On July 9, SpaceX closed below its $150 IPO price for the second consecutive trading day, with a cumulative two-day decline of 7.6%. Despite being officially added to the Nasdaq 100 index that day and receiving multiple "Buy" ratings, the stock remained under pressure, reflecting deepening market divergence over its valuation and profitability outlook.
Amid the stock’s slump, SpaceX’s AI product momentum did not falter. On July 8, Elon Musk announced via social media that Grok 4.5 would be released to the public on July 9, describing the model as "Opus-class" —a direct benchmark against Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus—and claiming it is "faster, more token-efficient, and lower-cost".
Grok 4.5 is built on a brand-new V9 foundation model with 1.5 trillion parameters, approximately three times the scale of its predecessor, Grok 4.3. The release is a joint effort by SpaceXAI (formerly xAI, which merged into SpaceX in February 2026) and AI coding startup Cursor, targeting enterprise use cases in finance, law, and software development, with capabilities for complex long-horizon tasks and new cybersecurity features. The company claims Grok 4.5 outperforms Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 on multiple benchmarks.
The launch comes amid intensifying competition in generative AI. According to Apptopia, Grok App’s U.S. market share continued to erode, falling to 8.7% in June, down from 10.6% in May, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT remained the market leader. Meanwhile, OpenAI is also set to release GPT-5.6 on July 10, following a delay over national security concerns.
The stock’s decline reflects deeper market skepticism about SpaceX’s business model: although Wall Street has set a 12-month average price target of $212 (implying ~46% upside) and TipRanks maintains a "Strong Buy" consensus, investors remain divided over its massive valuation, the commercialization path for its space ambitions, and its ability to catch up in AI.
SpaceX’s consecutive breaks below IPO price signal that the market is shifting from AI narratives to scrutinizing profitability and valuation discipline. Yet, the on-schedule release of Grok 4.5 shows that its AI commercialization drive continues. However, Grok App’s declining market share to 8.7% highlights that in the consumer AI space, SpaceXAI still faces intense pressure from giants like OpenAI. The contrast between a "broken" stock price and a "launching" product perfectly captures SpaceX’s current reality—a compelling long-term story, but a near-term profitability path still awaiting validation.