Space Exploration Technologies’ (NASDAQ:SPCX) — aka SpaceX — stock is down roughly 43% from its peak in June. But that hasn’t stopped UK investors from piling in.

According to Interactive Investor, SpaceX was the second most-bought stock on its platform in July. And it has topped the charts over the past month on AJ Bell.

Clearly then, many UK investors have been buying the dip. Should I get involved too?

I’ve been wary

Before SpaceX went public, I was wary about buying shares through my investment platform. History shows that hyped-up IPOs tend to fizzle out quite quickly, leading to a lower share price.

In fact, in an early-June article entitled Will SpaceX crash after the stock market IPO? I wrote: “In my experience, there’s usually a chance to invest later on at a better price if I’m patient”.

Admittedly, the stock isn’t that far off its IPO price of $135, so hardly a crash when measured from that point. And when I said patient, I was thinking 12 months at least before taking a serious look.

However, the company’s second quarter report certainly piqued my interest. Here’s why…

The AI wildcard

Having followed SpaceX as a private company for a decade, I was already familiar with the space/rocket side of the business. I’m one of those nerds who tunes into the live Starship test launches.

And the Starlink satellite constellation, while an enormous engineering challenge to build and operate, is actually quite a simple business to conceptualise. Boiled down, it’s a global telecom utility operating as a high-margin subscription service.

The AI business was what I wanted to learn more about. Because SpaceX’s capital expenditure here is on track to exceed $50bn in 2026 — a colossal sum that worries me.

What did I learn?

SpaceX intends to make money from AI in a few ways:

Rent out massive GPU capacity to external AI companies.

Software subscriptions (Grok and Cursor, an AI coding tool).

AI satellites in orbit offering energy-efficient, low-cost processing capacity.

As is well-documented, SpaceX disrupted the launch industry through extreme vertical integration and cost-cutting innovations. As a result, it has reduced the cost of launching cargo to low Earth orbit by roughly 95% compared to NASA’s shuttle days.

What interests me here is that this same disruptive mindset, alongside the expertise in building the best rockets and satellites, is being applied to terrestrial data centres.

Terrestrial data centres are a trivial problem compared to making gigantic reusable rockets which are launched frequently. And the Starlink satellites also are alien-level technology… so you take a small percentage of that engineering, apply it to terrestrial data centres, and you get an amazing outcome.

Elon Musk.

Additionally, SpaceX plans to start launching Starmind AI satellites next year. Of course, Musk’s timelines are notoriously optimistic, and there’s a big risk that AI costs balloon much faster than expected moving forward, forcing SpaceX to take on debt and issue equity.

Nevertheless, the optionality here for the existing Starlink business is already off the charts — maritime fleets, commercial airlines (just 10% penetrated), Starlink Mobile, governments, defence (Starshield), and consumers. Then Starmind to come, eventually.

The stock’s still expensive today, adding risk for invertors considering it. So my plan is to build out a position over time whenever SpaceX sells off.

Should you invest £5,000 in Space Exploration Technologies Corp. – Class A right now?

When investing expert Mark Rogers and his team have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the flagship Twelfth Magpie Share Advisor newsletter he has run for nearly a decade has provided thousands of paying members with top stock recommendations from the UK and US markets.

And right now, Mark thinks there are 6 standout stocks that investors should consider buying. Want to see if Space Exploration Technologies Corp. – Class A made the list?

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Ben McPoland has no position in any of the companies mentioned.

The post Down 43%, is SpaceX a stock to consider buying? UK investors give their verdict appeared first on The Twelfth Magpie.

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