{"id":7216,"date":"2026-06-14T05:23:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T05:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7216"},"modified":"2026-06-14T05:23:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T05:23:59","slug":"former-tesla-board-member-issues-candid-message-on-spacex-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7216","title":{"rendered":"Former Tesla board member issues candid message on SpaceX stock"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Venture capitalist Steve Westly says SpaceX<\/strong> is “three moonshots in one company” and the math only works if most of them pay off.<\/p>\n
On June 12, SpaceX (SPCX) just pulled off the biggest initial public offering in stock market history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The company raised $75 billion, priced shares at $135 each, and debuted on the Nasdaq with a bang, jumping 19% on its first day of trading, according to CNBC.<\/li>\n
By the closing bell, shares had settled around $161. That put the company’s market cap at roughly $2.1 trillion.\u00a0<\/li>\n
The pop continued after hours, lifting the valuation closer to $2.2 trillion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But behind the celebratory bell-ringing, a veteran investor with deep experience with Elon Musk has a pointed message for anyone considering buying in.<\/p>\n
SpaceX is not just a rocket company<\/strong><\/h2>\n
SpaceX isn’t just a rocket company anymore. Musk folded his artificial intelligence startup xAI into SpaceX in February 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The combined entity consists of AI data centers, the Grok AI models, the X social network (formerly Twitter), and an AI image generator.<\/p>\n
So SpaceX now spans three very different businesses: rockets and space exploration, Starlink satellite internet, and an AI division.<\/p>\n
More AI:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Micron sits at the center of a red-hot chip rally<\/strong><\/li>\n
IBM CEO sends blunt message on AI and quantum computing<\/strong><\/li>\n
Anthropic CEO makes shocking admission about AI<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The only part currently turning a profit is Starlink. According to the SEC filings, the satellite internet unit generated $4.4 billion in operating profit last year. <\/p>\n
The AI division, by contrast, lost $6.4 billion while bringing in just $3.2 billion in revenue, as CNN reported.<\/p>\n
The company has lost $41.3 billion in total since its founding in 2002, according to its prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n
Steve Westly’s candid warning about the $2 trillion SpaceX valuation<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Westly, who served on Tesla’s board and founded The Westly Group, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that figuring out what SpaceX is worth isn’t easy.<\/p>\n
The three businesses inside it are, in his words, “completely disparate.”<\/p>\n
His bottom line? At least two of the three bets need to work out.<\/p>\n
“SpaceX is three moonshots in one company, but I think they’re going to need to make at least two of these moonshots successful to keep that $2 trillion valuation,” Westly told CNBC.<\/p>\n
SpaceX’s own IPO prospectus acknowledged that some of its plans rely on technologies that do not yet exist.<\/p>\n
Related: 5 reasons why the SpaceX IPO could be an absolute dud<\/strong><\/p>\n
There’s also the governance issue. Musk holds super-voting Class B shares that give him around 85% of the shareholder vote, CNN reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In plain terms, he would essentially have to vote against himself to be removed. Investors take on real financial risk but have almost no say in how the company is run.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Research firm Morningstar put SpaceX’s fair value closer to $780 billion, less than half the IPO valuation, suggesting the market is pricing in significant future optimism.<\/p>\n
Is a Tesla-SpaceX merger next?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
There’s one more wrinkle for investors to consider. Westly told CNBC he thinks a merger between SpaceX and Tesla is “absolutely likely.”<\/p>\n
CNBC reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter, that the two companies already share a long list of resources and that Musk has discussed combining them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Westly didn’t dismiss the governance headaches that would come with such a move, but he didn’t back away from his prediction, either.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be a tricky one. There will be a lot of governance issues, people will have complaints about that, but\u2026 I think there’s a good chance that ends up happening,” he told CNBC.<\/p>\n\n
SpaceX trades at a lofty valuation following its IPO.<\/p>\n
History’s verdict on giant, pricey IPOs<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Academic research adds another layer of caution. <\/p>\n
A long-running study of more than 9,200 IPOs by University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter found that companies with more than $1 billion in pre-IPO revenue posted an average three-year market-adjusted return of -2.1%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Separately, among tech companies priced above 40 times sales, 12 out of 14 trailed the broader market over their first three years.<\/p>\n
Musk was candid about his reasons for going public. <\/p>\n
He told a JPMorgan Chase livestream before the IPO that SpaceX has been cash-flow positive since around 2015 and wants to raise capital for a major growth phase, including plans to put more than 100,000 satellites in orbit and build AI data centers in space.<\/p>\n
There’s clearly a bull case. But Westly’s math is worth sitting with: three moonshots, and you need most of them to land.<\/p>\n
Related: Dan Ives spills the beans on SpaceX future<\/strong><\/p>\n
Venture capitalist Steve Westly says SpaceX is “three moonshots in one company” and the math only works if most of them pay off. On June 12, SpaceX (SPCX) just pulled… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[4848,9557,1238,4575,267,1843,91,2723],"class_list":["post-7216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular","tag-board","tag-candid","tag-issues","tag-member","tag-message","tag-spacex","tag-stock","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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