SpaceX has lost more than $1 trillion in stock-market valuation since its peak, briefly landing it below Meta on the U.S. market-cap leaderboard
SpaceX on Thursday scrubbed what was to be its first Starship flight since the company went public, calling it off just as the booster began to ignite.
SpaceX has shed more than $1 trillion in market capitalization since reaching its peak a little over a month ago - and as a result it's threatening to slip further down the ranks of the largest U.S. companies.
The company, which houses artificial-intelligence, rocket-launch and satellite-internet businesses, was once ranked as high as No. 5 in market value among U.S. companies - ahead of Amazon.com (AMZN) and closing in on Microsoft $(MSFT)$.
But SpaceX $(SPCX)$ fell below Meta Platforms (META) on an intraday basis on Monday, making it the eighth largest U.S. company, before it clawed back to regain its slight edge over the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. It moved behind Broadcom $(AVGO)$ last week for the first time as its stock broke below its initial-public-offering price.
Shares of SpaceX are trading fractionally higher on Monday, putting them on track to snap a six-session losing streak. SpaceX's market capitalization stands at about $1.65 trillion on an intraday basis, while Meta's is now at $1.64 trillion.
SpaceX, the company, has experienced setbacks lately, as well. Last Thursday, it was forced to postpone the latest test of the Starship rocket after some engines failed to start, according to CEO Elon Musk. Two of those engines need to be removed and replaced before another launch can be attempted.
The company had initially said it would pursue a new test as soon as Monday. However, on Sunday it said it would aim to hold Starship's 13th test as soon as Thursday, the day after Musk leads Tesla's $(TSLA)$ second-quarter earnings call.
Starship is necessary to achieve many of SpaceX's goals, and most analysts covering the company warn that potential delays with the program pose a risk to their ambitious forecasts.
"Starship drives the connectivity pillar and the AI pillar," Greg Pendy, who covers the space economy for Clear Street Research, told MarketWatch, referring to two of SpaceX's three business segments. "Any push-out or delay really delays the growth story."
Now the company has also had to scrub a Falcon-9 launch that was planned for Monday morning. In a statement, SpaceX said the vehicle and its payload "remain safe."
While SpaceX's stock has been declining, Meta's has had a good month. Meta's stock is up 14.5% in July, according to FactSet. The company's Muse Spark 1.1 model, its first that claims to provide near-frontier agentic coding capabilities, has been well-received.
Meta is also reportedly planning to become a neocloud provider like CoreWeave (CRWV) or Nebius (NBIS). The company is in talks to lease computing power to the AI lab Anthropic in a deal that could be worth $10 billion, according to the New York Times. Anthropic has also purchased potentially tens of billions of dollars' worth of compute from SpaceX through May 2029.
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-William Gavin
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July 20, 2026 12:47 ET (16:47 GMT)
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