Shares of SpaceX plunged about 16 percent on Monday, June 22, closing near $155 — their lowest level since the company’s record-setting initial public offering on June 12 — as a brief post-listing rally unravelled into one of the most violent reversals in recent market memory.
The single-day drop wiped roughly $400 billion from the company’s market value and extended a three-day slide to about 23 percent, leaving SpaceX with a valuation just above $2 trillion. It was the third consecutive losing session for a company that only 10 days earlier had orchestrated the largest IPO ever.
The stock had soared after its debut, peaking near $225 on June 16 before the direction abruptly turned. By Monday’s close it had given back the bulk of those gains, slipping beneath the price at which it began trading. On Tuesday the shares clawed back some ground, edging up toward $162 in a partial rebound.
The latest leg down accelerated after SpaceX said it would sell investment-grade bonds for the first time, a debut debt offering that is expected to be the opening move in a large borrowing program to fund the company’s artificial-intelligence and orbital ambitions. The disclosure unsettled investors who had treated the IPO as a one-way bet.
Skeptics point to an uncertain path to profitability despite the company’s vast cash pile, the heavy capital demands of its space-based data-center plans, and a valuation that rests heavily on confidence in Elon Musk rather than near-term fundamentals. Bulls counter that SpaceX dominates global launch and satellite-internet markets with no comparable rival.
The sell-off did not occur in isolation. It coincided with a broad retreat from technology and AI-linked shares, as investors reassessed stretched valuations across the sector and braced for a less accommodative Federal Reserve.
For all the volatility, SpaceX remains one of the most valuable public companies in the world. But the speed of the round trip — from record IPO to below-issue price in under two weeks — has become an early test of how public markets will value a company whose ambitions stretch years into the future.