Two market-moving events land within 24 hours for SpaceX this week, and a third looms just a few months out. The stock’s short trading history has already seen a dizzying debut, a sharp pullback, and a stabilisation near $160. Now a forced buying wave from index funds, the end of lock-up restrictions on analyst coverage, and the signing of a massive cloud contract with Alphabet are converging to test whether the current valuation can hold.
After Monday’s close, SpaceX will officially join the Nasdaq-100. Index-tracking funds and ETFs must adjust their portfolios, triggering a passive inflow that BNP Paribas analysts estimate at $4.3 billion. The move comes just one day before the quiet period expires for the 23 banks that underwrote the company’s record-breaking $85.7 billion initial public offering on June 12. From Tuesday onwards, those banks can publish official research, giving institutional and retail investors their first broad set of valuations from the underwriters themselves. Independent houses have already thrown out targets as high as $401, though the consensus has yet to form.
The stock closed Friday at $159.23, up 1.07%, and has been trading in a band between $150 and $165 for the past two weeks after surging from its $135 IPO price to nearly $225 in the immediate aftermath. With only 5% of the company’s shares in public hands, the market capitalisation of roughly $2.1 trillion rests on a very narrow float — a setup that amplifies any large directional bet.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives initiated coverage with an outperform rating and a $190 price target, representing about 16% upside. His sum-of-the-parts valuation pegs the launch business at $66 billion, the Starlink satellite internet division at $600 billion, and the emerging artificial intelligence infrastructure segment — the largest piece — at $1.8 trillion. That AI bet is underpinned by a three-year contract with Alphabet that begins in October 2026 and calls for monthly payments of $920 million. Ives expects AI-related revenue to swell to over $80 billion by 2028, driven by the construction of orbital data centres.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
But the highflying valuation masks a punishing bottom line. SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.9 billion on revenue of $18.7 billion in 2025, and the first quarter of 2026 added another $4.28 billion in red ink. Most of the damage comes from the Starship program, which burns an estimated $3 billion a year, and from heavy capital spending on AI infrastructure — total capex reached $20.7 billion last year, of which $12.7 billion went into AI capacity alone.
Starlink, meanwhile, remains the profitable backbone. The satellite division generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating profit in 2025. Subscriptions hit 10.3 million at the start of 2026, double the prior year’s count. The network’s constellation now exceeds 10,700 active satellites after a July 1 launch of 24 more units from California, the company’s 79th Falcon 9 flight of the year. The first stage, flying for the seventh time, landed successfully on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You.
Competition is closing in. Amazon’s Project Kuiper fired 29 satellites into orbit on July 2 using an Atlas V rocket and plans to begin service later this year with terminals priced under $400. A key regulatory decision arrives on July 22, when the FCC votes on the Space Modernization Order, which could slash satellite licensing timelines from years to weeks and potentially boost Starlink’s capacity sevenfold.
For now, the immediate catalyst is this week’s dual event. Passive buying from the index inclusion and the first wave of official analyst opinions will test whether the current price reflects the underlying business reality — or whether the market is already pricing in a future that Starship and Starlink V3 have yet to deliver.
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