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SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1 trillion in value in a month
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2026
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When you consider the kind of life changing amounts of money even a few thousand shares sell for at current rates, they'd be crazy not to.
It's fallen maybe 12% since the IPO. You're talking about shares that were trading for a few bucks during the original debt offerings. Marc Andressen has something like a 6000% ROI on his holdings even at current prices.
If this company dropped by 50%, it would still be worth in the $800B range. There's no world in which current shareholders don't make fuckoff amounts of profit. The only question is whether we're talking nine figures or ten.
Well some of the shareholders, clearly none of the peope who had to wait for the IPO are going to make some unless they managed to sell off in the 4 days after IPO.
Beyond that, we don't know that much about the pre-IPO costs and how low it can go for them to still make out like bandits.
Fully unironically know a few folks who did exactly that. Got in at $135 and sold on the way up to $200, because it's insane to hold a company with a P/E of... 1000x? Something stupid like that.
We know what firms like Thiel's Founder's Fund and Andressen Horowitz paid for minority positions during the earlier funding rounds (Series A -J and assorted debt swaps). And we also know what a few of the outsider funds - EchoStar, for instance - paid for advanced shares shortly before the public offering. There were definitely some deals that were worse than others (the July 2025 Tender at $212/share was EchoStar, the December 2025 Tender at $421/share was to the company's own employees as well as some other earlier investors).
Even then, the volume of shares sold was miniscule compared to shares outstanding.
50% might prove optimistic. The rules that were bent for SpaceX exist for reasons. The August dump will be 4X the shares already in the wild. You are right, employees would be crazy not to sell at current rates. SpaceX employees are probably smart and/or educated enough to read the white papers on all these science fantasy projects and know they are pure fantasy. Cool stuff to fire up investment bros, but not the kind of thing they want to be tasked with trying to make reality. Point being, the floor for what an employee would not sale is going to be really low. True believers might hold, but anyone who smells the BS or just likes money will gleefully sell at 50% of current.
Meanwhile, China is making great strides in VTVL and much cheaper, open source LLMs. The EU is eager to find home grown or at the least not-American tech solutions. Every headline makes SpaceX look less and less likely to make ANY profits, let alone completely dominate supposedly multi-trillion dollar markets.
Even if they did believe in the possibilities, they are likely eager to offload in favor of a more diversified investment strategy.
Most folks I know that even think their company is in decent enough shape sell off RSUs quick as they can because they broadly don't trust having a bunch in a single company stock. Especially if that stock collapsing would likely correlate with them losing their paycheck too.
SpaceX employees are probably not happy about being used as a dumping ground for an AI black hole company. I expect many are counting the days until they can leave.
So, from 1% of market cap to 2%?
Spread over shareholders who still hold north of 90% of the company?
China (and India and Brazil, among others) are all making huge investments in aerospace. The EU is certainly making a lot of noise, but because everything is privatized to fuck, what you're left with is guess like Richard Branson paddin wallets while programs like the FCAS flounder.
Starlink is still the modern word in satellite communication. That's worth a few hundred billion on it's face.
Will this advantage last? Idk. Probably not, but maybe.
At a minimum, if you want to be friendly with America, you'll need to buy from Musk.
Starlink, which is nowhere near worth that much even under a best case scenario (compare to other comm companies), can make money and SpaceX still not make any profits because of the the xAI money pit. Also, no, the advantage will not last. The last 30 years of satellite communications have been one seemingly promising idea after another that fizzled out or was made obsolete. No reason to think that trend will change now, especially not when the Starlink model is extremely resource intensive.
The existing network plus whatever Elon Musk can launch in the next twenty years, assuming an absence of competition could be a trillion dollar company. When you've got a monopoly on military satellite technology in a market full of warring super states, that's a lot of economic leverage.
I'm deeply skeptical that he'll have that edge for long. But I can at least interesting someone who thinks it's worth a gamble.
And that no one comes up with a better tech and extending it out 20 years for... reasons. Sure. Ok. Trillion dollar company under those very reasonable assumptions.
Musk's done an excellent job of cornering the market in a few other sectors, EVs most notably. You'll notice how all the other American firms and even a few of the Japanese and Korean companies are bowing out and running away.
I'm not saying its a safe bet. But it's not as unreasonable as you might think.
The existing network will be gone within a few years. By design. If all goes well for SpaceX, it will have been replaced by a new network, which will also be gone within a few years.
Just pointing out that the existing network can't be relied upon without continued re-investment constantly. It's hard to build up a strong first mover advantage when the fruits of the effort burn up in the atmosphere routinely.
Who is going to pay the money for there to be a reasonable return on that value? I don't have Starlink, I have no need for it, since there's a cable coming into where I live. Sure there's people that live in remote places that it's useful for. But that's not a lot of people.
There are military applications, but Musk is a flake not military wants to be dependent on him. Every country in the world is spending a lot of money to end their dependence on the US defense industrial complex, so there will be alternatives for military purposes.
Maybe it can work in vehicles? But if the price is too high people will just use 5G or just go without access for a while.
Starlink is just a product to fill in some edge cases. It will probably make a steady profit, but there will be competition from Europe and China before too long.
Government militaries, mostly. The Pentagon and it's NATO allies, militaries across the Pacific Rim, Ukraine, etc.
Yeah, so everyone is moving away from dependencies on the US. Not likely anyone will want their comms dependent on a system a US President (or Elon Musk) can shut down for leverage in a trade deal.
Balance of Trade with the US has only grown year-over-year for the last decade, with the singular exception of 2023.
Everyone is not moving away from US dependencies, especially wrt to natural gas imports. European liberals are flirting with a degree of sovereign independence, while European conservatives are more and more aligned with MAGA tech billionaires. Latin American fascists are fully enthralled by the Rubio State Department as everyone from El Salvador to Costa Rica to Honduras to Peru race to build out the biggest network of Supermax Prisons for their northern neighbors to exploit. Out in the Pacific Rim, all the countries with American military bases are churning out pro-American politicians as fast as their mega-corporations can mint them. From South Korea to Japan to the Philippines to Australia, it's been a parade of Trump-friendly flunkies and ultra-nationalist goon squads. India's more aligned with America than it has ever been. The Middle Eastern states, from Egypt to Qatar to Turkiye, love Trump and can't stop sending him bribe money. The big African economies, from Nigeria to Cameroon to Ethiopia, have all been aligned with Trump since his first term (thanks largely to his friendliness with international petrochemical firms).
I wish that were true, but it simply is not. Multi-nationals and government militaries are all very eager to sign on with Musk, while their host countries debate the merits of investing in alternative programs. But, for the time being, Starlink is really the only game in town.