SpaceX shares closed Wall Street’s session yesterday at $148.30, down 0.78% and below the $150 level at which they debuted on the Nasdaq 100 index in Tuesday’s July 7, 2026 session — the second consecutive session below that threshold.
After spiking as high as $201.80 on June 16, the stock has pulled back sharply, though it is still trading above the $135 placement price at which it landed on the Nasdaq via its June 12 IPO.
The fever around the stock has clearly cooled compared with the euphoria of the first few days, vindicating several analysts who had already warned — even before the IPO — that the market’s valuation of the aerospace group looked excessive from the start. Is the speculative bubble some analysts feared now actually bursting?
To be fair, in premarket trading the SPCX stock is showing a positive trend, up more than 1% and back above the $150 mark. Still, over the last five trading sessions the stock has lost more than 8.5%.
SpaceX: watch out for AI’s real cost. “I won’t buy SPCX shares, for myself or my clients”
Money.it spoke to several experts who have never hidden their skepticism about the stock’s initially stellar performance, and who point out there was never solid ground for treating SpaceX as a thermometer for sentiment toward AI stocks.
Bryan Byrer, founder of investment advisory firm Millennial Financial Planning, noted that a third of SpaceX’s revenue depends on contracts awarded by the US federal government — a dependency on the priorities of Washington and the Trump administration, meaning any policy shift could significantly hurt the stock’s trajectory.
Byrer also stressed that **the “real cost of AI” SpaceX has to bear is probably higher than investors realize**.
The manager said he has no intention of buying SpaceX shares, either for himself or for “my clients,” explaining that he wants to wait for future earnings calls and the release of financial disclosures first.
He also dismissed the idea that SpaceX’s IPO amounts to some kind of moment of truth for AI stocks, arguing that label fits better with other Wall Street listings still to come — namely OpenAI and Anthropic — which would more directly reflect the market’s view of companies actually operating in artificial intelligence.
The expert also pointed out that xAI, the AI company also founded by Elon Musk whose acquisition is what got SpaceX classified as an AI stock in the first place, is actually “a drag weighing on the rest of the company, and is on track to lose $10 billion in 2026.”
The real test for SpaceX, according to one expert
Caution also came from Jay Hurst, a US entrepreneur and finance expert who is a veteran of the mortgage industry, best known as co-founder of Hurst Lending & Insurance and co-owner/co-founder of the new Ribbon Home division.
Hurst told Money.it that, in the days immediately before the IPO, he had already decided he would wait before taking a position in SpaceX stock. In his words:
«When an offering reaches this size, the first-day price mostly reflects demand generated during the placement process and strong media momentum, rather than the company’s intrinsic value. It’s a dynamic I’ve observed many times and it no longer surprises me. My evaluation horizon is generally around 90 days. Within that window the initial enthusiasm tends to fade, the effects of the lock-up expiration start to show, and the first post-IPO financial disclosures come out — finally giving investors something concrete to base an analysis on.»
But isn’t the prospectus itself supposed to be enough to give investors a clear picture of a company’s condition? Not quite, Hurst noted, since a prospectus is “by its nature a document built to present investors with what the company wants them to hear.”
**It is the first quarterly report filed after the IPO that represents the real first test** of a company’s actual state and the quality of its fundamentals, he added.
Did the IPO price already bake in a too-perfect scenario?
While acknowledging that “SpaceX is no longer just an aerospace company” but rather “an integrated infrastructure platform, enabled by space technologies,” independent finance and technology consultant Francisco Matilla Serrano was quick to add that, in his view, “a more reasonable valuation should have landed in the $1.2 to $1.4 trillion range” — compared with the $1.77 trillion valuation implied by the IPO placement price.
To justify a valuation above that range, Serrano continued, “the company would have needed to provide particularly solid financial disclosure on Starlink’s margins, the unit economics of the space-launch business, free cash flow generation, and the expected profitability of future investments in AI infrastructure.”
Even before the IPO, Matilla Serrano had warned that “the risk the market is most likely underestimating is that of valuation-multiple compression,” since “SpaceX can remain one of the most important companies in the world from a technological and strategic standpoint, and investors can still end up with disappointing returns if the placement price already assumes a near-flawless execution scenario across every major business line: space launches, satellite broadband, AI infrastructure, defense contracts, and the future commercialization of space operations.” That is apparently exactly what happened, given the wave of initial buying that hit the stock.
Serrano had effectively predicted the cold shower to come, telling Money.it before what was the largest IPO in history that he would rather “wait for further financial information before investing immediately after the listing.”
Why? “In an IPO of this size, the first trading sessions are often dominated by market enthusiasm, allocation dynamics, heavy retail investor participation, and index-related flows,” when it would have been better to “evaluate the investment once more detail becomes available on operating margins, capital-expenditure intensity, segment-level profitability, debt structure, any insider sales, and the post-listing governance setup.”
A bullish CEO’s forecast comes true: the scarcity premium fades as the float grows
On valuation, the forecast that has clearly played out is the one from Arthur Azizov, CEO and founder of B2BROKER Group and B2BINPAY. In the days after the IPO, when the stock’s strong rally pushed the market to value the company at nearly $2.1 trillion, Azizov told Money.it that — against revenue of **$18.7 billion in 2025** — euphoric investors were paying not so much for the SpaceX brand as for “Starlink’s growth potential, the company’s dominant position in the space-launch market, its artificial-intelligence prospects, and the development of future orbital-computing infrastructure.”
His estimate for the stock at the time: «My fair-value estimate for the stock over a 12-to-24-month horizon would sit, in the base-case scenario, in a range of $115 to $145 per share.»
The expert also warned that “even at those levels the valuation would remain extremely elevated, but it would incorporate a risk premium more consistent with the uncertainties tied to execution of the business plan, the heavy intensity of capital expenditure, and the gradual erosion of the stock’s scarcity premium as more shares become available on the market.”
SPCX shares still up 9% from the IPO price, as bulls and bubble-watchers face off
Azizov’s outlook has materialized: shares have fallen below the $150 mark since their Nasdaq 100 debut, now approaching the upper end of his $115-to-$145 range.
In fact, the B2BROKER Group CEO did not rule out a bullish scenario in which “shares could jump to a range of $180 to $200 and even consolidate stably above those levels.”
The conditions SpaceX would need to meet for that, however, are demanding: “Starlink’s monetization would need to accelerate, losses tied to AI infrastructure development would need to shrink to a fully manageable level, and the company’s main operating targets would need to be met.”
The biggest risk? «In my view, the risk the market is most underestimating concerns share supply. First-day trading performance was driven above all by the stock’s scarcity, given that only about 4% of total share capital was actually available for trading — the free float. Over the following six months, however, a significantly larger share of the stock could become tradable, materially shifting the balance between supply and demand and, as a result, price dynamics.»
The stock’s all-time closing high came on June 16, when SpaceX shares — the company built by Elon Musk — ended the session at $201.80, a record. Given yesterday’s close at $148, that marks a roughly 27% drop from the peak.
Still, measured against the $135 IPO placement price on June 12, the stock remains up around 9% since its market debut. Wall Street analysts, moreover, remain decidedly bullish on SPCX shares: the average analyst target price stands at **$240**, implying a $3.2 trillion valuation for Musk’s company — more than Amazon, Microsoft and Tesla — despite the warnings from those who have told Money.it they see echoes of the Mississippi Bubble in the stock’s run-up.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Laura Naka Antonelli on July 09, 2026 as «Azioni SpaceX, la bolla sta per scoppiare? Le previsioni degli analisti intervistati da Money.it si stanno avverando». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
