@xizhe_chan: SpaceX is the largest IPO in history, with intricate price games and valuation logic behind it. On June 12, 2026, SpaceX debuted on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX at an issue price of $135, closing at $161 on the first day, up about 19%, with a market cap exceeding $2 trillion, setting a record…

SpaceX is the largest IPO in history, with a highly complex pricing game and valuation logic behind it.

On June 12, 2026, SpaceX landed on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, with an IPO price of $135. It closed at $161 on its first day, up about 19%, pushing its market cap past $2 trillion and setting the record for the largest IPO in human history. Meanwhile, nearly all tokenized new issuance in the crypto space fell through, mainly because underwriters allocated extremely limited quotas to crypto channels.

On valuation logic, SpaceX’s $2 trillion price tag is essentially a bundled story of three businesses: Starlink (Connectivity) is the only profitable segment, with an estimated operating profit of about $4.4 billion in 2025, supporting the company’s cash flow; the rocket launch business builds competitive moats but operates at a loss; and the AI segment (xAI) suffers a deep loss of $6.35 billion, yet the market assigns it roughly 93% of the valuation weight, corresponding to a potential market of $26.5 trillion.

On earnings anchors, the company disclosed two computing lease agreements: Anthropic pays 1.25 billion per month (annualized ~15 billion, through May 2029); Google pays about $920 million per month (starting October 2026, through June 2029). However, both contracts include a 90-day termination clause at any time, so they cannot be considered as deterministic long-term revenue.

On valuation concerns, the current price-to-sales ratio is about 92–100x, higher than the most expensive stock in the S&P 500, Palantir (about 73x). Historical data shows that the vast majority of IPOs with a price-to-sales ratio above 40x underperform the broader market within three years. If one expects the market cap to double to $4 trillion, that would approach the size of Nvidia, currently the world’s highest-valued company — a difficult self-consistency given the company is still operating at an overall loss.

On the short-term structure, Nasdaq amended its rules in May 2026, allowing the top 40 new stocks by market cap to be included in the Nasdaq-100 just 15 trading days after listing, waiving the minimum public float requirement. This means passive ETFs like QQQ will be forced to buy, and combined with indices like FTSE Russell, mechanical buying is estimated at about $22–27 billion. However, this is a one-time event, while the unlocking selling pressure will begin to be released in batches after the Q2 earnings report (around July–August), continuing through the second half of the year until full unlock in December. Musk personally is locked until June 2027.

Conclusion: SpaceX is a great company with undeniable engineering capabilities, but its current valuation has already fully priced in optimistic expectations. In the short term, the chip structure is slightly bullish, with passive buying providing temporary support; in the medium term, when passive buying is exhausted and coincides with unlocking dates, the probability of valuation reverting to fundamentals is high. From an investment rather than speculation perspective, waiting for a more reasonable price is a safer choice.