SpaceX
SpaceX prepares for last launch until August: Caution over cadence
After a second automatic T-10s launch abort Monday night, Elon Musk expressed a welcome prioritization of caution over an attempt to break cadence records. As such, the launch team at LC-39A are standing down an attempt today and instead conducting a full review of the Falcon 9 vehicle and ground systems, pushing the launch to either July 5th or 6th. As Musk transparently phrased it, there is only one chance to get a rocket launch right.
We're going to spend the 4th doing a full review of rocket & pad systems. Launch no earlier than 5th/6th. Only one chance to get it right …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2017
Following a truly unprecedented series of launches for the company, there was understandably a bit of annoyance from fans watching the coverage for a second time, as well as from journalists seeking to cover the launch. I think a tweet from former NASA Space Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale summed up the proper response most coherently, however, stating that “it’s tough to remain vigilant and do the right thing, extremely tough after a couple of launch scrubs and [with] range closure looming”. Remaining vigilant is precisely what SpaceX is doing by calling off another attempt on July 4th and choosing to instead carefully examine the systems involved to ensure that there is no real issue with pad or vehicle hardware.
For launch companies, there are an untold number of external and internal pressures urging executives to attempt launches, be those financial, political, or something as simple as employees wanting to get home for a holiday. However, past failures of launch vehicles, particularly the Space Shuttle, have demonstrated that constant vigilance is a necessity when dealing with rocketry. Wayne Hale was flight director for forty Shuttle launches. In fact, he became Program Manager the day of the Columbia disaster, which occurred at the beginning of February in 2003.
In this context, his statement is almost certainly intended as positive – albeit solemn – encouragement for the choice to take a more cautious route before attempting another launch. SpaceX itself has experienced two widely publicized failures of the Falcon 9, with the most recent of those having occurred less than ten months ago. After China suffered a complex failure during the second launch of their Long March 5 heavy lift vehicle last Sunday, Musk offered sympathy for those involved. Any failure in the launch industry often acts as a wake-up call for other companies and agencies involved, and undoubtedly becomes a reminder that one cannot become too comfortable or allow launch processes or vehicle manufacturing to become too routine when the stakes are as high as they can be.
Sorry to hear about China launch failure today. I know how painful that is to the people who designed & built it. https://t.co/iOkj6egF3O
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 2, 2017
It goes without saying that SpaceX is sharply aware of the need to ensure reliability and safety as they march ever closer to the debut flight of Crew Dragon and its first crewed launches, likely to occur in early 2018. If the stakes for launching the payloads of commercial customers are already high, the price of failures that could lead to loss of life are unspeakable and ought to humble those fans and bystanders who may be losing patience while waiting for a third (admittedly enthralling) launch. Those eager to watch SpaceX’s live coverage must seek to remember that the launches we love to watch occur because paying customers have placed trust in SpaceX to deliver their payloads to orbit, be those payloads massive geostationary communications satellites or astronauts and cargo headed to the ISS. Rightfully so, the customer will always come first, and routine live coverage of rocket launches must always be treated as the luxury it is for the indefinite future.
SpaceX has successfully recovery and reused both Falcon 9 and Cargo Dragon in the last several weeks, and has also recovered three first stages from the three related launches that occurred in that same time period. (SpaceX)
Admittedly, a cornerstone of SpaceX’s mission as a company is making access to orbit reliable, affordable, and routine, but there will always be risk in rocket launches, just as there will always be risk when one boards a plane, drives a car, or simply walks down the sidewalk along a busy street. Minimizing and reducing the risk present in spaceflight will take a considerable amount of time and effort, and doing what is necessary to prevent failures from negatively impacting the customers that make SpaceX viable as a company is both a rational and ethical strategy.
Returning to current events, the Falcon 9 intended to launch Intelsat 35e went horizontal on July 4, and is likely now in the integration facility present at LC-39A, providing easier access to engineers as they comb over the vehicle to ensure its health. After an absolutely picturesque launch attempt Monday evening, weather is looking even better for a potential launch attempt on either Wednesday or Thursday evening.
If the vehicle and pad cooperate, Intelsat 35e will be a facing send off for the Eastern Range before it shuts down for the remainder of July to undergo routine maintenance. SpaceX currently does not have Vandenberg (West coast) missions scheduled until August, so July will likely see no launches from the company. There is still plenty to be done in lieu of launching customer payloads, however. LC-40, the pad damaged in the Amos-6 static fire incident last September, is currently preparing to be reactivated, with a recent interview of Gwynne Shotwell pointing to its initial availability sometime in August. Once it is reactivated, all single core Falcon launches will be transferred to LC-40, and LC-39A will begin undergoing structural modifications to accommodate both crewed missions in 2018 and Falcon Heavy, which could debut as early as Q4 of 2017.
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- Intelsat 35e, July 2nd. (SpaceX)
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- A render of Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon at LC-39A. (SpaceX)
The two most visible changes that will occur at LC-39A will be the installation of additional hold-down clamps and modifications to the Transporter Erector, as well as a Crew Access Arm, which will be attached to the large, vertical structure seen directly right of Falcon 9. Of note, it is very likely that at least two, if not all three of the first Falcon Heavy’s cores are already present at the Cape. After years of being deemed a paper rocket, Falcon Heavy is indeed very real and very close to being able to conduct its first launches.
A month of no launches from SpaceX will undoubtedly be less than thrilling, but the Air Force and Kennedy Space Center employees will get a much-deserved break from a busy launch manifest ahead of what will likely be an even busier final four months of the year. There is a lot to look forward to.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just upped his Tesla stake further fueling SpaceX merger conversation
Elon Musk just collected a $116 billion Tesla payday and the timing is eye-opening
Elon Musk quietly collected one of the largest single-transaction paydays in corporate history on Monday. A Form 4 filed with the SEC on June 17, 2026 disclosed that Musk exercised 303,960,630 Tesla stock options from his 2018 compensation package, with the transaction dated June 16. No shares were sold on the open market.
The numbers are straightforward but striking. Musk exercised the options at a split-adjusted strike price of $23.34, with Tesla closing at $404.66 that day, putting the spread at $381.32 per share and generating roughly $115.9 billion in paper gains in a single transaction. To cover the exercise cost, Tesla withheld 17,531,857 shares through a net share settlement, meaning Musk paid nothing out of pocket.
For perspective, in 2018, Elon Musk’s award was originally approved by Tesla shareholders on March 21, 2018, and structured entirely around performance milestones that many analysts at the time called unreachable. Every tranche eventually vested. The original grant covered 20,264,042 shares at $350.02, which after Tesla’s 5-for-1 split in 2020 and 3-for-1 split in 2022 adjusted to 303,960,630 shares at $23.34. A Delaware court rescinded the award in January 2024, ruling the board was conflicted. As Teslarati reported, Tesla shareholders voted to ratify the package anyway in June 2024 by a wide margin. The Delaware Supreme Court reversed the decision in December 2025, finding full cancellation too extreme, and Tesla’s board signed an Implementation Agreement on April 21, 2026 to formally deliver the shares.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
The timing and structure of the Form 4 filing carries more weight than a routine stock option exercise typically would. Musk exercised his 2018 Tesla award on June 16, a week into SpaceX completing its IPO and trading publicly, and giving SpaceX a public market valuation and share currency for the first time in the company’s history. A stock-for-stock merger between two companies requires the acquiring entity to have tradeable shares it can offer to the target’s shareholders, and SpaceX now has exactly that. At the same time, Musk just increased his direct Tesla voting power to approximately 20%, giving him greater influence over any shareholder vote that a merger would require. The restricted shares he received cannot be sold until 2033, which removes any near-term incentive to cash out and instead positions this stake as long-term structural collateral in a deal. Additionally, Musk’s two companies are already deeply intertwined through shared semiconductor fabrication at their joint TERAFAB facility in Austin, cross-company supply chain transactions, and Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI prior to the SpaceX-xAI merger.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has publicly placed the odds of a Tesla and SpaceX combination at 80% to 90% by early 2027. The Implementation Agreement that made Monday’s exercise possible was signed on April 21, 2026, roughly two months before the SpaceX IPO closed. That sequencing, building Musk’s Tesla ownership to its highest point ever immediately before SpaceX gains the public currency needed to acquire it, is either an extraordinary coincidence or a carefully staged foundation for the largest corporate merger in history.
SpaceX has exercised its option to acquire Cursor, the innovative AI coding company, in an all-stock transaction valued at $60 billion. The deal, announced on June 16, marks a significant step in SpaceX’s expansion into advanced artificial intelligence, building on months of close collaboration between the companies.
Cursor, officially operated by Anysphere, Inc., is an AI-native code editor and coding agent designed to transform software development. Founded in 2022 by a group of MIT graduates in San Francisco, Cursor builds on the familiar foundation of Visual Studio Code but integrates powerful AI capabilities directly into the core experience.
Unlike traditional code editors or simple extensions, Cursor functions as a full “coding agent” that turns natural-language instructions into actionable code.
SpaceX has exercised the option to acquire @cursor_ai in an all-stock transaction with the goal of building the world’s most useful AI models.
For the past few months, SpaceXAI has been jointly training a model with Cursor, which will be released in Cursor and Grok Build soon.… https://t.co/X5mepgXgjJ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 16, 2026
Developers interact with Cursor through features like its Composer agent, which can search entire codebases, edit multiple files, run terminal commands, debug issues, and complete complex multi-step programming tasks autonomously.
Users describe high-level goals, such as “build a scalable API endpoint with authentication,” and the AI plans, implements, tests, and refines the solution while the human oversees decisions. Additional tools include advanced autocomplete (Tab), context-aware chat, and infrastructure for handling billions of daily requests.
The platform has gained considerable traction, surpassing $3 billion in annual recurring revenue by early 2026 and earning adoption by over half of the Fortune 500 companies. Its agentic approach accelerates development dramatically, allowing engineers to focus on architecture and creativity rather than repetitive coding.
The acquisition integrates Cursor’s leading product, expert team of roughly 300 engineers, and distribution network among top software developers with SpaceX’s unparalleled computational resources. SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, equivalent to a million H100 GPUs, has already powered joint training of next-generation models. These models are expected to launch soon within Cursor and SpaceX’s Grok Build environment.
This combination positions SpaceX to develop the world’s most capable AI systems for coding and knowledge work. Access to Cursor’s real-world usage data from millions of professional developers provides unparalleled feedback loops for model improvement. Training on Colossus enables rapid iteration on massive datasets, potentially creating AI that outperforms current leaders in reliability, context handling, and complex reasoning.
For SpaceX, the benefits extend far beyond software tools. Rocket engineering, satellite constellation management, autonomous flight systems, and Starship development involve millions of lines of highly specialized, safety-critical code.
Cursor’s AI agents, supercharged by proprietary models trained on SpaceX’s domain expertise, could slash development timelines, reduce errors, and enable faster innovation cycles. This vertical integration of AI tooling strengthens SpaceX’s competitive edge in both aerospace and the broader AI race, complementing its xAI initiatives.
The deal reflects the exploding value of AI-native developer platforms. By owning Cursor outright, SpaceX secures a strategic talent pool and product pipeline that will accelerate internal projects while potentially offering enhanced tools to the wider engineering community. As AI continues reshaping software creation, this acquisition underscores SpaceX’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology for ambitious goals, from Mars colonization to global connectivity.
SpaceX executed its first Falcon 9 launch since going public on June 15, a routine yet symbolically powerful Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 booster B1093, on its 14th flight, occurred at approximately 8:34 a.m. PDT from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E), deploying 24 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites into low-Earth orbit.
The first stage successfully landed on the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean, underscoring the company’s unmatched reusability track record.
Watch Falcon 9 launch 24 @Starlink satellites to orbit from California https://t.co/meDwb05qOE
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 15, 2026
This mission comes just three days after SpaceX’s historic IPO on June 12, which shattered records as the largest ever. The company raised $75 billion by pricing shares at $135, with trading under ticker SPCX on Nasdaq opening at $150 and closing at $160.95—a 19 percent gain—valuing SpaceX at over $2.1 trillion.
The launch highlights the seamless transition from private innovator to public powerhouse. SpaceX, founded in 2002, has revolutionized access to space with over 650 Falcon 9 flights and a massive Starlink constellation now serving millions globally.
As a public company, it faces new pressures: quarterly earnings, shareholder scrutiny, and expectations to accelerate Starship development for Mars ambitions and deeper NASA partnerships. Yet the market response signals strong confidence in its dominance, as launch costs are slashed by 95 percent, rapid satellite deployment, and a backlog of government and commercial contracts.
SpaceX maintains bold advertising push for Starlink, contrasting Tesla’s minimalistic approach
Analysts view today’s flight as business as usual, but it carries extra weight. With shares volatile in early trading days, successful operations reassure investors that core capabilities remain unaffected by public status.
SpaceX now operates under heightened transparency, potentially unlocking capital for ambitious goals like Starship orbital tests and global broadband expansion.
Challenges loom, including regulatory hurdles for megaconstellations, competition in reusable rockets, and orbital debris concerns. Nevertheless, this morning’s flawless execution reinforces SpaceX’s trajectory.
As Musk often notes, the company’s mission—to make humanity multiplanetary—now aligns with Wall Street’s growth demands. The stars, it seems, are aligning for both.
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