After pricing its IPO at $135 per share in June 2026, valuing the company at over $2 trillion and briefly making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, SpaceX stock surged past $225. By late July, shares had cratered nearly 50% from those peaks, trading in the $114 to $120 range, dipping below the IPO price for the first time around July 15.
From record IPO to investor exodus
SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut was historic by any measure. For context, pre-IPO tender offers in late 2025 had valued shares around $421, implying a private valuation near $800 billion. The public market initially decided SpaceX was worth more than double that.
Several sessions saw single-day drops of 6% to 10% or more, wiping out hundreds of billions in market value from the peaks. The decline was attributed to investors considering the company’s enormous spending on artificial intelligence and related technologies and concluding that the valuation had gotten ahead of the fundamentals.
The Musk contagion effect
