HAWTHORNE, Calif. — Short sellers have piled into SpaceX at a historic clip since its record IPO, and Elon Musk and his allies are warning them that betting against the company has rarely ended well.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares this week, drawing a direct parallel to the punishing short-selling pressure Tesla weathered in its early public years, when aggressive bears ultimately "went broke." His comment landed as Teslarati reported that short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company had surged.
A Record Short Trade
According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached roughly 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34% of SpaceX's limited public float of around 640 million shares, with a notional value near $24.6 billion. Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95%, and borrow fees climbed. The bets 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, a supply wave detailed in the SpaceX lockup expiry.
Musk has issued his own warnings. In mid-July he posted that "the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low." On August 4, just before earnings, he responded to the latest short-interest data with a familiar shrug: "I try to warn them, but they just double down."
The Numbers Behind the Confidence
SpaceX gave the bulls plenty to point to. Second-quarter revenue jumped 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus near $6.9 billion, while the net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents a share, far better than the roughly 24-cent loss analysts expected. Starlink and connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion, up 66%, and the AI business generated $2.6 billion, results laid out in the company's first-ever earnings report.
Echoes of the Tesla Trade
Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end and a path to $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. That combination, Chamath's history lesson, Musk's repeated alerts, and SpaceX's aggressive growth targets, has set up a high-stakes standoff. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, but the long-term bulls point to Starlink's scale, Starship's rapid progress, and booming AI compute demand as reasons the bears may ultimately meet the same fate as the skeptics who once bet against Tesla, and lost.
