After Losing More Than $1 Trillion in Market Cap, This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Will Become the Most Valuable Business in the World, According to Elon Musk

SpaceX shares opened around $150 in early June, peaked at $225.64 four days after the IPO, then fell as low as $108 by late July, and were about $138 as of Aug. 26 versus a $135 offering price—reflecting persistent volatility. Financially, SpaceX generated $18.7B revenue in 2025 but posted a $4.9B loss; Q1 2026 revenue was ~$4.7B with a $4.3B net loss and Q2 revenue rose 92% YoY to $7.8B while net losses narrowed to $541M. The article’s core view is that Starlink is becoming a real cash engine, but Starship and AI infrastructure are still major cash drains, making a “most valuable company” outcome possible but not the base case.

Analysis

The market is starting to separate the “cash engine” from the “story premium.” Starlink-like cash flows can support a respectable industrial multiple, but the rest of the equity looks like duration-heavy venture optionality that is being marked down as rates stay restrictive and investors demand proof of contracted revenue rather than narrative.

Near term, the stock is likely to trade on launch cadence and any incremental disclosure around customer growth, not on long-dated claims about orbital AI. The key second-order effect is competitive discipline: if this platform must preserve margins to fund capex, it cannot price broadband as aggressively for long, which is the only setup that would give satellite peers room to stabilize. If launches stumble or AI infrastructure remains pre-revenue, the market will likely compress the multiple another 15-25% without waiting for annual results.

Contrarianly, consensus may be underestimating how much value can accrue to a single profitable network effect business if it keeps compounding at scale; the problem is that current pricing still assumes the moonshot call options are worth more than they probably are. The thesis is falsified if operating income continues to expand while free cash flow stays positive through the next 2-3 quarters and management shows even modest third-party AI contract wins. Absent that, this is a cleaner short on narrative excess than on fundamental collapse.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Sell rallies in SPCX using 1-3 month put spreads, ideally after launch-related strength; target a 2-3x premium return if the next catalyst disappoints, with max loss limited to premium paid.
• If borrow is tight, use a delta-defined short via SPCX call spreads instead of outright shorting; this captures valuation compression while capping squeeze risk around headline events.
• Pair trade: short SPCX / long NVDA into any announcement that leans on orbital AI optionality; the trade expresses that monetized AI capex still accrues to terrestrial compute, not space, over the next 6-12 months.
• Set a watch item for the next quarterly update: if operating income in the core connectivity business inflects lower or capex rises faster than revenue, add to the bearish position; if both improve, cover 30-50% of the short.
• No fresh long until there is independently verifiable contracted revenue for AI compute or a sustained reduction in launch failure risk; otherwise the risk/reward on owning the stock remains asymmetrically poor.