SpaceX closed near $135 per share on Tuesday, erasing a peak gain that briefly valued Elon Musk's combined space and AI operation above $350 billion. The stock debuted at $135 four weeks ago in what became the largest technology IPO on record by gross proceeds. The 24% decline from the intra-month high occurred across eight trading sessions, two of which followed the company's addition to the Nasdaq-100 index last Thursday.
The IPO itself departed from Wall Street convention in at least three material ways. Musk retained super-voting shares that give him veto authority over any acquisition or major capital deployment, a structure more common in European dual-class listings than in US tech offerings of this scale. The underwriting syndicate permitted direct retail allocation through a broker-agnostic portal, bypassing the usual institutional anchor process. Pricing occurred on a forward revenue multiple of 18x, well above the 12x to 14x band that characterized the 2023 and 2024 venture-to-public cohort. That premium reflected the combined aerospace manufacturing, satellite-internet subscription revenue, and the newly disclosed AI infrastructure segment, which contributed $4.2 billion in trailing twelve-month sales.
The round-trip to IPO price within thirty days is notable not for its velocity but for its context. Index inclusion typically generates $600 million to $1.4 billion in passive inflows for a company of SpaceX's float-adjusted market capitalization, yet the stock declined 7% in the two sessions following the Nasdaq-100 announcement. That suggests either front-running exhaustion or that the IPO allocation itself was wide enough to satisfy near-term institutional demand. The latter interpretation gains support from the fact that the company placed $18 billion of primary equity in the debut, leaving underwriters with limited scarcity to manage. Musk has stated publicly that he intends no follow-on offering for at least eighteen months, which removes a common near-term dilution concern but also eliminates a catalyst for underwriter stabilization activity.
Allocators now face a valuation question with sparse precedent. SpaceX combines a defense-adjacent manufacturing business with contracted NASA and Department of Defense revenue through 2032, a consumer broadband subscription model in Starlink that has already reached 3.1 million terminals, and a data-center GPU leasing operation that competes directly with CoreWeave and Lambda Labs. No public comparable carries all three. The aerospace manufacturing peers trade at 2.1x to 3.4x sales; the satellite connectivity companies at 4x to 6x; the AI infrastructure lessors at 14x to 22x. SpaceX's blended forward multiple of 16x implies the market is weighting the AI segment heavily, but the company has not yet broken out segment-level EBITDA margins, which makes cross-checking that assumption difficult.
Operators should monitor two near-term disclosures. The company will file its first post-IPO 10-Q in mid-May, which must include segment-level revenue and a reconciliation of cash flow from the Starship and AI infrastructure programs. Separately, the super-voting share structure includes a covenant that requires Musk to reduce his voting control below 51% if the stock trades below IPO price for more than 90 consecutive days. That clock started Tuesday. If the threshold is breached, the board must either authorize a buyback sufficient to lift the price or convert the super-voting shares to one-vote common, which would materially alter the control premium embedded in the current valuation.
The stabilization at $135 leaves the company precisely where it began, but with one month of price discovery and a Nasdaq-100 weighting that ensures continued passive flow. The next catalyst is the May filing.