Investor's Corner
[Updated] Insider reveals possible SpaceX IPO, Tesla shareholders will reportedly have early access
SpaceX is preparing to IPO this year, according to a leaked report posted to a trading forum and tipped off to Teslarati. A user by the name of Jushuatree provides very specific detail in what will likely be the most anticipated and talked about IPO in the last decade.
Updated: SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell issued a statement confirming that there are no plans for a SpaceX initial public offering, contrary to Empire Capital’s original communication to its investors.
Updated: Teslarati was able to connect with Empire Capital Partners via phone call and speak to a representative in regards to the reported email sent by the firm. Empire Capital Partners confirmed the email, however also qualified it by saying they were reaching out to clients floating the idea of a SpaceX IPO in an attempt to gather more interest from clients in Tesla, Inc. They do not have any evidence of SpaceX preparing for an IPO, and they believed the best way to gain potential early interest is through an investment in Tesla.
The post reveals that Empire Capital Partners, a hedge fund focused on the technology sector, is soliciting interest in a pre-IPO for SpaceX and telling investors that the company has positioned a large stake in Tesla. Reportedly, Tesla investors will have exclusive early access to buy into the “Biggest opportunity of the decade” as soon as the initial public offering is released.
While news of a SpaceX IPO will likely trigger mass interest from institutional investors and Tesla shareholders, it’s important to note that a long process awaits before the Elon Musk-backed space company goes public. SpaceX has not yet filed an S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which can take upwards of 30 days to review, not including any time required for additional amendments made to the filing. The S-1 filing allows the company to submit financial information to the SEC ahead of launching on the public markets. Companies looking to make an initial public offering then proceed with a “roadshow” to convince institutional investors to invest in the company. After that, the company would set the pricing of the IPO and begin the offering.
[Update: Empire Capital Partners, in fact, has no relation with a hedge fund run by Scott Fine and Peter Richards. The compay’s official entity is Empire Capital GP, LLC]
Empire Capital Partners is a global asset manager, based in Connecticut, with $1.13B in assets and was founded in 2005. ECP was founded by Scott A. Fine and Peter J. Richards, and they have participated in several large IPOs including Box, Square, Twitter, Fitbit, and Esty. The company lists SpaceX as a partner on their website and a featured investment that is “live” to their customers.
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According to the insider note posted to Sharetrader, ECP has a “10-year history of substantial financial investment” with SpaceX. The note indicates that the hedge fund has been working on the deal for the past 18-months and looking forward to presenting “the biggest pre-IPO opportunity of 2017, maybe even the decade” to its investors.
“Empire Capital Partners is proud to present to you, the fantastic opportunity, in which you are able to take full advantage by getting involved at the ground level. This is sure to be the biggest pre-IPO opportunity of 2017, maybe even the decade. SpaceX is the brainchild of Elon Musk, a highly undervalued company founded in 2002. SpaceX raised $1 billion from Google Inc. and Fidelity Ventures in January 2015. This investment accounts for less than 10% of the company’s estimated value, conservatively between $10 and $12 Billion US Dollars.” reads the email sent to Joshuatree.
SpaceX will list on the NYSE, while Tesla is listed on the NASDAQ. Tesla’s IPO in 2010 went for $17 per share and raised over $226M. Tesla has since raised several billion dollars from the public markets since, including $1.4B in March this year, and continues to see strong demand from investors.
Musk stated in 2015 that a SpaceX IPO would be unlikely in the future, stating, “It will go public once we have regular flights to Mars.” Since then, Musk has seen incredible success in the public markets. Tesla continues to set record highs and currently worth over $51B, becoming one of the largest automakers in the world. Additionally, the overall conditions in the market are at near all-time highs – a prime condition for a SpaceX IPO.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk and has since risen to become a multi-billion dollar company with over 5,000 employees. The company has completed dozens of flights over the past couple of years and landed several lucrative contracts with NASA, The Department of Defense, SES, and Iridium. Outside of SpaceX’s current operations, Musk has even larger plans for the company. Musk revealed in June 2016 that SpaceX intends to build a rocket capable of reaching Mars and transporting large masses of people. Called, Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), SpaceX is looking to build a 40-story tall re-useable rocket capable of carrying hundreds of people to the red planet. The company has lofty goals to start testing the ITS rocket after 2020 but requires significant funding for the program. At its inception, Elon Musk injected roughly $100M in capital into the company.
We’ve provided a copy of the original e-mail tipped off to Teslarati and reportedly sent by Empire Capital Partners to its clients.
We are currently positioning the bulk of our clients into ‘Tesla Motors Inc.’ a company trading on the NASDAQ in New York under the trading symbol ‘TSLA.’ The company has an ancillary company preparing for a formal listing in the New York Stock Exchange, as an IPO (Initial Public Offering) called SPACE X. The reason we are putting all our preferred clients into TESLA; is what we know. Not only is TESLA going to show solid gains in the short term – yielding clients anywhere upwards of 20%. We have insight that the SPACE X IPO will be the most lucrative, and sought after IPO of 2017! Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, and CEO of Tesla, Solar City and Space X has announced – the existing shareholders of Tesla will have exclusive option to buy into the Initial Public Offering of Space X as soon as they are released. Elon Musk likes to take care of his own. We have bought an institutional position in TESLA and are using the shares that we have acquired to bring new clients on board at a discount, in order to show them how Empire Capital Partners can deliver in 2017. Our goal is simple. We want to show you the power of information and get you involved in the Space X IPO. The minimum investment into TESLA is $10,000.00 USD and that would allow you to take advantage of the Initial Public Offering of SPACE X once it is announced. You can find additional information about TESLA at http://www.tesla.com
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Empire Capital Partners has, with SpaceX, a 10 year history of substantial financial investment. We have spent the last 18 months in analytical research having crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s.
Empire Capital Partners is proud to present to you, the fantastic opportunity, in which you are able to take full advantage by getting involved at the ground level. This is sure to be the biggest pre-IPO opportunity of 2017, maybe even the decade. SpaceX is the brainchild of Elon Musk, a highly undervalued company founded in 2002. SpaceX raised $1 billion from Google Inc. and Fidelity Ventures in January 2015. This investment accounts for less than 10% of the company’s estimated value, conservatively between $10 and $12 Billion US Dollars.
Although SpaceX is known by the general public for its work on reusable rockets, the well-known giant Google has other interests Google’s interest peaked with Musk’s recent announcement when he outlined a plan for a global communications system that would use satellites to beam low-cost internet around the world.
Elon exclaimed, “Larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” He added, “at least five years and $15 billion to build and will implement 700 tiny satellites 750 miles above the Earth.” Google has long had similar ambitions itself by spreading internet around the world, including to remote regions. Google would then boost the number of people who have access to its services and of course all the extra revenue that comes with it! SpaceX points out that two thirds of the world have no access at all. It’s why we’re so focused on new technologies. New technologies that have the potential to bring hundreds of millions more people online in the coming years.”
Facebook and Google have already been working with balloons and drones trying to figure out how to spread Internet access. The internet space race is on! With Google heavily investing such large amounts into SpaceX, TALK ABOUT A WINNING COMBINATION! GOOGLE AND ELON MUSK! Now might be the time to sell those Facebook shares and back SpaceX by investing into the only clear winner of that race.
Even combining Google and SpaceX’s achievements and technologies, there are still a lot of big questions and challenges around how Musk’s satellite vision will work. Another big challenge would be installing ground-based antennas and computer terminals to receive the satellite signals. One thing that you can count on, the sure fire bet!
IF ELON MUSK PUTS HIS MIND AND MONEY INTO IT. IT WILL HAPPEN!
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Fidelity invested in SpaceX in January 2015, putting up $16.75 million to join Google in a $1Billion investment. Fidelity now values its SpaceX stake at $19.25 million, a 15% increase. SpaceX said the two new additional investors owned just under 10% of the company. Google put the vast majority of cash into SpaceX’s billion-dollar financing round — $900 million for a 7.5% stake in the company. That implies SpaceX’s new valuation is $12 billion and puts the company ahead of companies like Dropbox, Snapchat and Airbnb, but behind Xiaomi, Uber and Palantir.
As a private company, SpaceX’s financials are fairly opaque, it has booked as much as $7 billion in future revenue from 60 commercial launch bookings over the next several years, and last year won a $2.6 billion contract to build the Dragon 2 and transport astronauts to the International Space Station. It also is bidding for a second contract to ferry cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), which is expected to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
SpaceX now ranks fourth on The Wall Street Journal’s list of billion-dollar private companies, securing an easy $12 Billion valuation.
SpaceX’s value exceeds that of rivals. United Launch Alliance, a key SpaceX competitor in the US, is reportedly the subject of a $2 billion takeover bid by the space firm Aerojet. But ULA has older technology and less commercial business than SpaceX. Arianespace, the European private launch contractor, was valued between $340 and $640 million as France prepared to sell its stake in the firm this summer, but it does not manufacture its own rockets.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
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