SpaceX Stock Falls Below IPO Price as ARK Buys $17M Dip
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- SpaceX stock closed at $131.11 on Thursday, down 3.1%, marking its first close below the $135 IPO price after dipping below that level intraday on Wednesday.
- ARK Invest bought approximately 123,000 SpaceX shares worth nearly $17 million across four of its funds on Wednesday, with SpaceX now the sixth-largest position in the flagship ARK Innovation ETF at roughly 4.4% of assets.
- SpaceX shares have now fallen for five consecutive trading sessions and nine of the past 11, with investor sentiment pressured by a valuation of about 45 times estimated 2026 sales.
- SpaceX faces a supply event after Q2 earnings, due in a few weeks, when 20% of outstanding shares held by early investors will unlock and become available to trade.
- Starship's 13th test flight is scheduled for Thursday evening at roughly 6:45 p.m. Eastern, with the upper stage set to attempt deployment of 20 Starlink V3 satellites and an in-space relight of a Raptor engine before a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
- Starship's pitch: a fully reusable design targeting up to 150,000 kilograms of payload capacity at roughly one-tenth the per-kilogram cost of the partially reusable Falcon 9, a cost curve that underwrites SpaceX's trillion-dollar orbital AI data center thesis.
- Tesla remains ARK Innovation ETF's single largest holding, underscoring the firm's broader conviction in Elon Musk's ventures even as SpaceX slides.
Why it matters: ARK's $17 million bid from the market's most vocal SpaceX bull is going head-to-head with a 20% share unlock triggered by the upcoming Q2 earnings report, meaning ARK's conviction buy will be immediately tested by a wave of potential selling from early investors. For the bull thesis to hold, Starship's 13th test Thursday evening needs to validate the reusable-launch economics that justify SpaceX's roughly 45x sales multiple.
