi moment" (where index funds, once hailed as a blessing for ordinary investors, are publicly humiliated and degraded in an absurd scenario): low-fee index funds, originally John Bogle's market tool for the average person, could become a channel for capital exits and risk transfer due to rule rewrites.
The article further points out that even if the IPO succeeds, SpaceX may still face a huge funding gap, continuous dilutive financing, lack of governance rights, and mandatory arbitration. Its impact won't be limited to SpaceX itself: this IPO could shock stock and crypto market liquidity, serve as a stress test for the AI bubble, and potentially damage the long-established trust in index funds. The author's conclusion is not to recommend shorting SpaceX, but to remind investors: when Musk-style narratives, passive index funds, and market frenzy intertwine, the most dangerous thing is often not that the story isn't big enough, but that ordinary people simply have no right to choose not to participate.
Below is the original text:
As the SpaceX IPO approaches, here are a few observations and predictions:
1. From a Business Perspective, SpaceX Will Face a Devastating Failure
Substantively, SpaceX's entire valuation logic is built on the Starship project. And by "Starship," I mean a version far more powerful than what we've seen so far.
· Launching the heavier V3 Starlink satellites requires Starship.
· Making these launches—and other launch services for third parties—more economical requires a reusable Starship.
· The promised orbital data centers require Starship.
· Fulfilling SpaceX's obligations to NASA's Artemis program requires Starship.
· Any lunar or Mars colony also requires Starship. The SpaceX IPO registration document even predicts "new trillion-dollar markets on the Moon, Mars, and beyond."
But the problem is that Starlink satellites orbit at about 300 miles above Earth, while the highest altitude Starship has ever reached—most recently in the Version 3 launch, where both the booster and upper stage were lost—was only 121 miles. From 121 miles to 300 miles, there's still a long way to go, requiring a huge amount of extra fuel. Will Lockett has calculated why, in his words, the Version 3 Starship is actually "useless."
And this doesn't even touch on the near-physical impossibility of orbital data centers or the extremely low probability of Starship completing the cryogenic propellant transfer mission for Artemis III.
(I've used this analogy before, but I love it too much not to use it again.)
Of course, you might think that even without orbital data centers, xAI is the real key to SpaceX's ultimate success. If you think so, I suggest you check out the facts discussed by Patrick Boyle in this YouTube video (starting at 10:25). As Boyle points out: this company's (xAI) AI products account for 93% of SpaceX's claimed addressable market, but its flagship product, Grok, isn't even used by its own engineers. And it's trying to spend $60 billion to acquire competitor Cursor just to make its product actually work.
As for the heavily publicized $15 billion annual contract with Anthropic, Boyle raises an obvious question: xAI is essentially renting out computing power and hardware from its Colossus and Colossus II data centers to its competitor, Anthropic. This strongly suggests that xAI currently cannot fully utilize its own data center capacity. (Boyle also raises a less obvious point: Anthropic can cancel this three-year agreement at any time with just 90 days' notice.)
However, it will take some time for all these hard facts to fully surface. How long? Two years? One year? Maybe less?
But one thing, unfortunately, I am quite certain about: before these facts are fully exposed, the various private investors who have funded SpaceX over the past two decades have ample opportunity to offload their shares at huge profits to unsuspecting public investors.
2. As a Wealth Transfer Machine, SpaceX Will Be Astonishingly Successful
A series of rule changes by Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and FTSE Russell almost guarantee that the SpaceX IPO will greatly enrich SpaceX insiders while plundering ordinary retirement investors who naively put their 401(k) and IRA savings into broad-based index funds.
A. Nasdaq Fired the First Shot in This Shameful Parade
As early as March 10, when rumors about the SpaceX IPO were still in their early stages, the author of the Substack column "Keubiko's Musings" published a prescient article titled "The Nasdaq Shame," with the subtitle: "How to Manipulate an Index to Please a Billionaire."
Nasdaq not only eliminated the so-called "listing maturity" requirement, allowing SpaceX to enter its index just 15 days after the IPO, but it also changed how low-float stocks are weighted in the Nasdaq 100 Index.
SpaceX will be a stock with an extremely low free float—only 5% of shares available for sale. Yet Nasdaq will calculate its weight as if the free float is 15% of total shares outstanding. According to Keubiko: the index is assigning a fictitious, multi-ten-billion-dollar weight to a restricted, tightly controlled float. Hundreds of billions of dollars in price-insensitive passive capital will be legally required to buy this stock en masse in just a few days. You are essentially forcing a fire hydrant of massive index capital into a garden hose of real liquidity. This is a recipe for creating a huge, artificial supply-demand squeeze.
Oh, but it gets worse. Much worse. As Keubiko writes, the math here will become "truly brutal."
Once the insiders' 180-day lockup period ends and SpaceX's free float exceeds 20%, Nasdaq will calculate the stock's weight based on 100% of total shares outstanding.
Of course, Musk has perfectly timed the lockup expiry to coincide with Nasdaq's mid-December index rebalancing. Once again, Keubiko writes: Index funds will be forced by rules to buy tens of billions of dollars more of this stock precisely when insiders can dump huge amounts of unlocked shares onto the market. Are you starting to feel your liver being squeezed into foie gras?
Since Keubiko first sounded the alarm in that article, many financial journalists and market experts have realized what's happening. Now you can find numerous articles describing how Nasdaq, by rewriting rules, ensures that millions of passive investors—ordinary people who put their retirement savings into broad-based index funds—are forced to buy SpaceX stock at absurd valuations.
B. Other Major Indices Joined the Parade
In this race to the bottom, the S&P 500 has also amended its rules to fast-track index inclusion and no longer requires companies to demonstrate sustained profitability.
Predictably, FTSE Russell soon followed suit.
C. The "Rikishi Moment"
Phil Bak recently gained significant attention with his excellent Substack article, "The Rikishi Moment." The title comes from a profound humiliation suffered by the late, great baseball player Pete Rose—a man who was both great and deeply flawed.
Bak knows well that Vanguard's John Bogle, the inventor of the low-fee index fund, gave ordinary investors a precious gift. But what was once an extremely beneficial market tool has, in the hands of cynics and unscrupulous actors, become an evil instrument. Bak writes: John Bogle is no longer with us. I can only imagine how he would view what is happening to index funds today. I can only imagine his equally sorrowful eyes. I can only imagine him, with the same dazed, weary acceptance, watching his great invention, which once stood so high, fall into the sewer of fraud.
D. Who Will Benefit from This Theft?
This seems too easy to answer, doesn't it? Of course, Elon Musk and his long-time enablers, like Antonio Gracias, Steve Jurvetson, and Ira Ehrenpreis.
But the beneficiaries extend far beyond Musk's inner circle. As the excellent Rupert Mitchell (author of Blind Squirrel Macro) said on a recent podcast: Over the past 20 years, virtually everyone who is anyone has had the opportunity to buy SpaceX—and did buy it. Trust me, everyone holds it. There's no sovereign wealth fund, no institution, no mutual fund, no private equity firm, no crossover hedge fund that hasn't heavily owned this stock—and they all bought it at prices far below what the IPO is offering to the public.
Unsurprisingly, guess who else we can add to Rupert's list:
3. What Happens After the Thieves Flee the Scene?
This is easy to answer: disappointing business performance (see Part 1) and endless equity dilution.
Even including the "greenshoe option," the SpaceX IPO can raise at most about $85 billion. But a close reading of its registration document—done by Greg Collins of Cape Fear Advisors—reveals that by 2030, SpaceX's capital needs will reach approximately $235 billion.
If we assume SpaceX raises $85 billion from the IPO and uses $20 billion to repay debt, there will still be a $170 billion funding gap. (Collins expects a smaller raise and a larger gap, but regardless, it's a huge gap.)
Of course, one obvious solution is to drain Tesla's cash reserves—whether through a merger or by further forcing Tesla to invest in SpaceX. But Tesla's cash is far from enough to fill the SpaceX furnace.
The future will be—and even the S-1 document has already foretold it—endless dilutive financing. Buried deep in the amended S-1 is this warning: We may issue a significant amount of equity in the future for related transactions.
Even this statement could be misleading. Not the part about "issuing a significant amount of equity in the future"; that will almost certainly happen.
The problem is: are these issuances really for "future transactions"? Elon, aren't you really trying to say: to fulfill the transactions that SpaceX has already committed to in the S-1 document?
As for any potentially misleading statements or false information in the registration document, and any current or future misconduct by Musk and other executives and directors, aggrieved investors will have almost no recourse.
SpaceX shareholders will be forced into mandatory arbitration. They will have no meaningful voting rights. Governance disputes will be adjudicated by a brand-new Texas commercial court, presided over by Musk-friendly judges—and without a jury.
4. Final Thoughts
The following thoughts are in no particular order. Also, remember that the only law Elon Musk can't get away with breaking is the Law of Unintended Consequences.
A. This Could All Collapse
The SpaceX IPO could face a catastrophic failure from the start, or it could even be delayed or canceled. The reason is simple: there might be too many shares eagerly looking for buyers, and not enough capital in the market to absorb them.
Rupert Mitchell and Ben Brey discussed these possibilities in a highly informative written report and subsequent podcast.
B. It Could Shock Stock and Crypto Markets
SpaceX is offering an unprecedented 30% of its issuance to retail investors, who must source cash from somewhere.
Therefore, this IPO could trigger large-scale, disruptive selling. The most obvious candidates are stocks and crypto assets, as those wanting to participate would need to sell other holdings to raise cash. In fact, the downward pressure on Bitcoin's price in recent weeks might partially stem from such selling. (Michael Saylor's recent moves have only added fuel to this fire.)
C. It Could Burst the AI Bubble
Chris Irons of Quoth The Raven believes the SpaceX IPO will serve as a market referendum, testing whether the AI investment bubble can continue to inflate.
If SpaceX successfully lists with overwhelming demand, it would signal that despite all the red flags, investors are willing to voluntarily suspend traditional investment discipline and continue believing the story. But if the result is disappointing, it could mark the beginning of the end for this investment cycle.
(In a recent podcast with Adam Taggart, Chris described today's financial markets as "a digital casino on cocaine.")
D. It Could Permanently Damage the Popularity of Index Funds
For decades, index funds have offered ordinary people—those without complex financial knowledge but needing to invest for retirement—broad market exposure at very low fees.
But the SpaceX IPO is a massive trap for these ordinary people. If what I foresee happens, they will be forced to buy at artificially inflated prices, only to watch their purchased assets inevitably depreciate.
This could leave a sufficiently serious stain on index funds that 401(k) plan sponsors and administrators, as well as financial advisors more broadly, might no longer recommend them as suitable investment tools.
E. Don't Try to Short SpaceX!!
Elon Musk is a figure with a cult-like following. More importantly, he has repeatedly proven immune to almost any truly effective market, legal, or regulatory scrutiny.
Musk's critics are right about many things: Tesla's poor fundamentals, the lies about full self-driving, the Robotaxi fantasy, the shaky accounting. But when they thought these issues would affect the stock price, they were wrong.
Someday, somewhere, someone will make a lot of money shorting Tesla or SpaceX. But that person almost certainly won't be you.
At least for now, the best way to understand Tesla is not as a financial investment, but as a religion. Today, SpaceX can be added to that category.
So my advice is: Stay away from it. Tend your garden. Play with your kids. Read a good book. Listen to some great classical music. Here's a recording I recently heard and highly recommend.
