SpaceX IPO hits record but stock slides; AI pivot and skepticism grow

SpaceX stock has closed below its IPO opening price of $150, trading at around $148 in mid-July, after a two-day slide following its fast-tracked inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 index Source: Ground News. The June 12 IPO, which raised $75 billion and was the largest in history, saw shares briefly top $225 but has since lost ground Source: BBCSource: Fox Business.

The AI pivot

SpaceX's valuation now hinges heavily on AI. The company acquired Musk's xAI in February, rebranding it SpaceXAI, and recently launched the Grok 4.5 model for coding and agentic tasks Source: CNA. Analysts at J.P. Morgan expect SpaceX to expand terrestrial AI compute to 9 gigawatts by 2029, with current Colossus clusters generating over $28 billion in annual revenue from deals with Anthropic and Google Source: CNA. Musk also secured FTC approval to acquire optical interconnect startup Mesh Optical, a key technology for scaling AI clusters Source: Tom's Hardware. A longer-term orbital data center vision remains unproven Source: CNA.

Market reactions and skepticism

Not all investors are enthusiastic. Subversive ETFs filed for two "Ex-Elon" funds that exclude Tesla and SpaceX from the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500, citing governance and valuation concerns Source: The Next WebSource: TechCrunch. Famed investor Jeremy Grantham called the IPO "the craziest in history," warning that the valuation depends on improbable AI breakthroughs Source: Fox Business. Meanwhile, Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded barbs on X after Apple sued OpenAI for alleged trade secret theft, with Musk calling Altman "Scam Altman" and Altman retorting that Musk is "selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters" Source: CNBC.