SpaceX share price drops below stock market debut

SpaceX shares have fallen below their initial public offering price for the first time since the company went public last year, as a combination of competitive pressure, regulatory setbacks and growing questions about the viability of its Mars colonisation timeline have eroded investor confidence.

The shares, which debuted at $82 in June 2025 and rose as high as $145 in the months following the IPO, closed at $79.40 on Wednesday, a decline of more than 45 percent from their peak. The fall has wiped approximately $85 billion from the company's market valuation and has made SpaceX one of the worst-performing major IPOs of the past two years.

Several factors have contributed to the decline. Competition in the launch market has intensified, with Amazon's Project Kuiper and several Chinese state-backed companies winning contracts that SpaceX had been expected to secure. The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded the Starship programme twice this year following test failures, delaying the timeline for the heavy-lift rocket that is central to both the company's commercial strategy and its Mars ambitions.

More fundamentally, some investors have begun to question whether SpaceX's valuation — which at its peak exceeded that of several established aerospace and defence contractors combined — was justified by the fundamentals of a business that remains heavily dependent on government contracts and whose most ambitious plans are decades from commercial viability.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's chief executive, has dismissed the share price decline as short-term noise and has said the company remains on track to achieve its long-term goals. But the market's reassessment of SpaceX has implications for the broader commercial space sector, which has relied on SpaceX's success story to attract investment.