SpaceX’s $1 trillion slide puts Meta back in the race

SpaceX has lost more than $1 trillion in market value from its peak just over a month ago, and its place among America’s most valuable companies is getting shaky, according to MarketWatch.

The rocket, satellite-internet and artificial-intelligence company briefly fell below Meta Platforms in intraday trading Monday, MarketWatch reported. That would put SpaceX at No. 8 among U.S. companies by market capitalization, after it had previously climbed as high as No. 5, ahead of Amazon and within reach of Microsoft.

By Monday afternoon, SpaceX had edged back in front of Meta. MarketWatch said SpaceX’s intraday market value stood at about $1.65 trillion, compared with Meta’s $1.64 trillion.

SpaceX shares were fractionally higher Monday, putting the stock on pace to end a six-session losing streak, according to MarketWatch. The bounce came after a rough stretch that included the stock breaking below its initial public offering price and falling behind Broadcom last week for the first time.

Launch delays add to the pressure

The market slide has coincided with fresh snags in SpaceX’s launch program.

Last Thursday, SpaceX called off the latest Starship test after some engines failed to start, Chief Executive Elon Musk said, according to MarketWatch. Musk said two of the engines would have to be removed and replaced before the company could try again.

SpaceX had first suggested it might attempt another test as soon as Monday. On Sunday, the company said in a post on X that it was aiming for Starship’s 13th test as soon as Thursday, one day after Musk is scheduled to lead Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call.

MarketWatch reported that Starship is central to many of SpaceX’s plans, and that analysts who cover the company see delays in the program as a risk to their forecasts.

“Starship drives the connectivity pillar and the AI pillar,” Greg Pendy, who covers the space economy for Clear Street Research, told MarketWatch. “Any push-out or delay really delays the growth story.”

SpaceX also scrubbed a Falcon 9 launch planned for Monday morning. In a statement on X, the company said the rocket and its payload “remain safe.”

Meta gets a lift

While SpaceX has been sliding, Meta has had a stronger July. FactSet data cited by MarketWatch showed Meta shares up 14.5% for the month.

MarketWatch reported that Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 model, described by the company as its first with near-frontier agentic coding capabilities, has been well received.

Meta is also reportedly looking to enter the neocloud business, a field that includes CoreWeave and Nebius. The New York Times reported that Meta is in talks to lease computing power to Anthropic in a deal that could be worth $10 billion.

Anthropic has also bought potentially tens of billions of dollars’ worth of computing capacity from SpaceX through May 2029, according to MarketWatch.

For now, SpaceX remains just ahead of Meta by market value. The gap, at least on Monday, was thin enough to keep Wall Street watching the leaderboard.

This story draws on original reporting from MarketWatch.