Wall Street just handed SpaceX a new price target, and the case behind it comes down to a single technical challenge rather than the company’s rockets, satellites and AI ambitions combined. If Elon Musk solves it, the upside case gets much bigger. If he does not, so does the risk.
The call adds another data point to a stock that has swung wildly since its record-breaking debut earlier this year, and it arrives just as investors are still digesting a mixed quarterly report that left the bull and bear cases equally intact.
Pivotal Research bets SpaceX’s future on Starship reusability
Pivotal Research initiated coverage of SpaceX on September 8, with a Buy rating and a $220 price target, which implies roughly 49% upside from the recent trading levels.
Analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak framed the entire investment case around one variable. He wrote that SpaceX’s roughly $2 trillion valuation rests almost entirely on Starship reusability. Meaning each vehicle would need to fly 20 to 50 times with relatively cheap, fast refurbishment between launches, according to StreetInsider.
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If Musk pulls that off, Wlodarczak argues the payoff would be enormous. Cheaper, more frequent launches would allow SpaceX to deploy far more Starlink’s satellite capacity, enough to capture a meaningful share of the wireless industry. The resulting launch advantage could also position SpaceX to collect tolls from other companies trying to operate in orbit.
The downside case is just as stark. Wlodarczak wrote that if Starship reusability targets are not achieved, SpaceX becomes “a different and much smaller company.” A warning that frames the entire bull case as conditional on solving one specific engineering problem.
SpaceX shares have been on a wild ride since IPO
SpaceX priced its June IPO at $135 a share, raising $85.7 billion in the largest public offering in history, and the stock briefly touched a record high of $225.64 within its first few trading sessions before entering a sharp pullback, according to Quartz.
The ride down was just as dramatic. Shares fell to an intraday low of $104.83 on August 3, Yahoo Finance reported. A gap that came before recovering to close at $147.95 by September 4, a bounce that came even as the underlying capex concerns over the company’s enormous capital remained largely unresolved.
Wall Street’s own price targets reflect just how unsettled the debate remains. Across 37 analysts covering the stock, targets currently range from $62 to $450, while roughly three-quarters of analysts rate the stock a Buy. This underscores the bullish consensus despite the unusually wide dispersion.
Starship’s own track record shows why upper-stage reusability still remains an open question rather than a resolved fact. The vehicle has flown 13 times, with eight successful missions. Yet none of those Starship flights has been reused from a previous launch.
SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company gave analysts plenty to debate.Anadolu / Getty Images
The numbers behind Wall Street’s capex worries
SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company gave analysts plenty to debate. Second-quarter capital expenditures hit $18.4 billion, far above what Wall Street had expected for capex, with $15.83 billion of that spending directed toward AI infrastructure alone, a figure that immediately overshadowed an otherwise solid revenue beat.
Bank of America stayed bullish despite the sticker shock. Analyst Ronald Epstein reiterated a Buy rating and $235 price target after raising the firm’s 2026 capex forecast to $67.3 billion from $48.2 billion, arguing SpaceX’s AI investments were reaching cash breakeven in under a year, according to TheStreet.
JPMorgan reached a similar conclusion from a different angle. Analyst Doug Anmuth raised his price target to $240 even while projecting capex could approach $200 billion in both 2027 and 2028, putting further pressure on free cash flow and extending the timeline to meaningful profitability. Meanwhile, Musk had moved his own $1 trillion annual revenue target up to 2030 from 2031, TheStreet reported.
Not every firm shared that optimism. Wells Fargo cut its target to $215 from $230 over AI spending concerns, and Piper Sandler lowered its target further to $140. Arguing that valuation worries and the potential for a sharp increase in the tradable share count as SpaceX’s looming share lockup expiration.
What it means for SpaceX investors
The lockup calendar adds another layer of pressure investors need to track. More than 300 million additional SpaceX shares are scheduled to become eligible for sale on September 9, with a second tranche of similar size scheduled later on September 24.
This creates the potential for additional selling pressure regardless of how the reusability story develops.
For investors, Wlodarczak’s framing cuts through a lot of the noise around SpaceX’s other businesses. Debates over xAI, the Colossus data center project, and Starlink pricing all matter less than whether Starship achieves true reusability, since that single outcome determines which version of SpaceX actually shows up in the years ahead.
The options market’s positioning suggests that professional investors are not panicking despite the stock’s volatility. A signal that tends to matter more than headline price swings alone.
That measured reaction, paired with a price target range spanning hundreds of dollars, is a reminder that SpaceX remains a genuine binary bet dressed up as a diversified space and AI company. And treating it otherwise risks missing what actually determines the stock’s next major move.
Related: Elon Musk drops stunning SpaceX forecast