SpaceX has cooled off in a big way after its hot start as a publicly traded company, raising questions about future major initial public offerings potentially coming down the road. The stock on Friday traded near $126 — about 7% below its IPO price of $135. Shares are also more than 40% below their all-time intraday high $225.64. The sharp reversal comes after several index providers made it easier for companies such as SpaceX — which is still valued at more than $1.6 trillion despite the drop from its peak — to be included into their benchmarks in a shorter timeline. Ahead of the SpaceX IPO, Nasdaq changed its 10% minimum public float rule and its seasoning requirements, which effectively act as a probationary period for a company’s stock before it goes into a big index that drives huge flows of passive investment. The stock was added to the Nasdaq-100 index on July 7 . FTSE Russell also changed its rules to make it easier for new megacaps like SpaceX to enter its indexes. But after SpaceX’s recent reversal, some investors worry the enthusiasm around mega IPOs — such as potential ones from artificial intelligence giants OpenAI or Anthropic that could also be up for fast-track index inclusion — could wane. “It does dampen the mood. It would be hard for it not to,” Michael Khouw, strategist at Tidal Financial Group and options trader, told CNBC on Friday. SPCX 1M mountain SpaceX one month This year’s IPO market has been primarily driven by mega offerings. According Renaissance Capital, only 86 IPOs have priced in 2026, down 22.5% from this time last year. However, total IPO proceeds have skyrocketed by nearly 800% to $142.4 billon. SpaceX raised $75 billion from its IPO, while SK Hynix raised more than $26 billion from its U.S.-share listing. Cerebras , Innio and Madison Air collected another roughly $10.23 billion. Adding to the sagging mood is a broader reconsideration of AI’s returns on investment. Following Meta’s announcement earlier this month that it would be selling excess computing capacity, in addition to the success of many open source AI models replicating what the frontier companies are doing, investors wonder the massive spending spree in AI will be justified in the end. “We’ve had the narrative change, and there are just a lot more questions being asked,” JJ Kinahan, head of retail expansion at Cboe Global Markets, told CNBC on Friday. “There have been so many questions around AI in terms of the amount of money being spent and the return that companies are seeing on it.” This all comes as investors await OpenAI and Anthropic to announce they will go public. The latter company is setting up meetings with investors ahead of a potential IPO in 2026, CNBC reported Wednesday, citing sources . The former, according to a New York Times report , may delay its IPO until next year.
