SpaceX stock slides 14% from IPO price after raising $85B in historic debut

SpaceX, the company that made reusable rockets look routine, is learning that public markets are a different kind of reentry problem. Shares have dropped below their $135 IPO price by mid-July 2026, erasing the euphoric gains from a debut that raised approximately $85.7 billion, the largest initial public offering ever conducted.

The stock, trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, opened at $150 on June 12 and closed its first session near $161, a roughly 19-20% pop from the IPO price. That first-day surge pushed SpaceX’s market capitalization above $2.1 trillion and, briefly, made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

The numbers behind the record

SpaceX priced 555.6 million shares at $135 each on June 11, initially raising $75 billion. After underwriters Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley fully exercised their overallotment option, adding 83.3 million shares, gross proceeds climbed to roughly $85.7 billion. The debut valuation landed around $1.77 trillion before the market decided it wanted to pay even more on day one.

For context, that $85.7 billion raise dwarfs every previous IPO by a wide margin. Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing, the prior record holder, raised about $25.6 billion. SpaceX more than tripled that in a single transaction.

Early investors including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz finally got their liquidity event after years of riding SpaceX through private funding rounds.

What went wrong after the pop

The slide from $161 to below $135 represents a decline of more than 14% from the first-day close. Two forces appear to be driving the pullback. First, the straightforward mechanics of profit-taking. Investors who got in at $135 and watched shares spike 19% in hours had every incentive to lock in gains. Second, a broader market reassessment around AI infrastructure spending has cast a shadow over high-growth technology names. SpaceX, which operates Starlink’s satellite internet constellation alongside its launch business, sits at the intersection of aerospace and digital infrastructure, making it susceptible to shifting sentiment on big-ticket tech capex.

Why this IPO matters beyond SpaceX

The sheer scale of SpaceX’s listing has structural implications for capital markets. An $85.7 billion raise absorbs an enormous amount of institutional capital in a single transaction, potentially crowding out smaller IPOs competing for the same allocation dollars.

SpaceX going public also removes one of the last great arguments for private market investing. For years, the company was the crown jewel of the late-stage private market, a reason for institutional investors to accept the illiquidity and opacity of venture-stage allocations. Now that it trades on Nasdaq, that particular gravitational pull disappears.

For investors weighing whether the current price represents a buying opportunity or a warning sign, the key variable is SpaceX’s revenue trajectory. In the fiscal year leading up to its IPO, SpaceX reported revenues of $18.67 billion, significantly bolstered by Starlink’s subscription-based revenue model. Whether those revenue streams justify a valuation that still sits in the neighborhood of $1.8 trillion, even after the selloff, depends heavily on growth rates that only future quarters will reveal.