SpaceX Shares Dip Despite Starship Reaching Orbit

SpaceX shares slipped 2% on Monday, even as the company’s Starship reached orbit for the first time and deployed its first batch of next-generation Starlink satellites.

It should have been a triumphant moment, but investors are weighing the milestone against a wave of newly unlocked stock and insider selling. There's also a growing sense that the space business isn't where the money is made, just as Anthropic's blockbuster IPO threatens to pull capital toward a rival AI story.

Latest Market Moves

• SpaceX shares closed 2.16% lower at $145.47 on Monday, before edging up around 0.2% in overnight trade heading into Tuesday.

• Procure Space ETF slipped 1.5% on Monday and ARK's space ETF (ARKX) lost 1.9%, both underperforming the Nasdaq Composite's 0.9% decline.

• Launch rival Rocket Lab fell 2.4% and moon-lander maker Intuitive Machines dropped 2.6%, as Starship's success did little to lift the wider launch trade.

• Satellite names also struggled, with Planet Labs down 3.8% and Starlink challenger AST SpaceMobile off 1.3%.

Starship Finally Makes Orbit

Monday's flight was a genuine milestone.

Flight 14 was Starship's first orbital mission after 13 suborbital tests, and it deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, each offering around 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity. The flight was cut to about three hours from a planned ten after one engine shut down early, with Elon Musk explaining that “our popularity would diminish very rapidly” if debris fell on populated areas.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman called the launch “gorgeous” and said the agency is “excited to help” make Starship missions routine. Musk went further, predicting hourly launches within two to three years, although questions remain over what the engine failure means for NASA's Artemis moon programme.

Lockup Expiry Floods the Market

The bigger problem for the share price is supply.

Around 328 million shares became eligible for trading when SpaceX's post-IPO lockup expired on 24 September, and President Gwynne Shotwell sold roughly $52 million of stock under a pre-arranged trading plan. That meant Starship's success landed in a market suddenly holding far more tradable shares.

The stock remains above its $135 IPO price from June, but well short of the $160 it hit on its first day of trading. Insider sales under pre-set plans are routine, but the timing, right as the lockup lifted, has done little for sentiment.

Rockets Aren't Where the Profit Is

SpaceX's latest results show where the money is actually made.

In the second quarter, the Space segment, which houses launch and Starship, posted an operating loss of $542 million on revenue of $962 million. Connectivity, driven by Starlink, brought in $4.29 billion of revenue and $1.66 billion of operating income, while the AI segment lost $1.26 billion even as revenue more than tripled to $2.56 billion.

That makes Starship's success matter mostly as a cheaper way to get Starlink satellites into orbit, rather than as a profit engine in its own right. Starship can carry up to 60 V3 satellites per mission, more than 20 times a Falcon 9's capacity, so the payoff shows up in the Connectivity numbers further down the line.

Anthropic Joins the Queue

Competition for investors' money is also about to heat up.

Details of Anthropic's IPO prospectus emerged on Monday, showing 2025 revenue of $4.6 billion, a 12-fold jump, alongside an operating loss of more than $8 billion. The Claude maker is expected to list at a valuation above $2 trillion, which would top SpaceX's $1.77 trillion IPO valuation and could make it the biggest listing ever.

The debut is expected after November's US midterm elections, most likely in early 2027, giving funds a pure-play AI alternative to SpaceX's own AI ambitions. There's an irony here too, with Anthropic among the companies that have signed compute deals with SpaceX.

SpaceX Slips Out of Its Rising Wedge

The chart suggests momentum was fading well before Monday's dip.

SpaceX shares have been climbing inside a rising wedge on the 8-hour chart since mid-August, with each push higher covering less ground as the two trendlines converge. Price has now slipped below the wedge's lower trendline and was trading around 14,650 in early Tuesday dealings, while RSI has rolled over to the low 40s after a run of lower peaks.

A sustained move below the trendline would put the mid-September low around 14,300 in focus as initial support, followed by the 13,500 IPO price and the late-August base near 13,100. Reclaiming 15,000 would put the break in doubt and bring the recent highs near 15,700 back into view.

Source: SpreadEx | SpaceX, 8-Hour Chart