Cathie Wood doubles down on SpaceX as shares slide to fresh post‑IPO low
Cathie Wood is leaning into the latest bout of weakness in SpaceX stock. Her firm, ARK Invest, scooped up another 18.3 million dollars’ worth of shares after the company’s price dropped to its lowest level since going public, pressured by a delayed Starship launch.
According to ARK’s trading disclosure for July 17, four of the asset manager’s actively managed exchange-traded funds collectively bought 147,623 SpaceX shares as the stock slipped 5.43% on the day. SpaceX ended Friday’s session at 123.99 dollars, having briefly traded as low as 122.12 dollars intraday.
The ARK Innovation ETF made the biggest move. The flagship fund added 95,129 SpaceX shares, a stake valued at roughly 11.8 million dollars at Friday’s closing price. Innovation and disruptive technologies are the core focus of this fund, and the latest purchase reinforces SpaceX’s role as one of its cornerstone growth bets.
ARK’s Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF also increased its exposure, picking up 30,464 SpaceX shares worth about 3.78 million dollars. That fund is designed to capture opportunities in automation, robotics, and advanced manufacturing-areas where SpaceX’s reusable rockets and next‑generation launch systems fit squarely into the thesis.
The Space Exploration & Innovation ETF added another 12,611 shares, equivalent to roughly 1.56 million dollars. This fund targets companies directly tied to the commercialization of space, satellite infrastructure, and related technologies, making SpaceX a natural holding and, increasingly, a top conviction name.
Rounding out the buying, the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF purchased 9,419 SpaceX shares valued at approximately 1.17 million dollars. While this ETF focuses on themes like cloud computing, AI, and digital platforms, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network provides a clear crossover between space technology and next‑gen connectivity.
These latest trades extend a buying streak that began when SpaceX debuted on public markets in June. Over the week ending July 10, ARK accumulated an additional 52.1 million dollars in SpaceX stock spread across the ARKK, ARKQ, ARKW, and ARKX funds. Earlier, around the company’s June 12 market debut, ARK had already taken down approximately 444 million dollars in SpaceX shares.
Taken together, the series of purchases has pushed ARK’s total SpaceX investment since the IPO to more than 475 million dollars. With the newest batch of shares acquired at prices around 8.2% below the 135‑dollar IPO offer, Wood is signaling that she views the pullback as a buying opportunity rather than a warning sign.
While ARK was increasing its bet on SpaceX, it was trimming exposure elsewhere. On the same trading day, the firm reduced its holding in Robinhood Markets. ARKW sold 20,089 Robinhood shares and ARKK let go of another 5,913. In total, 26,002 shares were moved out of the portfolio as Robinhood stock fell 5.72% to close at 99.96 dollars. ARK did not publicly disclose its rationale for the sale, but the rotation suggests a reallocation toward higher‑conviction positions like SpaceX.
The latest bout of selling pressure in SpaceX came after the company had to abort Starship Flight 13 shortly before launch. During pre‑flight testing, at least two Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster reportedly failed to ignite, forcing mission control to scrub the launch just minutes before liftoff.
Elon Musk later indicated that SpaceX would swap out the problematic engines and proceed with another attempt. The company rescheduled Flight 13 for July 20 at 6:45 p.m. Eastern Time, framing the delay as an operational hiccup rather than a fundamental setback for the program.
Market reaction, however, was swift. The aborted launch triggered renewed debate over Musk’s leadership and SpaceX’s near‑term execution risks. Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus tied the stock’s decline to growing skepticism about Musk’s performance across his various companies, arguing that another marginal new low in the share price was more plausible than a sudden dramatic crash.
Other investors pushed back on the pessimism. Tesla shareholder Sawyer Merritt described the sell‑off as an overreaction to a short delay in a highly complex test program. From that perspective, the decision to stand down and address engine issues before attempting another Starship launch reflects robust safety and engineering discipline rather than a sign of deeper trouble.
Wood’s actions place ARK firmly in the camp that views the volatility as noise against a larger, long‑term story. Her strategy has consistently emphasized buying into disruptive technology names during periods of weakness, a playbook she appears to be repeating with SpaceX. By adding heavily below the IPO price, she is effectively “averaging down” and expressing confidence that the company’s long‑term value will eclipse current market concerns.
From a strategic standpoint, the move also underlines how central SpaceX has become to ARK’s investment themes. The company sits at the intersection of several trends that ARK believes will reshape the global economy: reusable rocket technology lowering launch costs, satellite constellations enabling global internet coverage, and the broader commercialization of space from communications to Earth observation and beyond.
Investors watching this trade can draw a few key takeaways. First, institutional appetite for SpaceX remains strong even in the face of launch delays and technical setbacks. Second, the current pricing-below the IPO level-is being interpreted by some sophisticated market participants as a favorable entry point rather than a red flag. Finally, the stock’s sharp moves around operational news highlight how sentiment‑driven and volatile newly public, high‑growth names can be.
The Starship delay itself needs to be viewed in context. Spaceflight test campaigns, especially for vehicles as ambitious as Starship and Super Heavy, are inherently iterative. Engines will fail, launches will be scrubbed, and hardware will be reworked. Each aborted attempt typically generates a new set of data that can improve reliability and performance over time. For long‑horizon investors, these stumbles are often expected waypoints rather than thesis‑breaking events.
ARK’s portfolio shifts around SpaceX and Robinhood also illustrate how active managers respond to rapidly changing conditions. Rather than holding a static basket of growth names, Wood is selectively trimming positions where near‑term risk‑reward looks less compelling and redeploying capital into stories she believes have become more attractive on a pullback. That kind of tactical rebalancing is especially common in sectors where sentiment can swing quickly, such as fintech and space technology.
The divergence in commentary from figures like Marcus and Merritt shows how polarizing Musk‑led companies remain. To critics, operational delays reinforce a narrative of over‑promising and under‑delivering. To supporters, the same delays are evidence that SpaceX is pushing the frontier of what is technically possible, which inevitably involves failures and resets along the way. For now, ARK’s trading record places it squarely with the latter camp.
Looking ahead, much will depend on the outcome of the rescheduled Starship Flight 13 and SpaceX’s ability to demonstrate steady progress in its test program. A successful launch and recovery could quickly reverse the recent negative sentiment and validate ARK’s aggressive buying. Conversely, another high‑profile setback might test the patience of more short‑term oriented shareholders, even if long‑term believers remain unfazed.
For investors considering whether to “buy the dip” alongside Cathie Wood, several factors warrant attention: the company’s execution on Starship milestones, the expansion and monetization of the Starlink network, the broader regulatory environment for launch providers, and the overall risk tolerance of their portfolio. SpaceX is not a low‑volatility industrial stock; it is a high‑beta, high‑uncertainty bet on a radically different future for space and communications.
In that sense, the recent trading activity serves as a real‑time case study in growth investing. ARK is using a bout of pessimism, triggered by a specific operational delay, to deepen its exposure to a company it sees as central to multiple disruptive themes. Whether that proves prescient or premature will depend not on a single scrubbed launch, but on SpaceX’s trajectory over the coming years-and on how much volatility investors are willing to endure along the way.