SpaceX IPO Live: What Elon Musk’s IPO Means for Tech, the Market, and You

I just did a quick google search on the SpaceX IPO. How many hundreds of articles are we actually expected to read about this?

Given the hype surrounding Friday’s big IPO, there are a few misconceptions worth addressing ahead of time. While many people view SpaceX as a massive, dominant space enterprise, it’s more complicated than that.

« It’s actually a very successful but relatively small satellite launch company, attached to a money-losing social media company and a money-burning artificial intelligence company, and then sprinkled with a lot of hype about humanity going between the planets, » said Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the Financial Times’ financial blog, Alphaville.

In other words, it’s perhaps closer to a vertically integrated space and communications company with ambitious, high-risk side bets. Of course, at its core, SpaceX is a launch company that designs rockets (like the Falcon 9 and Starship) and sells access to space. But surrounding it are these related businesses — most notably Starlink, its satellite Internet network, and xAI, which SpaceX acquired in February 2026. And since xAI includes the X social media platform and X’s chatbot, Grok, they’re also under the SpaceX umbrella.

X is not revenue-sustainable. And like most cash-burning AI businesses, xAI is expensive to run and has very heavy losses.

You could say that the SpaceX ecosystem revolves around a single goal: building the infrastructure needed for global connectivity and, ultimately, space colonization. But the main concern is that SpaceX’s overall package is driven more by hype and momentum than by its proven profitability.

Wigglesworth said the biggest immediate risk is clear: Shares could fall soon after they start trading. This result will affect both the company and investors, although it is not necessarily a signal of wider economic problems. As he noted, IPOs « do poorly all the time. »

In the first few weeks after an IPO, price movements can be misleading. Opening day could be volatile, with banks helping stabilize prices and strong retail demand potentially pushing shares higher. We will also see index funds start to be bought, which could help push the price up a bit.

However, as Wigglesworth pointed out, the more meaningful test will come in a month’s time when the market determines whether there is sustained demand « for a company trading at some of the brightest valuation ratios we’ve seen in history. »

So here’s another misconception to address: If SpaceX is popular, it’s safe to buy, right?

I didn’t have to read too many articles to get an answer to that.

« Popularity and notoriety are poor indicators of what makes a successful investment, » Wigglesworth told me. « Even good companies can be bad investments at a dumb price. »