News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
SpaceX bears are taking a victory lap as the stock struggles a month after the IPO
* After enjoying a brief post-IPO surge, shares of Elon Musk's rocket and AI company have struggled. * Bearish commentators say the slide reinforces their views that the stock was overvalued from the start. * "I think it could be half over the course of the year," one bearish commentator said. SpaceX stock has struggled after a brief burst of post-IPO enthusiasm, and the bears are taking a moment to reiterate their downbeat views on the stock. A month after a historic IPO, SpaceX stock dropped below the initial offering price of $135 on Wednesday, marking a 40% decline from its peak of around $225. Wall Street analysts rushed to issue bullish price targets when the stock joined the Nasdaq 100 earlier this month, but the bears are feeling emboldened by the plunge that they say bolsters the view that the stock was overvalued from the get-go. "Expect the price to completely crash," former Fidelity Overseas Fund manager and hedge fund founder George Noble told Business Insider. "I think it could be half over the course of the year." Noble said $30 is a fair price target for SpaceX stock, a forecast that implies a drop of 78% from Wednesday's price. He's also previously criticized Tesla, describing Musk's EV company as the biggest bubble in stock market history. Jay Ritter, an economist and market commentator dubbed "Mr. IPO" for his expertise and research on companies and capital markets, told Business Insider that he was considering shorting SpaceX prior to its IPO. While Ritter didn't say whether he is betting against the stock yet, he added that he's not at all surprised by the post-IPO slide. CFRA analyst Keith Snyder labeled the stock with a "sell" rating directly following its IPO and hasn't wavered, even as many of his peers on Wall Street dole out bullish price targets and commentary in their initial coverage. "I am still negative on the valuation at these levels and haven't seen anything that would change the story for me," Snyder told Business Insider last week. The only thing he says would change his mind is actual growth. Ed Elson, a day trader who co-hosts Scott Galloway's Prof G Markets podcast, said in June that he saw the stock as highly overvalued, predicting that it would be cut in half within the coming year. On July 14, Elson shared an updated take on SpaceX, highlighting concerns about the bullish sentiment among Wall Street analysts. Elson laid out why this may be problematic for investors, especially as many bullish analysts are from banks that underwrote the SpaceX IPO. In his view, they still have financial incentive to describe the stock favorably, even after the end of the legal 'quiet period' for underwriters. "Anyone who bought post-IPO is now underwater," he said. "This is in line with the trend: Research shows IPOs recommended by analysts at underwriting banks underperform and, on average, lose value." If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow Business Insider on Yahoo.
SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred SpaceX stock dropped below its initial public offering price for the first time on Wednesday, signaling dwindling hype around the Elon Musk company. Shares dipped below their IPO price of $135 on Wednesday morning for the first time since listing, a humbling loss for the stock, which had skyrocketed more than 50% in its first days of trading last month. The shares regained some ground later in the day, closing at $135.27. The initial offering gave the company a market cap of $2.2 trillion, making it one of the world's most valuable public companies. For a short period, the IPO also made owner Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, though his net worth now is about $800 billion. On July 7, the company was added to the Nasdaq-100 after a rule change allowed companies to join 15 days after their IPOs. SpaceX raised a total of $86 billion after underwriters exercised their right to sell additional shares, on top of the $75 billion initially raised. It was the largest IPO in history. SpaceX, based near Austin, Texas, is the leading launch services company in the world, with its Falcon 9 rocket accounting for the vast majority of satellites launched last year. It is also the leading satellite-based broadband provider with its Starlink service. The extraordinary interest in the IPO was driven by Musk's plans to make the company an AI leader -- including plans to launch orbiting satellite data centers powered by the sun that crunch AI data. The company's headquarters moved from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024, but it retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County. Since the IPO, SpaceX has used its newfound wealth to expand in the AI space. It announced last month that it was acquiring the AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion, with the deal expected to close in the third quarter. The San Francisco company, founded in 2022, enables engineers to instruct software in English to run coding tasks autonomously. Musk also merged his xAI artificial intelligence company into SpaceX earlier this year. The combined entity recently announced it was leasing computing power to rivals Anthropic and Google at two terrestrial data centers it has constructed. Since the IPO, investors have expressed concerns about the company's spending plans and debt load. Even with the volatility of the last month, there's still more uncertainty to come. The stock could fall further as locked-up shares held by current and former employees are released. At least 20% of the shares will be released after second-quarter results are disclosed sometime in the coming months, with all the lockups expiring in December. But Space X isn't the only megacap stock to experience ups and downs early on. Shares of Meta, then named Facebook, fell significantly below the IPO price of $38 before recovering. After its May 2012 launch, shares plummeted by nearly 50% and hit a record low of $19.69 in August 2012. The company took more than 14 months to rebound, finally surpassing its $38 IPO price in July 2013.
Traders cool on Tesla-SpaceX merger as Polymarket odds slide
Traders on Polymarket have sharply scaled back bets that a Tesla-SpaceX merger will be announced this year, even as Wall Street analysts insist a tie-up is only a matter of time. The prediction market now puts just an 11% chance on an official announcement by 30 September, down 28 percentage points, while the odds of a deal being unveiled by 31 December have fallen 19 points to 24%. More than $836,000 has been wagered across the market, which resolves yes if either company announces it is being acquired by or merged with the other, regardless of whether the deal completes. The retreat contrasts with bullish calls from analysts, with Wedbush's Dan Ives putting the odds of a Tesla-SpaceX tie-up at about 80% and arguing the connective tissue between the companies is already forming. Speculation intensified after SpaceX's $85.7 billion initial public offering, which created a company now valued at around $2.44 trillion with $100.8 billion in cash. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell declined to dismiss the idea when asked directly in June, suggesting a tie-up might make Elon Musk's life a little easier. Musk has exercised 304 million Tesla options, lifting his voting stake to 19.9% as he targets the 25% control he says is needed to advance the carmaker's AI ambitions. The two companies already share extensive commercial ties, including joint ownership of the Terafab chip facility, and SpaceX bought $697 million of Tesla's Megapack battery systems in 2024 and 2025. Musk has form for consolidation, having folded social media platform X into xAI in 2025 before SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock deal this year. Musk himself has acknowledged the complexity, telling analysts that any deal would have to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served.
Traders cool on Tesla-SpaceX merger as Polymarket odds slide
Traders on Polymarket have sharply scaled back bets that a Tesla-SpaceX merger will be announced this year, even as Wall Street analysts insist a tie-up is only a matter of time. The prediction market now puts just an 11% chance on an official announcement by 30 September, down 28 percentage points, while the odds of a deal being unveiled by 31 December have fallen 19 points to 24%. More than $836,000 has been wagered across the market, which resolves yes if either company announces it is being acquired by or merged with the other, regardless of whether the deal completes. The retreat contrasts with bullish calls from analysts, with Wedbush's Dan Ives putting the odds of a Tesla-SpaceX tie-up at about 80% and arguing the connective tissue between the companies is already forming. Speculation intensified after SpaceX's $85.7 billion initial public offering, which created a company now valued at around $2.44 trillion with $100.8 billion in cash. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell declined to dismiss the idea when asked directly in June, suggesting a tie-up might make Elon Musk's life a little easier. Musk has exercised 304 million Tesla options, lifting his voting stake to 19.9% as he targets the 25% control he says is needed to advance the carmaker's AI ambitions. The two companies already share extensive commercial ties, including joint ownership of the Terafab chip facility, and SpaceX bought $697 million of Tesla's Megapack battery systems in 2024 and 2025. Musk has form for consolidation, having folded social media platform X into xAI in 2025 before SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock deal this year. Musk himself has acknowledged the complexity, telling analysts that any deal would have to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served.
Dear SpaceX Stock Fans, Mark Your Calendars for July 16
SpaceX Corporation (SPCX) investors have a major date circled on the calendar right now. On July 16, the company is scheduled to launch Starship Flight 13, a mission that could become the stock's biggest catalyst since its blockbuster IPO just over a month ago. The launch isn't just another test. For the first time, Starship will attempt to deploy 20 commercial Starlink V3 satellites, marking an important step toward regular commercial operations. A successful mission could help restore investor confidence after weeks of heavy selling, while another setback may add to the pressure on shares. More News from Barchart SpaceX stock has been extremely volatile since going public. Shares debuted at $150 after pricing at $135 in June, surged above $225 during the first week, and have since retreated 29.5%, sinking to its lowest price today since its IPO Debut. This is happening as investors shift their focus from IPO excitement to the company's steep losses, aggressive spending, and premium valuation. The stock currently trades at roughly 110 times expected trailing 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion, far above the aerospace and defense industry's average of 2.5 times to 3 times sales. Even after losing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value, investors are still paying a premium for the company's long-term growth story rather than its current financial performance. Starship Flight 13 Could Be a Defining Moment The July 16 mission is particularly important because it represents the second test of the new Starship V3 design after the first V3 launch ended with an explosion following splashdown in May. SpaceX says Flight 13 includes software upgrades designed to address issues from the previous mission. Beyond testing the vehicle itself, the company will deploy 20 next-generation Starlink satellites, including six equipped with cameras to monitor the spacecraft's heat shield during reentry. If the mission succeeds, investors may gain confidence that Starship is moving closer to commercial service, unlocking new revenue opportunities across satellite deployment, lunar missions, and eventually Mars exploration. Another failure, however, could reinforce concerns about execution risks at a time when investor sentiment is already fragile.
SpaceX stock falls below IPO price, testing investor confidence after blockbuster debut
SpaceX's slip below its initial public offering price risks turning a marquee stock-market debut into a confidence test, potentially unsettling retail investors and complicating decisions for other companies weighing high-profile listings. Elon Musk's company, spanning rockets to AI, debuted on June 12 and soared in the ensuing days, at one point valuing the company at well above $2 trillion. Since its debut, trading has been rocky. The stock slipped below its $150 opening price in late June with concerns about lofty tech stock valuations weighing on global indexes. The stock slid below its $135 IPO price for the first time on Wednesday, touching an intraday low of $132.15 before recovering to trade down 0.6% at $135.27 -- just over a month after the record-breaking IPO made Musk the world's first trillionaire. SpaceX shares started trading as part of the Nasdaq 100 index about a week ago. A break below the IPO price is a psychological blow for SpaceX shares, said Matthew Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak. "It raises the narrative that the stock is up on fluff, on speculation, on froth, and not on real fundamentals," Maley said. Investors who bought into the excitement around SpaceX's listing, "hoping to 'make a killing' will be disappointed," said Greg Halter, director of research at Carnegie Investment Counsel. He said weakness in SpaceX would put it more in line with 30 years of heavily hyped IPOs, where average and median returns over the first month are often negative. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. PRICE DISCOVERY NOT PANIC? A drop below the IPO price is not unusual for a newly listed company. Shares of Cerebras Systems, which went public in May, have dropped below the IPO price, and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, fell similarly after its debut. Investors often fixate on IPO prices and early trading, said Ryan Lee, senior vice president of product and strategy at financial services firm Direxion. "The reality is, (SpaceX) is still undergoing some of this price discovery process," Lee said. A fall for SpaceX below $135 reflects "normal, albeit painful" market mechanics, especially as investors, venture capitalists and employees sell shares after lockups expire, said Gabriel Shahin, CEO at Falcon Wealth Planning. "A near-term dip below the $135 threshold would not fundamentally alter our current positioning or cause us to panic-sell," he said. CAUTION OR GREEN LIGHT FOR NEXT IPOS Some investors think SpaceX's stock performance could influence the market for future public listings. OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing the public markets. Neither company responded to a request for comment. Carnegie's Halter said companies and investment banks considering large IPOs this year are watching SpaceX closely. "No one wants an IPO to flop or have the initial price be ratcheted down," Halter said. He suspects some IPOs would be pulled rather than priced at lower valuations. But Direxion's Lee said SpaceX's capital raise could encourage some companies with large funding needs to move faster. "If I'm OpenAI or if I'm Anthropic and I'm in this true arms race to build the frontier AI model and I need capital, I'm going to try to beat the other one out the door," Lee said. RISKING RETAIL TRADERS' SKEPTICISM A drop below the IPO price could hit retail investors, who received about 20% of the allocation, hard. "Many novice investors have approached SpaceX with a 'meme stock' mentality, buying in with capital they cannot afford to lose," Shahin said, warning that losses could fuel perceptions that markets favor insiders. "The market needs to understand that post-IPO volatility is normal." SpaceX's first earnings report will be a major test for the stock. Underwriters typically support stocks in the first 30 days and may do more for SpaceX given the deal's size, the public attention and the fact other high-profile offerings are imminent, said Maria Llerena, director of financial research at Domini Impact Investments. "Loss-making companies without a clear path to profitability are typically volatile and can fall below their IPO price," said Llerena. Published on July 16, 2026
Dow Jones Top Company Headlines at 9 PM ET: United Airlines Lifts Outlook as Higher Fares Blunt Turbulent Fuel Prices | SpaceX ...
United Airlines Lifts Outlook as Higher Fares Blunt Turbulent Fuel Prices The carrier said that adjusted earnings should hit $9 to $11 a share in 2026, lifting the low-end of its previous target by $2 a share. ---- SpaceX Shares Fall Below IPO Price for the First Time The rocket maker's stock slipped below $135 as the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped. ---- BHP Annual Copper Production Falls; Iron Ore Output Notches Record High BHP Group said it produced a record amount of iron ore but less copper over the past year, and forecast a further drop in copper output in the year ahead as grades fall at a giant mine in northern Chile. ---- QVC Defeats Shareholder Challenge to $5 Billion Debt-Cutting Plan A Houston bankruptcy judge approved a disputed intercompany settlement that clears the retail network to exit chapter 11. ---- J.B. Hunt Reports Higher Profit As Revenue Grows Across Most Segments The logistics company reported a profit of $181 million, with its largest business segment reporting a 22% increase in revenue and a 10% increase in volume. ---- Conagra's 'Show-Me' CEO Says Every Product Needs to Earn Its Keep John Brase, who took over the company in June, is plotting a turnaround for the food giant. ---- Mira Murati's AI Startup Releases First Model in Bid to Loosen AI Giants' Grip Thinking Machines Lab CEO Mira Murati is betting on more customizable artificial-intelligence models to chip away at the lead of frontier labs such OpenAI and Anthropic. ---- Kalshi to Offer Contracts Predicting Flight Cancellations The contracts will allow users to predict the percentages of flights canceled at an airport within a given timeframe. ---- Patrick Drahi's Altice International Accused of Debt Default Lenders holding about $9 billion in bonds claim Patrick Drahi's telecom empire stripped away collateral through intercompany deals, sources said. ---- Stripe and Private-Equity Firm Advent Offer to Buy PayPal The deal would value the fintech company at around $53 billion. ---- BlackRock Shares Rally After Assets Soar Past $15 Trillion BlackRock reported profits rose 20% from a year earlier, and shares rallied almost 7%. ---- Conagra Swings to Loss, Cuts Dividend Under New CEO The maker of Orville Redenbacher's popcorn and Slim Jim swung to a loss in the fiscal fourth quarter and cut its dividend, as its new chief executive aims to strengthen the company with a more conservative spending strategy. ---- JPMorgan, BlackRock and Goldman to Tokenize Stocks, Treasurys Trade processor DTCC is launching a trial run with Wall Street firms to convert assets into digital tokens. ---- Morgan Stanley Posts Blowout Quarter Thanks to Blockbuster IPOs, Newly Minted Millionaires The bank reported adjusted second-quarter earnings of $3.46 a share, blowing past Wall Street forecasts thanks to a surge in investment banking revenue. (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 15, 2026 21:15 ET (01:15 GMT) Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Why SpaceX shares fell below their IPO price for the first time
SpaceX shares slipped below their initial public offering (IPO) price for the first time on Wednesday, a little over a month after the company made history with the biggest IPO ever. The stock later recovered slightly and closed at $135.27, just above its IPO price of $135. During the day, however, it fell as low as $132.28. The drop marks a big change for the Elon Musk-led company, whose stock had surged after listing and briefly pushed its market value above $2.6 trillion, making Musk the world's first trillionaire. By Wednesday afternoon, the company's valuation had fallen to around $1.78 trillion. SpaceX shares fall below IPO price When SpaceX debuted on the stock market, investor excitement sent its shares soaring. At one point, the company was valued even higher than tech giants Microsoft and Amazon, despite both companies having much longer histories as public firms and stronger financial results. But that excitement has started to fade. SpaceX made history with the biggest IPO ever when it debuted on the stock market on June 12. On its first day of trading, the company's shares jumped 19%. The IPO was priced at $135 per share, while the stock opened at $150, about 11% higher than the offer price. Since then, however, the shares have slowly moved lower, even after being added to the Nasdaq-100 index. Wednesday's decline came as the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite also slipped about 0.2%, while technology stocks have remained volatile over the past month. Why did SpaceX shares fall? Several factors came together to pull SpaceX's shares lower. After the stock's strong rally following its record-breaking IPO, many investors chose to book profits, leading to increased selling. At the same time, some on Wall Street began questioning whether the company's valuation had become too high after it briefly crossed $2.6 trillion, especially since SpaceX reported a $4.9 billion loss last year and many of its long-term projects are still in the early stages. Investors are also growing cautious about the company's heavy spending on artificial intelligence after it raised $25 billion through bonds to fund new technology infrastructure. Concerns that the US Federal Reserve could raise interest rates have only added to the pressure on highly valued technology stocks. Even SpaceX's inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 failed to lift sentiment, with the stock falling about 13% since joining the index. Analysts also say there have been no major new developments to renew investor excitement, while the upcoming expiry of the IPO lock-up period could lead to more selling as employees and early investors become eligible to sell part of their holdings. Investors may be cashing out Justus Parmar, CEO of Fortuna Investments, which invests in SpaceX, believes one reason behind the recent weakness is that some investors are beginning to sell their shares and lock in profits. "I think the elephant in the room is there's a lot of folks that are in the stock, and maybe some of them, or a good number of them are wanting to take some liquidity, which is essentially putting a lot of pressure on the stock," Parmar told Reuters. He added: "You're probably seeing a little bit of it, and through the course of the year, we'll be seeing more of that." However, SpaceX is not the first major company to see its shares fall soon after going public. One example is British chip designer Arm Holdings, which also slipped below its $51 IPO price about a week after its much-talked-about market debut in 2023. However, the stock later recovered strongly. Data from University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter also shows that weak performance after an IPO is quite common. According to his research, more than 70% of companies that went public between 1974 and 2021 delivered negative returns over the next three years compared with their offer price. Still, the decline is likely to boost the argument of critics who believed SpaceX's valuation had become too expensive. The company reported a $4.9 billion loss last year, and many of its biggest long-term projects have yet to prove they can succeed. Nasdaq 100 inclusion fails to help SpaceX's entry into the Nasdaq 100 index also failed to lift the stock. Since joining the technology-heavy index, the company's shares have fallen by about 13%. Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers, said investors have not seen any fresh developments that could renew confidence in the stock. "The fact that a stock has fallen a couple of dollars below its IPO price in itself is not a tragedy, but SpaceX is heavily watched and has an important role in investor psyche." Even though the stock has weakened, many Wall Street analysts remain optimistic about SpaceX's future. Morgan Stanley, one of the lead underwriters for the company's IPO, has set a 12-month price target of $300 for the stock. JPMorgan expects the shares to reach $225 by the end of 2027. Not everyone is as optimistic, though. Morningstar believes the stock is worth much less. Last month, the research firm said it values SpaceX shares at just $63. All eyes now on earnings and lock-up expiry Investors are now waiting for SpaceX's first earnings report since becoming a public company. Analysts expect the results to be released during the first week of August. Soon after that, the first phase of the IPO lock-up period will end. This will allow eligible employees and some early investors to start selling part of their holdings. Apart from financial results, investors are closely watching SpaceX's 13th Starship test flight. The successful development of Starship is considered important for the company's future plans. SpaceX hopes the rocket will lower launch costs and support ambitious projects such as orbital data centres and missions to the Moon. Disclaimer: This article provides factual analysis only and is not, and should not be construed as, an offer, solicitation, or recommendation to buy or sell securities. Investors must conduct their own independent due diligence and seek advice from a registered financial advisor in the respective jurisdiction.
SpaceX Stock Falls Below IPO Price as Investors Weigh Losses and Lockup Expiry
SpaceX shares fell below their initial public offering (IPO) price for the first time on Wednesday, highlighting growing investor caution as the company's early post-listing momentum continues to fade. The stock dropped 2.2% to $133.02 during midday trading, slipping beneath its $135 IPO price set during last month's $86 billion public offering. The decline extends a volatile trading period for the Elon Musk-led aerospace company. After surging nearly 50% within its first three trading sessions, SpaceX stock has surrendered much of those gains as investors reassess the company's financial outlook and broader market conditions. Market participants are also watching the upcoming expiration of the first insider lockup period, which will occur after SpaceX releases its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company. The end of these restrictions could increase selling pressure as early investors and company insiders become eligible to sell their shares. Investor sentiment weakened further after SpaceX disclosed a net loss of $4.9 billion for the previous year, raising concerns about the company's timeline for achieving sustained profitability. At the same time, uncertainty surrounding the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy and slowing enthusiasm for artificial intelligence-related stocks, particularly semiconductor companies, have added pressure to high-growth technology names. Despite the recent pullback, SpaceX initially benefited from strong institutional demand following its rapid inclusion in major stock indexes. The company was added to the Russell 1000 Index shortly after its market debut and later joined the Nasdaq-100 after eligibility rules for newly listed large-cap companies were accelerated. Even with shares trading below their IPO price, Wall Street analysts remain optimistic about the company's long-term growth potential. Raymond James recently issued one of the most bullish forecasts on the stock, assigning an $800 price target and signaling confidence that SpaceX can recover as it expands its commercial space, satellite, and technology businesses.
SpaceX reveals AI1 orbital data center design for satellite network
The AI1 satellite's 70-meter wingspan and 150 kW compute payload could reshape how the world thinks about AI infrastructure. SpaceX unveiled its AI1 orbital data center satellite in a video around June 9, 2026, laying out a vision for AI computation that skips terrestrial infrastructure entirely. The satellite is designed for sun-synchronous orbit, powered by solar arrays, cooled by passive radiation, and connected to the rest of the world through laser links to the existing Starlink constellation. The headline specs are striking. The AI1 has a 70-meter wingspan, a deployed height of 20 meters, and a peak compute payload capacity of 150 kW. Elon Musk noted that one AI1 satellite's power output is roughly equivalent to one Nvidia GB300 rack. Simpler than Starlink, bigger ambitions Musk pointed out that AI1 manufacturing drops the phased-array antennas that make Starlink satellites complex to produce. What's left is solar cells, radiators, and laser links. In January 2026, SpaceX filed with the FCC proposing a constellation of up to one million AI1 satellites. To support that manufacturing ambition, the company is building a Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas. Initial AI1 satellite launches are targeted for late 2027, though SpaceX plans to deploy compute payloads on select existing Starlink satellites before the dedicated AI1 fleet is ready. The AI1 operates at roughly 70 kW per ton at approximately 600 km altitude. Passive radiative cooling in the vacuum of space sidesteps one of the thorniest problems facing ground-based data centers: heat. On Earth, cooling a hyperscale data center can consume a significant portion of its total energy budget. In orbit, you radiate heat directly into space. The terrestrial data center problem this is solving SpaceX is explicitly pitching AI1 as a way to sidestep land use, power grid, water cooling, and permitting constraints that face terrestrial data centers. The laser link architecture routes data through the Starlink constellation rather than requiring dedicated ground stations at every customer site. Hardware refresh cycles are a known challenge: you can't easily send a technician to swap out a GPU at 600 km altitude. Whatever compute is on that satellite has to last, or the economics of the whole system deteriorate quickly. What investors should watch The AI1 announcement lands at an interesting moment for SpaceX's corporate trajectory. The company has been preparing for an IPO, and orbital data centers represent a differentiated, high-margin business category. Starlink's connectivity business is already profitable; AI compute-as-a-service from orbit would be an entirely new revenue category. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all committed to multi-hundred-billion-dollar terrestrial data center buildouts over the next several years. The late 2027 launch timeline gives the market roughly 18 months to decide how seriously to price this possibility.
Inside The SpaceX AI1 Orbital Data Center: Can It Compete With Terrestrial? Here's The Full Math
Last December, when SpaceX's plan to IPO was still a distant vision (amid rumors of a valuation of "only" $800BN, or less than half where the company finally landed), we laid out a blueprint of what data centers in space would look like, and also recommended a handful of public companies for those who wanted to invest in this theme. Fast forward nearly 7 months later when, with SPCX now public (if briefly dipping below its IPO price earlier today), we refresh on the sector and the cost model, and share some further analysis around optical/lasers, spectrum, solar, radiator, and compute density. Additionally, we use the latest Deutsche Bank research on SpaceX (available to pro subs) to factor in the latest thoughts and disclosures from the Musk regarding its AI1 satellite and Starmind constellation.
SpaceX shares drop below IPO price for first time as blistering rally unravels
SpaceX shares dropped below their initial public offering price for the first time on Wednesday before closing just above that level, just over a month after the rockets-to-AI firm completed the biggest IPO ever and made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. The shares slid 0.6% to close at $135.27, after falling as low as $132.28 -- below the $135 IPO price and well below last month's high that briefly propelled the company's market valuation above those of tech giants Microsoft and Amazon, firms with longer public track records and stronger financial results. It is the latest reminder that Wall Street's enthusiasm can cool quickly, even for a company whose vast ambitions and Musk backing briefly helped it fetch a valuation above $2.6 trillion last month, compared with $1.78 trillion on Wednesday afternoon. "I think the elephant in the room is there's a lot of folks that are in the stock and maybe some of them or a good number of them are wanting to take some liquidity, which is essentially putting a lot of pressure on the stock," said Justus Parmar, CEO of SpaceX investor Fortuna Investments. "You're probably seeing a little bit of it and through the course of the year, we'll be seeing more of that." Debt concerns The about-face in SpaceX reflects in part investor concern over debt-funded AI spending and what potential Federal Reserve rate hikes might do to stretched tech valuations. SpaceX turned to the bond market last month to raise $25 billion, becoming the latest tech giant to sell bonds to build out costly technology infrastructure whose return prospects are hotly debated on Wall Street. The stock's retreat "seems to be a combination of profit-taking, valuation reassessment and the unwinding of extremely bullish positioning following one of the most anticipated listings in recent years," said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com. It is not uncommon for a stock to fall below the IPO price, especially during periods of broader market stress. Still, the drop could bolster critics who have argued that SpaceX's valuation was stretched, given that it lost $4.9 billion last year and many of its ambitions are untested. Nasdaq inclusion fails to lift shares "There hasn't been anything lately to remind people of some of the catalysts for why they bought SpaceX," said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers. "The fact that a stock has fallen a couple of dollars below its IPO price in itself is not a tragedy, but SpaceX is heavily watched and has an important role in investor psyche." The stock's addition to indexes such as the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 didn't reverse the retreat. SpaceX's shares have dropped some 13% since they were included in the Nasdaq 100. Investor focus will shift to the company's first results after listing. Analysts expect the report to happen in the first week of August. After the report, the first phase of the IPO lock-up period is set to expire, allowing eligible employees and some early shareholders to begin selling portions of their holdings, an event that analysts say could weigh further on the stock. Investors are also closely watching the company's 13th Starship test flight as the rocket's successful development is critical to lowering launch costs and enabling many of its most ambitious long-term projects, including orbital data centers and lunar missions. "We're really on maybe 30 days or so into this experiment, still so very early," said Parmar. "The big thing is Elon got his $85 billion to take SpaceX to the next level of growth, which will take many years to see how that plays out. Not 30 days of trading."
Every SpaceX Starlink satellite has to dodge a collision almost weekly, and experts fear the worst
Experts warn that the rapid growth of satellite constellations, such as Starlink, and the overall increase in operational spacecraft in orbit pose a risk of collisions that may become unmanageable in the future. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. SpaceX's Starlink satellites made over 355,000 collision avoidance maneuvers throughout the past year, with each satellite now dodging debris and other spacecraft on an almost weekly basis. The numbers are based on disclosures made by SpaceX in its latest semiannual report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). According to the latest report, Starlink satellites performed an overall 207,152 avoidance maneuvers between December 2025 and May 2026, up nearly 60,000 from the 148,696 reported in the previous half year. That brings the yearly total to over 355,000, more than three times as many as the constellation performed in 2024. On average, each Starlink satellite performed more than 40 space dodging maneuvers per year between June 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026. Experts fear the situation might soon get out of hand. "I think we're heading towards a situation where there will be a collision involving an operational satellite in the constellation," Hugh Lewis, a space sustainability expert and professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., told Space.com. "And it will not be for the lack of trying to avoid those things. It will be in spite of all those maneuvers." The increase coincides with the growth of the internet-beaming constellation and the overall number of satellites in space in the past five years. Starlink grew from about 6,000 satellites in 2024 to more than 10,000 as of June 2026. Over the same time period, the overall number of operational spacecraft in orbit rose from around 10,000 to about 16,000. The SpaceX constellation orbits at altitudes between 298 miles (480 km) and 342 miles (550 kilometers) and uses an autonomous collision avoidance system that initiates a maneuver when the probability of a collision appears higher than 3 in 10 million. Lewis says that although SpaceX is "doing an excellent job" managing orbital traffic, the steep growth cannot continue without risks. "The avoidance maneuvers reduce the probability of a collision to about one in a million, which is so small that it's negligible," Lewis said. "The problem is that if you make a million maneuvers and you have a residual probability of one in a million, you end up with an aggregate risk across your entire constellation that you can't get rid of." Lewis points out that with the expected continued rise in avoidance maneuvers (SpaceX has applied to the FCC to increase the size of its constellation to 100,000 satellites), SpaceX will have made a million avoidance maneuvers over the lifetime of the Starlink constellation as early as June 2027. By 2030, the constellation may be making more than a million maneuvers every year. At that point, the one in a million risk of a collision may no longer be negligible at all. Tommaso Sgobba, the Director of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, told Space.com that the increase in collision avoidance maneuvers is a predictable certainty. "The more satellites you pack into [an orbital] shell, the more pairs of satellites exist that could potentially cross paths," Sgobba wrote in an email. "Adding satellites does not just add risk one unit at a time, it multiplies the number of possible pairings. Double the satellites in a shell and you roughly quadruple the number of pairs that need to be watched." Sgobba also said that the collision probabilities predicted are highly inaccurate as the effects of air drag, which change frequently with space weather, are currently impossible to predict. He said that due to the vast uncertainties in satellite trajectory predictions "operators lack tools to tell a real threat from statistical confusion," adding that "satellites are frequently dodging ghosts, burning fuel and shortening their operational lives in the process." SpaceX, being the largest constellation currently in orbit, takes the bulk of responsibilities for orbital maneuvering. Instead of communicating with the other operator to decide who will make the dodge, Starlink satellites automatically avoid other objects -- both space debris fragments or operational satellites -- whenever there is a conjunction alert. Other ambitious constellations, such as Amazon LEO or China's Thousand Sails, or Qianfan, are currently being deployed, actively adding to the high number of satellites operating in low Earth orbit. Lewis said that the only way to safely manage multiple constellations is to make sure their orbits do not intersect. That, however, is not the case based on available information. The Thousand Sails constellation, in particular, is expected to occupy similar regions as Starlink. Many of the recently announced orbital data center projects want to launch into particular orbital regions that are convenient for their operations and are therefore likely to overlap. "The safe thing to do is to separate the constellations," Lewis said. "But then you are talking about orbital carrying capacity and the first mover benefit, because if I go into a particular altitude with my constellation, then nobody else can use it." Sgobba calls for predicted numbers of collision avoidance maneuvers based on satellite numbers to be mandatorily disclosed to regulators before applications are granted. "Right now, there is no clear requirement for a company to say, before launch, how many collision avoidance maneuvers a constellation of this size and density will need every year and whether the satellites carry enough fuel and automation to actually perform them all," Sgobba wrote. "In short, the crowding of orbit is not an accident waiting to happen. It is a manageable, predictable engineering workload and the argument worth making publicly is that regulators should be treating it that way, by asking for these numbers up front rather than reacting to headlines about near misses after the fact."
Scottish Mortgage: Broker warns on SpaceX concentration
Canaccord Genuity (TSX:CF, LSE:CF) has initiated coverage of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC (LSE:SMT) with a 'hold' rating, warning that SpaceX now dominates the portfolio to an uncomfortable degree. Analyst Iain Scouller said the rocket company accounted for 28% of net assets at 30 June, once the trust's 8% balance sheet leverage is taken into account. He suggested investors who now view their holding as outsized after strong share price gains could top-slice their positions. The shares trade at 1446p against a net asset value of 1538p, a discount of about 6%. Canaccord thinks a discount of 5% to 10% is reasonable given the risk and reward attached to private companies and the potential volatility from the large SpaceX position. The trust has performed strongly, with the share price up 38% and net asset value up 36% over the year to 13 July. SpaceX contributed 14.9% to absolute performance over the year to 31 March, just over half the 27.4% net asset value return. Its valuation rose by £1.91 billion to £2.98 billion, equivalent to 79% of the £2.43 billion total increase in fair value across the private portfolio. Almost all of that gain remains unrealised. The realised gain over the year was just £0.8 million. Beneath the SpaceX number, the private portfolio was mixed, with 21 investments falling in value and only 14 rising. Scouller scored the trust's 126-page accounts eight out of 10, praising improved disclosure on unlisted holdings following a Financial Reporting Council thematic review. He would like to see a vintage year breakdown for private investments, more detail in regulatory announcements when valuations change, and industry classifications for each holding. SpaceX is currently classified as an industrial rather than a technology company, which helped lift the industrials weighting to 29% from 17%. Canaccord noted the trust applies a typical 10% illiquidity discount to unlisted valuations, and a further 10% for execution risk where a transaction has yet to close. The cost of debt is low at 3.6%, up from 3.1%, helped by long-dated debentures issued in 2020 and 2021 at rates below 3%. Gearing fell to 11% of net asset value from 13%. Scottish Mortgage spent £3.1 billion buying back 318.6 million shares, or 22% of share capital, over the two years to 15 March 2026. The board has reviewed the fee structure and rejected a performance fee, with the ongoing charge ratio at 0.33% of net assets.
Elon Musk promises 'no exceptions' after Sam Altman's one word response on xAI's Grok 'uploading' customer code to its own servers
Elon Musk has promised total transparency after a security researcher revealed that xAI's coding assistant, Grok Build, was secretly uploading entire private customer code repositories to a company-controlled Google Cloud storage bucket. In response, the billionaire promised to make the entire codebase of X (formerly Twitter) open source with "no exceptions". Musk's push for absolute transparency follows a sharp online critique from rival OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who publicly labeled the data privacy issue as "concerning"."Once we have completed our review for security vulnerabilities, we will make the entire codebase of 𝕏 open source, with no exceptions," Musk said in the post. "Moreover, we will invite third party reviewers to examine the system that is running to confirm that the open source code is what is running. Trust through total transparency is the only thing that should be believed," he added.The controversy erupted over the weekend when a security researcher discovered that xAI's tool was harvesting vastly more information than was actually required to answer standard coding requests. In one extreme test, as per a report by Axios, Grok Build uploaded a massive 5.1GB of data for a task that only needed 192KB, essentially collecting up to roughly 26,000 times more data than necessary.Security experts warn that this excessive data grab likely scooped up proprietary source code, private database passwords, API keys and cloud credentials. The breach quickly caught the attention of OpenAI's Sam Altman, who posted a blunt, one-word response on X calling the situation: "Concerning". In a separate post, Altman added that the incident was "a reason to favor open-source harnesses".Shortly after the security researcher published the findings, the uploads stopped without users needing to download a software patch, indicating that xAI had quickly shut down the system from its end.xAI released an official statement on Monday claiming that "no trace and code data is ever retained" for enterprise customers who hold strict zero-data-retention agreements.Furthermore, Musk announced a total purge of the collected information to pacify outraged developers. "As a precautionary measure, all user data that was uploaded to SpaceXAI before now will be completely and utterly deleted. Zero anything whatsoever will remain," Musk stated.
Terrafab is 'critical' to SpaceX's valuation and future, Oppenheimer says (SPCX:NASDAQ) | Seeking Alpha
Since it was first announced, there has been much ink spilled on the Terafab project between SpaceX (SPCX) and Tesla (TSLA). Now, Oppenheimer believes the semiconductor project is "critical" to the valuation -- and future -- of SpaceX. "In typical SPCX fashion, the pitch is The Terafab project enables supply independence, scaling of AI capabilities, and positions SpaceX as the only vertically integrated AI company, which is central to its AI growth story and potential market dominance. Terafab faces complexity in building fabs, workforce expansion needs, high equipment costs, limited fab experience at Tesla, and potential execution risks due to the speculative nature and dependency on Intel's technology. The co-funding of Terafab by SpaceX and Tesla could set the stage for a future merger between the two companies according to some analysts.
Elon Musk Reverses Course and Calls Anthropic the AI Leader - Memeburn
For South African businesses, the deal shows how access to AI tools increasingly depends on a small group of foreign infrastructure providers. Elon Musk has made a sharp U-turn on Anthropic. After months of attacking the Claude developer as "woke," hypocritical and unlikely to win the AI race, Musk now says Anthropic has become the industry's clear leader. He also praised its newest models and promised that he wouldn't use his control over computing infrastructure to seriously harm the company. The warmer language matters because Anthropic isn't just one of Musk's competitors anymore. It's also a major customer. Musk admits he got Anthropic wrong Musk acknowledged the reversal in a post on X, writing that he was "clearly wrong about Anthropic." "They are obviously currently the leader in AI," he added, while praising Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models. The comments represent a dramatic change from his earlier public attacks on the company, as detailed in Business Insider's report on Musk's Anthropic reversal. Earlier in 2026, Musk accused Anthropic of stealing training data, promoting political bias and acting hypocritically. He also dismissed the company's chances of beating rivals such as OpenAI, Google and his own AI operation. Now, he's describing the company's technology as the best available. That doesn't mean the rivalry has disappeared. Musk continues to promote Grok as a serious challenger, especially after the release of Grok 4.5. You can read our breakdown of Elon Musk's Grok 4.5 "Opus-class" claims for a closer look at how his model compares with Anthropic's systems. The compute deal changed the relationship The friendlier tone emerged after Anthropic signed a major computing agreement with SpaceX. According to Anthropic's official announcement of the SpaceX compute partnership, the company gained access to more than 300 megawatts of capacity, representing over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs at the Colossus 1 data centre. Anthropic said the added infrastructure would increase usage limits for Claude subscribers and API customers. Reported contract documents indicate that Anthropic agreed to pay around $1.25 billion per month for capacity through May 2029. However, termination clauses may allow either party to leave the agreement with relatively short notice. That creates an unusual relationship. Musk responded to suggestions that he could simply cut Anthropic off. He said he wouldn't end access in a way that seriously damaged the company, even though Claude competes with Grok. Praise doesn't remove the business risk Musk's assurance may calm some concerns, but Anthropic still faces a clear dependency. A frontier AI company needs more than clever researchers and strong software. It needs enormous data centres, reliable electricity, advanced chips and enough cooling equipment to run those chips around the clock. Only a small number of companies can provide that infrastructure at the required scale. We think the real story here isn't Musk's change of heart. It's the growing power held by companies that control computing capacity. Musk can compete against Anthropic through Grok while earning billions from Anthropic's demand for GPUs. In other words, he can benefit whether customers choose his AI model or one built by a rival. That helps explain why public criticism may now matter less than commercial cooperation. What it means for South African AI users For South African companies, the dispute may feel distant. But the infrastructure behind Claude, Grok and other major models directly affects local pricing, reliability and availability. A startup in Cape Town or Johannesburg might build its customer service, coding or research workflow around Claude. Yet the servers powering that service sit overseas and may depend on commercial agreements between a handful of American technology companies. If those agreements change, local customers have limited influence. This matters because African businesses often access AI as imported infrastructure, rather than technology they control themselves. The Anthropic-SpaceX relationship offers another reminder that model access can depend on corporate negotiations taking place thousands of kilometres away. It also strengthens the argument for more African investment in data centres, energy capacity and locally hosted AI systems. South Africa has a growing cloud and data-centre sector, but training a frontier model still requires infrastructure on a completely different scale. Musk's endorsement could shift again Musk's latest position combines praise with competition. He has acknowledged Anthropic's technical lead while continuing to argue that his younger AI business could catch up. The recent release of Grok 4.5 shows that Musk hasn't abandoned the race; he's simply recognising the strongest current opponent. What we're watching now is whether the cooperation survives the next major model launch. Anthropic needs stable computing capacity. Musk wants Grok to win. Those goals can coexist while the infrastructure deal remains profitable, but a closer contest could test that arrangement. So, is Musk genuinely reconsidering Anthropic, or has a billion-dollar customer simply become harder to criticise? FAQs Why did Elon Musk change his opinion about Anthropic? Musk admitted that he had misjudged Anthropic's progress and now considers it a leader in artificial intelligence. The company's newer Claude models have performed strongly in coding, reasoning and business tasks. Anthropic's commercial relationship with Musk-controlled infrastructure may also have softened the rivalry. Does Anthropic compete with Elon Musk's xAI? Yes, Anthropic and xAI are direct competitors in the advanced AI model market. Anthropic develops Claude, while xAI offers Grok across X and other Musk-owned platforms. However, the companies can still cooperate on computing infrastructure while competing for users. Why does Anthropic need so much computing power? Training and operating advanced AI models requires thousands of powerful chips, large data centres and substantial electricity. More computing capacity allows Anthropic to improve Claude and support more users without severe usage limits. It also helps the company compete with OpenAI, Google and xAI.
SpaceX ushered in a 'new era' for investing in space. Why the stock is now cratering.
2026 has already broken records for investment in the so-called 'space economy' with half a year left to go Rocket-launch businesses can enable companies like SpaceX or Rocket Lab to pursue more lucrative markets, experts say. SpaceX has paved the way for the space industry to flourish, and its initial public offering drove investment to new heights. Space Capital, a venture-capital firm, reported Wednesday that some $31.6 billion had been invested in 129 companies in what it calls the "space economy" in the second quarter of 2026. That includes companies developing space-related infrastructure and those making hardware and software connecting and using space-based assets, as well as ventures that benefit from those assets. In just six months, 2026 is already a record-breaking year for investment in the sector, according to Space Capital. Both the first and second quarters of 2026 are the top periods ever tracked by the firm, which declared a "new era" for the space economy marked by the SpaceX (SPCX) IPO. Much of that investment is tied to dozens of infrastructure-related funding rounds. That includes the orbital-data-center startup Cowboy Space's $275 million fundraise and orbital-transfer-vehicle maker Impulse Space's $500 million fundraise. Prometheus, the Jeff Bezos-backed physical artificial-intelligence startup, raised $12 billion last month in the biggest round tracked by Space Capital for the quarter. It's reportedly pursuing technology for aerospace activities; Bezos' Blue Origin is also raising outside cash to fund its own space business. Space investing has grown over the last few decades, largely thanks to SpaceX, according to Space Capital's Chad Anderson. The company "made the space economy an investible category," he told MarketWatch, when it began flying the Falcon 9 rocket. Leading up to SpaceX's record-breaking IPO in June, space stocks surged. But those gains were sharply reversed last month, and losses have continued this month. After soaring 26.5% in May, the Procure Space exchange-traded fund UFO fell 22.4% in June and has so far shed 9.7% in July, according to FactSet. The Tema Space Innovators ETF NASA has shown comparatively steeper losses of 24% in June and 17% so far in July, per FactSet, after running up 36.7% in May. Anderson and others chalk the recent selloff to a case of "FOMO," which stands for "fear of missing out." First, that drove investment in public space companies while SpaceX lingered in the private market, then sold those stocks to buy SpaceX's newly minted shares. One expert previously told MarketWatch that space ETFs are feeling an "investment coma" as investors grapple with owning volatile space stocks. "People wanted access to SpaceX and they couldn't get it, and so they got similar exposure to other companies playing in the space," Anderson said. While there's "a lot of opportunity" with some of those companies, he said, some investors probably sold their shares to buy SpaceX, which has been volatile since its IPO. On both Monday and Tuesday, SpaceX nearly retreated to its IPO price of $135 a share, which valued the company at more than $1.7 trillion. The stock closed on Tuesday at $136.08 a share, down 32.6% from its June 16 closing price of $201.80. On Wednesday, the stock bounced 0.7% to get back to the $137 level in premarket trading. Don't miss: SpaceX's stock threatens to fall below the IPO price. Do investors face a 'crisis' if it does? "There's going to be even more volatility," Anderson said, citing the immense demand around the IPO and interest in SpaceX, the "apex player" in the space economy. Thanks to SpaceX's complicated lockup schedule, a large portion of insider-held shares is set to be released for trading next month. But if investors can stick it out, they could reap the rewards, analysts say. The average target price for SpaceX stock is $241.80 a share, according to the FactSet consensus, implying about 78% upside to Tuesday's closing price. And some analysts see potential in its rivals as well. KeyBanc analyst Michael Leshock sees room for Rocket Lab (RKLB) and Firefly Aerospace (FLY) to compete in "niche" markets for rocket launches, according to a note to clients last month. Both companies are currently working on new vehicles. Rocket Lab has also agreed to buy Iridium Communications (IRDM), its latest acquisition - one it called a "shortcut" to offering space-based applications. It somewhat mimics Amazon's purchase of Globalstar (GSAT) in April, which includes valuable spectrum licenses. Anderson said his firm expects to see more mergers and acquisitions in this quarter as space companies expand their offerings in search of profits. "Launch alone doesn't make a great business," he said. Most of SpaceX's revenue comes from its Starlink internet business, which comes from its rockets that send satellites into orbit. SpaceX has also agreed to buy an AI-coding startup to boost its Grok models. It also plans to eventually give its AI offerings a boost with space-based data centers. -William Gavin This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. (END) Dow Jones Newswires 07-15-26 0758ET Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman Says Elon Musk Found a 'Pretty Good Idea' in Leasing SpaceXAI's Unused Grok Capacity to Anthropic
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Cerebras Systems Inc. CEO Andrew Feldman says SpaceXAI, formerly xAI, moved into rented AI computing because its processors were not busy enough, as Grok drew less usage than expected. Feldman Blames Grok's Weak Early Adoption Speaking with Molly O'Shea on the Sourcery podcast on Monday, Feldman explained that Musk's company pivoted to an operator that rents out AI infrastructure because its Grok model struggled with early enterprise market adoption, leaving billions of dollars in hardware sitting idle. "You have to ask why they had available capacity," Feldman said. "They had available capacity because the Grok model wasn't used very much." Cerebras CEO @andrewdfeldman explains why @elonmusk and SpaceXAI made a deal to lease GPUs to Anthropic: "You have to ask why they had available capacity... They had available capacity because the Grok model wasn't used very much." "They had these GPUs sitting around, and... https://t.co/1IHsE98NR3 pic.twitter.com/ssomhhLJJl -- sourcery (@sourceryy) July 13, 2026 Trending: Avoid the #1 Investing Mistake: How Your 'Safe' Holdings Could Be Costing You Big Time Feldman said SpaceXAI could not afford to leave equipment idle. "They had these GPUs sitting around, and that's a bad idea," he said. He pointed to IPO-bound Anthropic's agreement to use SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Anthropic said the site provides more than 300 megawatts through over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs, allowing it to double Claude Code limits, remove peak-hour reductions and raise API ceilings. "They leased a whole block of them to Anthropic, and looked up and said, 'Whoa, that's a pretty good idea,'" Feldman said. "We had all these GPUs. Our model wasn't a success, but we can have a great business by stepping into what is a constrained market." Anthropic Deal Monetizes Idle GPU Capacity In May, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month for Colossus and Colossus II capacity through May 2029. Both sides can terminate with 90 days' notice, and Musk described the arrangement as a six-month lease, leaving its long-term value uncertain. See Also: Skip the Regrets: The Essential Retirement Tips Experts Wish Everyone Knew Earlier. Colossus 1 supported Grok's development, but Reuters described its capacity as unused prior to the Anthropic agreement. SpaceXAI said Grok 4.5 trained across tens of thousands of Nvidia GB300 processors.
SpaceX is the Dutch East India Company of the space age
In August 1602, more than 1 100 investors - from wealthy merchants to ordinary craftsmen - subscribed to the world's first initial public offering. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC, raised Gld6.4-million to build a maritime trade network stretching from Amsterdam to the East Indies. On 12 June 2026, SpaceX raised US$75-billion in the largest IPO in Wall Street history, pricing at $135/share and closing its first session more than 19% higher. Demand was roughly double the shares on offer - and South Africans were not left out, pouring R179-million into the stock through EasyEquities in just two days. Separated by 424 years, the parallel is worth taking seriously. Neither company was first into its frontier - Portuguese fleets reached the East Indies long before the Dutch, and governments have been launching rockets since the 1950s. What both did first was ask the public capital markets to fund a frontier, at a scale and time horizon no private syndicate would stomach. The VOC's real innovations were financial. As economic historian Gerard Koot notes in his history of the company, it introduced limited liability for shareholders and, unlike earlier ventures wound up after a single voyage, locked in its capital for a decade - a permanent fund for voyages that took years to pay off. Tradeable shares made the risk bearable, and gave the world the Amsterdam Stock Exchange as a by-product. SpaceX's logic is strikingly similar. The capital-hungry Starship programme - the company wants to be flying a rocket every 53 minutes within five years - and the Starlink constellation that is rewriting the economics of global connectivity consume cash on a scale that outgrew even Silicon Valley's deepest private pockets. As in 1602, the public market was the only pool of capital big enough. State-like influence The VOC's monopoly came stamped with sovereign powers: the right to make treaties with Asian governments, enlist soldiers, wage war, and build and administer forts - a company that behaved like a state. SpaceX holds no royal charter, yet its position is not far off a monopoly in practice. In 2025 it accounted for roughly half of all orbital launches worldwide and, by mass delivered to orbit, more than 80% of global upmass. It is also the de facto ferryman for Nasa astronauts: when a bungled test flight of Boeing's Starliner left two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station for 286 days, it was a SpaceX capsule that brought them home last year. Read: China nets a falling rocket in reusability race with SpaceX More telling still is Starlink's geopolitical weight. The constellation became crucial to Ukraine's communications infrastructure within days of Russia's invasion, and decisions about its coverage have shaped battlefield outcomes - leading Foreign Policy to argue that Starlink has effectively privatised a slice of geopolitics. Buyers of SPCX are not simply buying a technology company; they are buying into an entity with sovereign-level leverage over who connects, where and on what terms. The VOC was never just a shipping line: it ran an inter-Asian trading system from Persia to Japan, dealt in spices, textiles, porcelain and silver, and administered territory - a diversified enterprise built on control of a frontier's logistics. SpaceX, likewise, is no longer just a rocket company. In February 2026, it executed the largest M&A deal on record: an all-stock acquisition of Elon Musk's xAI valued at $250-billion, folding the X social platform and Grok AI models into the listed entity in service of Musk's ambition to build orbital data centres. The result is a company betting the rocket farm on AI: a space, connectivity and AI conglomerate whose parts reinforce one another the way the VOC's ships, ports and monopolies once did. The VOC is one of the few frontier enterprises with a share price record spanning two centuries - and its first lesson is patience. Shareholders waited more than seven years for a dividend, and the first, in 1610, was paid in mace - the spice, not money. Frontier infrastructure pays out slowly. There is no SpaceX moonbase yet, let alone Mars colonies. The second is that the frontier premium was real, but earned over decades. Economist and historian Lodewijk Petram, who reconstructed the price record from 17th-century merchants' papers, calculates an average annual return of 8.69% between 1603 and 1697 - comfortably above the 4-6% paid on Dutch government bonds. The third is that the premium decays as the frontier matures. After 1650, returns settled at a bond-like 3.5-4% a year. As economic historians Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude concluded: "The profits earned by the Company's actual equity were modest after the 1650s, and vanishingly small after 1730." The fourth is that price and reality can part ways entirely. The VOC's share price hit its all-time high in 1720 - not because of anything happening in Batavia, but because a speculative frenzy had spread from London across the continent. By then the company's underlying returns were already bond-like. (And the viral claim that the VOC was once worth $8-trillion in today's money is, as Petram has shown, off by a factor of roughly 8 000. SpaceX, at over $2-trillion, is already far larger in real terms than the VOC ever was - the comparison is about the category of enterprise, not its size.) Where the analogy strains The last lesson is the bleakest: dominance is not a perpetuity. From 1730, the VOC paid dividends it had not earned, funding them by drawing down its capital. War with Britain finished the job, the state nationalised the wreck in 1795 and the charter lapsed on 31 December 1799. There are caveats. The VOC's monopoly was granted by the state and enforced by cannon - its most profitable decades followed ruthless violence in the Banda Islands - while SpaceX's dominance is commercial and contestable. Rivals are massing: Europe's Iris2 constellation and Amazon Leo, which is heading for South Africa before Starlink is even licensed here. And as TechCentral has noted, the biggest IPO ever is also one of the riskiest, given its dependence on one man and on programmes whose economics remain unproven. None of this is a prediction about the share price. What the comparison establishes is the category of thing investors have just been offered: not a stake in a product company but a stake in the infrastructure of a frontier, with all the reach, entanglement and political gravity that implies. The VOC's record suggests such an investment can beat the market for decades - and that the premium fades once the frontier is tamed, and that the price, at the moment of greatest euphoria, can be the least reliable guide to what lies beneath. Space is the "final frontier", after all: no one knows how it will play out. Going boldly where no company has gone before carries immense potential reward - and equally immense risk. - © 2026 NewsCentral Media
