#夏日创作营 Is SpaceX a dream or a nightmare!

Iron Man was still, in the end, only human—not a god. The essence of business is not to create myths, but to create value. SpaceX’s share-price volatility is precisely proof of this.

When the market cooled down from the IPO frenzy back to rationality, investors began to scrutinize every expense, every launch, and the operational data of each satellite with a magnifying glass.

On June 12, the first day of trading, SpaceX’s $86-billion IPO—the largest IPO in history—closed at $160.9, up more than 19% from the $150 issue price. Three days after listing, the stock price surged 50%,

On June 16, it reached a historical high of $225.6, corresponding to a total market cap of $2.66 trillion. At one point, it surpassed Amazon to enter the global top five listed-company market caps, and Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

However, starting June 22, SpaceX’s single-day plunge was 16.4%. Its market value evaporated by $400 billion, setting the second-largest single-day contraction record in U.S. stock history;

On July 7, after being added to the Nasdaq 100 index, it fell 6.83% on its first trading day, slipping below the $150 opening price;

On July 15, it first fell below the $135 issue price during the day and then closed lower for four consecutive trading days;

On July 16, “Starship” was forced to terminate its launch due to an engine failure;

On July 21, after the Falcon 9 rocket’s ignition, the launch was urgently aborted. In just one month, SpaceX’s stock price was cut in half from its $225 peak, with market cap evaporating by more than $1 trillion. Musk’s fortune shrank from $1.45 trillion to $760 billion. As of the time of writing, SpaceX has just crawled out of the predicament of seven straight down days; its lowest price has already touched $119.68. Iron Man Musk’s “trillionaire” title lasted less than two weeks, and the story of the tattooed Asian girl who held the SpaceX rocket ignition button also lasted only one month. From the world’s first IPO to breaking the issue price—he finished in one month a path that takes others a year!

One month ago, this company was still the “chosen one” of global capital markets, the “light of humanity.” Musk was not only a dreamer who could get humans to Mars in five years and explore the stars and the sea for ten, but also a wealth creator who enabled thousands of early employees to see their personal fortunes exceed millions (of dollars). But the most formidable part of Musk was never just sending people to Mars. What he did was to take a money-burning aerospace business—once burning so hot it smoked—and force it into a trade that could be listed, could raise financing, and could make employees get rich along with it. If you only listen to press conferences and only watch PPT slides, you would think this is yet another leap in human civilization. Musk would open a new route between humanity and space, like Magellan—humanity’s new path into the cosmos. But when you look closely at the ledgers, the equity, the supply chain, and its underlying logic, you find a painfully stark fact: SpaceX is not selling some dream of the stars and the sea. It is selling scarce narratives, selling monopoly positions, and selling the world’s ongoing intoxication with the “Musk myth.” You think you’re buying a ticket to Mars, a passage to the future—but in reality, you’re only buying a portion of fuel to make the company’s valuation soar. And this fuel is burning out at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Because SpaceX’s business model is, at its core, a meticulously designed “narrative arbitrage.” So is it a myth of making fortunes, or a “negative” myth? Next, let’s break down step by step how SpaceX’s “narrative arbitrage” works.

In February 2026, loss-making xAI and the X platform were folded into SpaceX. The acquisition was conducted entirely in the form of stock, redefining traditional aerospace companies as “the world’s first space-grade general AI infrastructure provider.” It replaced a single rocket-launch valuation model with a closed-loop story of “orbital data centers” and “Starlink network + xAI compute power,” forcing a benchmark against AI giants such as Nvidia rather than traditional industrial stocks—expanding valuation room. Meanwhile, this merger and acquisition used a $20-billion bridge loan to transfer $17.5 billion of junk debt from xAI and the X platform onto SpaceX’s balance sheet, with an agreement that SpaceX would repay it within six months after listing. In effect, it wrapped a pile of hot potatoes in gold foil labeled “space AI” and stuffed them into the mouths of investors who were about to invest—or had already invested.

In May 2026 to early June, SpaceX signed long-term AI compute contracts with Anthropic (monthly payment of $1.25 billion) and Google (monthly payment of about $0.92 billion), respectively. Together, these deals locked in recurring revenue of more than $2.1 billion per month. Disclosing these big orders on the eve of the IPO was, in essence, using the AI story to underwrite an inflated valuation.

Although its AI business (xAI) was still in deep losses at the time (2026 Q1 loss of $2.5 billion), these contracts led the market to believe in its profit outlook, supporting an IPO valuation as high as $1.77 trillion. The prospectus claimed the potential market size was $26.5 trillion (mainly sourced from imagination about AI and compute). It emphasized that after Starship was fully reused, costs would drop by two orders of magnitude, creating the illusion of a “guaranteed breakout.” On June 4, 2026: the roadshow was launched. It designed “hunger marketing” to manufacture stock scarcity, planning to issue about 556 million shares at $135 per share to raise $75 billion. On the one hand, the IPO issued only 4.2% of the total shares outstanding, creating scarcity. On the other hand, subscription of the float was opened to retail investors, allocating 20% of the slots to them. By leveraging “retail frenzy” and a structure of “low float + high sentiment,” it sparked a rush to buy and pushed up the share price on the first day of listing.

On June 12, 2026: it officially listed and the share price skyrocketed. After SpaceX listed on Nasdaq, its share price rose about 20% on the first day. In the following several trading days, it continued to climb. At one point, its market cap neared $3 trillion, and its price-to-sales ratio (P/S) exceeded 100x. The extremely low float ratio (4.2%) and retail investors’ frenzy buying (net buys of $405 million in the first five trading days) together amplified share-price volatility, achieving the effect of “manipulating market value.”

On June 14, 2026: the prospectus details were interpreted by the media. It disclosed that Musk used a multiple-class equity structure (Class B shares, with 1 share carrying 10 votes) and an “extreme challenge” incentive plan. Through the A- and B-class share structure, Musk controlled about 82.4% of SpaceX’s voting power, diluted to about 82.3% after the IPO. This “one share, ten votes” super-voting structure allowed Musk to enjoy the capital-market premium while being almost free from any external constraints. The trade-off, however, is this: when the company needs continuous financing, issues debt, and carries out acquisitions and mergers, the market will become increasingly cautious about a governance structure that effectively means “one person decides everything.” On June 16, 2026, SpaceX announced the acquisition of the parent company of AI programming tool Cursor, Anysphere, through an all-stock transaction. The implied valuation for Cursor was $60 billion. The transaction was expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026. Anysphere would become a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX as the continuing company. (Previously, in April 2026, both sides had announced a model training cooperation, SpaceX received an option to acquire, and exercised that right after the IPO.) At this point, the intraday share price had peaked at $225.64, providing abundant “ammunition” for the deal. This kind of maneuver—using a peak share price to exchange for strategic assets—is essentially a high-stakes gamble: the bet is that improving the business map will let the myth continue; the bet is that building a bubble on top of another bubble will hold.

On June 23, 2026: SpaceX announced the issuance of about $20 billion in investment-grade bonds to repay the bridge loan used for the prior xAI acquisition. After the announcement, the share price wiped out about $600 billion over three days, the largest decline since listing. This was another combo of “selling the company at high prices and cashing out,” paired with “issuing debt to repay.”

(1) Use the soaring share price after listing and the credit rating (investment grade) to issue bonds at extremely low cost, repay xAI’s short-term high-interest acquisition loans, and optimize the debt structure;

(2) Although Musk himself did not directly reduce his holdings, issuing bonds for financing effectively used market funds to pay for the prior acquisition—achieving an indirect cash-out.

The market began “voting with its feet.” Investors realized that the company took on large-scale new debt again less than two weeks after listing, and that the profit outlook for its AI business was unclear (xAI losses exceeded $6 billion in 2025), triggering a wave of selling. Market confidence wavered. SpaceX’s share price fell from the peak of $225.64 all the way to around $180, with nearly $1 trillion in market cap evaporating.

Wall Street analysts began questioning Musk’s “capital reshuffling technique”: issuing debt at an overvalued price, exchanging bonds for assets, and then using those assets to tell stories to sustain the valuation.

Next, on July 7, 2026, on the first trading day after being included in the Nasdaq 100 index, the stock dropped 6.83%, falling below the $150 opening price; on July 15, it first fell below the $135 issue price during the day and closed down for four consecutive trading days;

On July 16, “Starship” was forced to terminate its launch due to an engine failure;

On July 21, the launch was urgently aborted after the Falcon 9 rocket ignited. After several rounds of heavy setbacks, SpaceX’s stock price was already about 15% below the issue price, and its market cap had shrunk by more than 40% from its peak.

The market began summarizing the week in terms of a “triple hit”: the index-inclusion effect faded, launch missions suffered setbacks one after another, and losses in the AI business continued to widen. More fatally, investors started questioning SpaceX’s core narrative—whether it is truly a “space exploration company,” or simply “Musk’s capital tool.”

When the narrative of “space exploration” was covered by doubts about “capital reshuffling,” the market’s valuation logic for SpaceX shifted from “a premium for dreams” to “a discount for risk.” And this roller coaster ride from the peak to the trough precisely reveals the essence of capital markets: when the story is no longer believed, the bubble loses the skeletal structure that supported it.

When the story is no longer believed, the bubble loses the skeletal structure that supported it. According to estimates by the financial analysis firm S3 Partners, currently about 206 million shares of SpaceX are being shorted, accounting for about 32% of the company’s publicly tradable float. The notional short position size is approximately $25 billion. Compared with last week’s estimate of about 185 million shares (about 29% of the float), this figure increased, and it also jumped sharply from the estimate from about a month ago of 40 million shares (about 5% to 7% of the float).

Facing the continuously rising short positions, Musk posted a response on a social platform, saying, “Investors who short SpaceX will ultimately lose money.” “Institutional investors that maintain long-term heavy short positions have an extremely low chance of survival.” He also said, “I have said that if we achieve our goals, SpaceX’s value will surpass the entire Earth—there is no doubt about that.” Of course, the prerequisite is “if” they can achieve the goals. The next issue Musk has to deal with is that SpaceX will release its first quarterly earnings report since listing after the close of U.S. stock trading on August 4, and starting August 6, there will be a large unlock of restricted shares worth up to $116 billion. Once early investors cash out, retail investors will be forced to take the bag. And the upcoming earnings report will give investors, for the first time, a detailed understanding of the company’s operating situation, becoming the key test for the next round of bull-bear games.

Of course, SpaceX’s story is far from over. The Starlink constellation in the sky is still growing; the Starship on the ground is still conducting test flights; Mars’s land is still calling; and the AI bubble has not yet completely burst. It’s just that the capital market has already cast its vote with share prices: solve the immediate problems first, and then talk about the stars and the sea of space.

In fact, for every corporate executive, decision-maker, and investor, SpaceX’s break below the issue price is a $1 trillion lesson in value. From IPO to listing, every step was a perfectly crafted business-plan book—meticulously calculated and packaged. Every step precisely drains different investors’ wallets. And Musk is still the richest person in the world, still the most disruptive entrepreneur. It’s just that this time, the market reminded him: in front of capital, perhaps no one can forever talk only about stories without facts. $SPCX