SpaceX shares have cratered 44% from their peak and sit 9% below the IPO price, leaving Wall Street underwriters and retail speculators alike underwater — while the satellite and launch infrastructure the company builds keeps serving American interests on orbit.
The financial class treats Musk's companies like casino chips. Right now the house is winning that bet. But for working Americans, the question isn't what Goldman Sachs loses on a bad trade — it's whether the physical and digital infrastructure these companies create stays in American hands and serves American needs.
CNBC reports SpaceX shares dropped another 5.5% on Friday, extending a 10-day losing streak to hit $122.12 — well below the $135 IPO price. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who underwrote the deal, raised an additional $11 billion in equity after the strong start. That now looks like selling at the top. Options traders have piled into puts: of $350 million in SpaceX options premium traded Friday, $290 million was tied to puts, and seven of the top 10 contracts by volume were puts, according to SpotGamma data cited by CNBC.
But not everyone is running. Over half the put premiums were sold — a bullish signal. Nine of the top 10 contracts by volume were bullish. Don Kaufman, co-founder of TheoTrade, told CNBC: "I'll buy it all day long at $100. Valuation will still be well over a trillion but it is what it is — a monster and will continue to be a monster."
Meanwhile, Musk's other infrastructure play — xAI and its Grok chatbot — is drawing heat from the usual quarters. Gizmodo reports that xAI is suing a South Carolina user, Terry Wayne Harwood, for allegedly using Grok to create child sexual abuse material and non-consensual sexual imagery. Harwood was arrested in February. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, says xAI has reported CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 73,604 times in 2026, leading to at least 244 arrests.
Gizmodo framed the lawsuit as hypocrisy, noting Grok launched with minimal guardrails and a "spicy mode" that let users generate explicit images before controls tightened. The UK government threatened X with fines or a ban over the capability. Musk dismissed the pressure as free speech suppression. What Gizmodo buried beneath its sneering: 73,604 reports to law enforcement and 244 arrests. That is infrastructure doing the work critics claim it won't.
The pattern is consistent. Wall Street can't price the value of satellite networks that serve American security and commerce. Critics can't acknowledge that AI tools without guardrails eventually get them — and that the enforcement is producing real results. The speculative class bets against American innovation and demands apologies when it delivers anyway.
The stock will find its floor. The satellites are already in orbit. The question isn't whether Musk's companies are worth what Goldman says on any given Friday — it's whether Americans will own what they've built, or watch it get shorted into foreign hands.
