SpaceX’s Stock Has Fallen Below Its IPO Price. Now It Has ‘Dampened the Mood’ For Other IPOs

SpaceX's blockbuster debut on the public markets was widely seen as the event that would reopen the door for billion-dollar technology initial public offerings, but now the aerospace giant's declining share price is cooling investor enthusiasm for the next generation of mega IPOs.

Shares of Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company traded below $124 on Friday, about 8% below their $135 IPO price and more than 40% below their all-time intraday high of $225.64, according to CNBC. Despite the selloff, SpaceX remains valued at more than $1.6 trillion, making it one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies.

The sharp decline comes after major index providers took unprecedented steps to accelerate SpaceX's inclusion in widely followed stock benchmarks. Ahead of the company's June IPO, Nasdaq revised its listing rules to allow SpaceX to join the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, bringing automatic buying from index-tracking funds.

FTSE Russell also modified its methodology to make it easier for newly public mega-cap companies like SpaceX to qualify for its indexes. The rule changes were widely viewed as recognition that today's largest technology companies can reach trillion-dollar valuations before going public, making them too significant for index providers to ignore.

Now, however, investors are questioning whether those fast-track additions could expose passive investors to companies whose market prices have not yet stabilized. "It does dampen the mood. It would be hard for it not to," Michael Khouw, strategist at Tidal Financial Group and options trader, told CNBC.

The concerns extend beyond SpaceX itself. Several of Silicon Valley's biggest private companies are widely expected to pursue public listings over the next year. Artificial intelligence leaders OpenAI and Anthropic are among the most closely watched candidates.

Anthropic has already begun holding meetings with prospective investors ahead of a possible IPO later this year, CNBC previously reported, while OpenAI could reportedly delay its public debut until 2027, according to The New York Times. A weaker aftermarket performance for SpaceX could make investors more selective about assigning lofty valuations to those companies.

The broader IPO market has also become increasingly concentrated around a handful of enormous offerings. According to data from Renaissance Capital cited by CNBC, just 86 IPOs have priced in the United States so far in 2026, down 22.5% from the same point last year.

Despite the lower number of deals, total proceeds have surged nearly 800% to $142.4 billion, largely because of a small number of record-breaking offerings. SpaceX alone raised $75 billion in its IPO. Semiconductor maker SK Hynix generated more than $26 billion through its U.S. share listing, while Cerebras, Innio, and Madison Air collectively raised another $10.23 billion.

The concentration of capital into only a few transactions has increased the importance of each major listing's performance, making SpaceX's decline particularly significant for market sentiment.

Adding to investor caution is a broader reassessment of artificial intelligence spending.
Earlier this month, Meta announced plans to sell excess computing capacity, fueling questions about whether the industry's massive investment in AI infrastructure has outpaced demand.

"We've had the narrative change, and there are just a lot more questions being asked," JJ Kinahan, head of retail expansion at Cboe Global Markets, told CNBC. "There have been so many questions around AI in terms of the amount of money being spent and the return that companies are seeing on it."