It was supposed to be a fireworks day for the space industry. Instead, it’s turning into a drubbing.
Exchange-traded funds tracking space stocks sold off sharply Friday morning, even as Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) made its trading debut in the largest initial public offering in history.
By 10:00 a.m. ET in New York, the declines were broad across the group:
- Global X Space Tech ETF (NASDAQ:ORBX) fell nearly 8%
- VanEck Space ETF (NASDAQ:WARP) dropped 6.8%
- Tema Space Innovators ETF (NYSE:NASA) lost 6.5%
- Roundhill Space & Technology ETF (NYSE:MARS) slid 6%
- Procure Space ETF (NASDAQ:UFO) declined 4.5%
- ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (NYSE:ARKX) fell over 2%
The pullback landed on the same session the sector got its marquee event.
SpaceX priced at $135 per share for a roughly $1.77 trillion valuation, raising about $75 billion — a debut that ranks as the biggest IPO ever recorded.
Why Space Funds Fell On SpaceX’s Big Day
In an exclusive interview with Benzinga, Tema ETFs founder and CEO Maurits Pot said the sell-off reflects a rotation, not a loss of faith in the theme.
Investors are “selling other space stocks to buy SpaceX,” Pot said, as retail traders concentrate capital into the single name they have waited years to access on a public exchange.
The move also follows a powerful run-up.
Heading into the listing, several of these funds had rallied between roughly 65% and 78% year-to-date on SpaceX-IPO anticipation, leaving the group exposed to a classic “sell-the-news” reaction once the event finally arrived.
TEMA ETF Defends SpaceX’s Valuation
Pot pushed back on the idea that SpaceX is priced for perfection, framing the company as far more than a launch business — spanning communications, launch and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.
He pointed to roughly $20 billion to $25 billion in expected revenue this year, plus an additional ~$25 billion in annualized revenue from newly disclosed AI data-compute contracts.
Those deals — with Anthropic and Alphabet Inc.‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google — have Anthropic paying about $1.25 billion a month and Google about $920 million a month for compute capacity, together worth roughly $26 billion a year.
Add that compute stream to the base business, Pot argued, and SpaceX trades at around 40 to 50 times sales — a multiple he called “not crazy” for an asset growing at this pace and breadth.
“The IPO is a first milestone” in a much larger journey toward “the globalization of space,” Pot said.
“Today, space goes global.”
Pot argued SpaceX has no genuine peer in financial scale and pace of innovation, and said the deeper opportunity sits in the ecosystem of smaller companies powering its rise.
He cited U.K.-based Filtronic plc as one example of the kind of supplier Tema targets.
“We invest deeply in the space supply chain,” he said.
Why SpaceX Is Set To Become A Top-3 Holding
Pot laid out why he expects SpaceX to climb quickly toward the top of the fund, citing four drivers: the sheer size of the company; unusually heavy retail participation in the deal; fast-tracked index inclusion, with Nasdaq and FTSE additions expected roughly five to 15 days after the IPO; and the structure of the post-IPO lock-up.
On that last point, Pot noted that pre-IPO holders typically face a 180-day lock-up before selling, but that the window can accelerate — potentially to as early as day 60 — if the share price clears certain milestones.
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