SpaceX had one of the most turbulent stock debuts in recent memory, and the volatility is far from over.
After pricing its initial public offering at $135 per share earlier this month in what became the largest IPO in history, the stock rocketed 67% to an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16 before pulling back sharply. By Friday, shares had settled at $153.23, still well above the offering price but well below the peak, leaving investors to debate whether what remains is a bargain or a warning.
The company raised $75 billion in the offering, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion. Trading under the ticker SPCX, the listing allocated an unusually large share of up to 30% to retail investors and combined SpaceX’s launch services, its Starlink satellite internet division and the AI infrastructure assets absorbed through its early 2026 merger with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI.
SpaceX enters Nasdaq 100 as index funds are forced to buy
The next catalyst for the stock is already on the calendar. Nasdaq confirmed that SpaceX will be added to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index on July 7, a move that will require large passively managed funds tracking that benchmark, including the widely held Invesco QQQ ETF, to purchase shares whether their managers want to or not.
That process began Friday, when FTSE Russell added SpaceX to its Russell U.S. indexes as part of its semi-annual reconstitution. Funds tracking those benchmarks were required to hold SpaceX shares before Monday’s session opened. Traders exchanged roughly $19 billion worth of SpaceX shares on Friday, with nearly half of that volume concentrated in the final minutes of trading as funds rushed to minimize the gap between their performance and the index they track.
J.P. Morgan estimated that the Nasdaq 100 inclusion alone could draw $4.3 billion in additional passive inflows into the stock.
The SpaceX valuation question no one can fully answer
Even after its post-peak decline, SpaceX is trading at roughly 107 times its 2025 revenue, a figure that stands in sharp contrast to the broader technology sector. Nvidia, the dominant force in artificial intelligence chips and itself a company with an enormous valuation, recently traded at around 21 times sales. SpaceX is trading at more than five times that multiple.
The company lost $4.9 billion in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, the net loss reached $4.28 billion. Starlink remains the only division generating consistent profit. The Starship rocket program, central to SpaceX’s long-term ambitions, remains grounded pending Federal Aviation Administration review following a test flight incident.
SpaceX’s total market capitalization now sits at around $2 trillion, placing it in the same range as Amazon. The distinction that complicates that comparison is that only roughly $100 billion of its shares are available for public trading. The rest are held by Musk, company insiders and employees, which limits the float and amplifies price movements in either direction.
Why the S&P 500 door remains closed for SpaceX
Despite its size and profile, SpaceX will not be joining the S&P 500. S&P Global confirmed this month that it would not alter its inclusion criteria to accommodate large IPOs, leaving SpaceX on the outside of the index that most institutional investors use as their primary benchmark.
To qualify for S&P 500 membership, a company must show a profit in its most recent quarter and across the sum of its four most recent quarters. SpaceX meets neither condition. That exclusion limits the universe of funds that are required to hold it and removes one of the most powerful automatic buying mechanisms available to any newly public company.
What SpaceX is actually selling investors
The investment case for SpaceX rests less on current financials and more on a projected future. The company’s filings describe a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion spanning satellite internet connectivity, commercial space launch services and AI computing infrastructure. The xAI merger added a major compute contract, a reported $1.25 billion per month agreement with Anthropic, to its revenue base and repositioned the company from a space operator to something closer to a diversified technology enterprise.
Whether that repositioning justifies a valuation that dwarfs nearly every company on earth is the question investors are still working through. Musk retains majority voting control and has agreed to hold his shares for 366 days after the listing, meaning the man most responsible for the company’s direction is not going anywhere soon.
For passive funds, the decision has already been made for them. For everyone else, the debate over what SpaceX is actually worth is just getting started.
