The Valuation Keeps Drifting Down — And the Date Is Set

When SpaceX last denied reports of a valuation cut, the company could still claim uncertainty. The numbers are now harder to defend.

SpaceX is targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation for its June 12 IPO on Nasdaq, according to 24/7 Wall Street. That's down from the $2 trillion-plus figure Bloomberg reported in April, and below the $1.8 trillion floor Motley Fool cited just days after the S-1 dropped. Musk posted on X that the lower figure was "false." The trajectory, however, is clear — the number is moving in one direction.

This will still be the largest public offering in history. What is in dispute is whether it's worth it.

What the S-1 Actually Shows

The SEC filing was, in Motley Fool's words, "mostly a disappointment."

The numbers are notable. In 2025, SpaceX revenue rose 33% to $18.7 billion — solid growth. But the company swung to a GAAP operating loss of $2.6 billion, compared to a profit of $466 million in 2024. The culprit: R&D spending exploded after the xAI merger.

Q1 2026 was worse on the growth front. Revenue slowed to 15.4% year-over-year, hitting $4.7 billion. The GAAP operating loss was $1.94 billion for a single quarter. R&D expense more than doubled to $3.5 billion in those three months alone.

Bloomberg confirmed the AI unit burned $7.72 billion in Q1 2026 and posted a $2.47 billion operating loss in the same period. Bloomberg called it plainly: "this certainly won't be the last time SpaceX shakes the tin can for funding."

The xAI Problem Nobody's Talking About Loudly Enough

When SpaceX merged with xAI, the deal valued xAI at $250 billion. That looked aggressive then. It looks worse now.

Anthropic just announced $47 billion in annualized run-rate revenue and raised money at a valuation of $965 billion, according to Motley Fool. xAI's 2025 revenue was $3.2 billion — less than 7% of Anthropic's run rate — and xAI's quarterly growth slowed to just 12.5% in Q1 2026.

SpaceX absorbed an AI company at a $250 billion valuation that is being outpaced by a competitor in both revenue and growth rate. That gap is shrinking in the wrong direction.

Wall Street's FOMO Machine

The New York Times identified exactly how the IPO is being sold: bankers are engineering fear of missing out. The pitch isn't "this is a great deal." The pitch is "you can't afford to skip it."

Nasdaq sweetened that trap. According to 24/7 Wall Street, Nasdaq was willing to modify index inclusion rules to allow SpaceX shares to enter major indexes almost immediately after listing. That forces passive ETFs and index funds to buy the stock regardless of valuation. Demand becomes automatic. Price discovery becomes artificial.

That's a mechanism designed to protect early institutional buyers, not retail investors.

History Is a Buzz Kill

24/7 Wall Street ran the actual data. IPOs valued above $50 billion have produced a median one-year loss of 31.9%. Applied to a $1.75 trillion valuation, that's roughly $560 billion in market cap evaporation.

Alphabet and Alibaba both crashed hard after their IPO debuts before eventually recovering. They had the fundamentals to recover. SpaceX is currently losing nearly $2 billion per quarter from operations.

On a price-to-sales basis, SpaceX is trading at close to 100x revenue — more expensive than every single S&P 500 company, according to Motley Fool. It is also losing money.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Getting Wrong

Most outlets are treating this like a horse race — who gets an allocation, which fund is in, what Musk said on X. That's the wrong frame.

The real story is a company with decelerating growth, widening losses, and an AI division that got merged in at a valuation that looks increasingly disconnected from reality — now asking the public to buy in at a price that gives it more market cap than any company ever listed.

The NYT's framing that "sky-high IPO pricing isn't great for real people" is correct, but they buried the lede. This isn't just about price. It's about the structural setup: index rule changes, institutional FOMO marketing, and a June 12 deadline that compresses the time ordinary investors have to read and understand a complex filing.

Why This Matters

If you're a pension fund manager, a VC with early shares, or an institutional allocator who gets in at IPO price — you might be fine. You have time horizons and hedges that regular people don't.

If you're an individual investor thinking about buying SpaceX on day one: you're looking at a company burning nearly $8 billion per quarter in its AI division, growing revenue at 15%, trading at 100x sales, and being marketed with engineered urgency rather than fundamental value.

History suggests a one-in-three chance of a 32% decline over the next year.

Waiting for the hype to cool and the price to reflect reality makes sense. The stock will still be there in October. The FOMO won't.