In the weeks following SpaceX's public debut, a familiar tension has emerged between institutional optimism and market reality — a tension NYU professor Scott Galloway is using to ask a deeper question about who, exactly, is trusted to tell the truth about a company's worth. With the stock trading 16 percent below its IPO price and a $300 analyst target resting more on AI ambitions than rocket launches, Galloway sees not just an overvalued stock, but a recurring failure of the financial institutions society has long relied upon to separate vision from fantasy. The echo of WeWork's accounting t
Galloway Blasts Morgan Stanley's $300 SpaceX Target as 'Romantic Comedy' Fiction
The institutions we used to trust to do this, you cannot trust
Mark
Why does Galloway think the Morgan Stanley target is so far off base? Is it just the number itself?
Mimi
It's not just the number. It's the foundation. Half the valuation rests on AI data centers, not space operations. That's a bet that SpaceX becomes something entirely different from what it was founded to be.
Mark
But couldn't that actually happen? Why is that fantasy?
Mimi
It could happen. But the question Galloway is really asking is: who vetted this? The same banks that approved WeWork's fake accounting are now saying this is sound. That's the pattern he's worried about.
Mark
So he's not saying SpaceX will fail—he's saying the institutions can't be trusted to evaluate it fairly?
Mimi
Exactly. He's saying the gatekeepers have failed before and they're failing again. The valuation might be right or wrong, but the process that produced it is broken.
Mark
What does the market actually think will happen?
Mimi
Prediction markets give it a 21 percent chance of closing July above $120. Most traders expect it to settle above $110. That's a lot closer to $100 than to $300.
Mark
And then the lockup expires in August?
Mimi
Yes. That's when insiders can sell. Jonas himself has said investors expect the stock to drift toward $100 when that happens. So the real test comes after earnings.
O Pulso
- SpaceX shares have already fallen nearly halfway from their intraday peak, and a lockup expiration releasing 911 million shares on August 6 threatens to accelerate the slide.
- Morgan Stanley's $300 price target — built on a projection that SpaceX becomes a $319 billion AI cloud giant by 2030 — has drawn open mockery from one of Wall Street's most prominent critics.
- Galloway's WeWork comparison is pointed: the same banks that blessed 'community adjusted EBITDA' as a legitimate metric are now underwriting SpaceX and issuing buy ratings, straining the credibility of institutional vetting.
- Prediction markets are unmoved by the bullish targets, pricing only a 21 percent chance SpaceX closes July above $120 and a 60 percent probability it settles above $110 — a quiet but damning verdict.
- SpaceX's first public earnings report arrives August 4, two days before the lockup expires, compressing the timeline for investors to decide whether the story is transformation or inflation.
In the weeks following SpaceX's public debut, a familiar tension has emerged between institutional optimism and market reality — a tension NYU professor Scott Galloway is using to ask a deeper question about who, exactly, is trusted to tell the truth about a company's worth. With the stock trading 16 percent below its IPO price and a $300 analyst target resting more on AI ambitions than rocket launches, Galloway sees not just an overvalued stock, but a recurring failure of the financial institutions society has long relied upon to separate vision from fantasy. The echo of WeWork's accounting theater lingers in his critique, raising the uncomfortable possibility that prestige and accountability have drifted further apart than markets yet acknowledge.
Scott Galloway arrived at Morgan Stanley's $300 SpaceX price target with the kind of contempt usually reserved for creative fiction — suggesting the analyst behind it might find a more honest living writing romantic comedies. The joke landed against a backdrop of real pain: SpaceX shares were trading near $113, down 16 percent from their $135 IPO price and far below an intraday peak of $225.64 reached just weeks earlier.
The target belongs to Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas, whose model envisions SpaceX revenue growing from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $319 billion by 2030. The catch is that more than half of that projected value comes not from rockets or satellites, but from artificial intelligence — data centers, compute contracts, cloud infrastructure. Goldman Sachs sits at $205. Raymond James carries an $800 target that would value the company at $10.4 trillion, earning its analyst a similar fictional career suggestion from Galloway's co-host.
Galloway's deeper concern is institutional. He traced a direct line to WeWork's 2019 IPO attempt, where underwriters approved a prospectus measuring profitability through a metric that excluded the company's actual costs. His viral takedown of that filing made his reputation — and the banks involved were Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup, the same institutions now underwriting SpaceX. 'The institutions we used to trust to do this, you cannot trust,' he said. The implication is less about SpaceX specifically than about a systemic failure to police the distance between ambition and accounting.
Prediction markets are reflecting that skepticism in cold numbers. Traders on Polymarket give SpaceX only a 21 percent chance of closing July above $120, and just 2 percent odds of finishing above $140. The most probable outcome — a close above $110 — is priced at 60 percent. A separate contract on a Tesla-SpaceX merger by year-end has attracted nearly $880,000 in volume at 16 percent odds, suggesting some traders find dramatic restructuring more plausible than a sustained recovery.
The immediate pressure point is August 6, when a lockup tranche of roughly 911 million shares expires and insiders can begin selling. SpaceX reports its first public earnings two days earlier, on August 4. Even Jonas has acknowledged that many investors expect the stock to drift toward $100 as that selling pressure arrives. Whether Galloway's critique proves prescient or simply premature will likely be answered within days.
Scott Galloway, the NYU professor and market skeptic, took aim at Morgan Stanley's $300 price target for SpaceX this week with a particular kind of scorn: the suggestion that the analyst responsible should abandon finance altogether and try writing romantic comedies instead. The barb landed as SpaceX stock traded near $113, having fallen 16 percent below its $135 IPO price and nearly halfway down from an intraday peak of $225.64 just weeks earlier.
The $300 target belongs to Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas, whose valuation model projects SpaceX revenue climbing from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $319 billion by 2030. The crucial detail: more than half of that valuation rests not on rockets or launch services, but on artificial intelligence—specifically, data center operations and compute contracts with companies like Anthropic and Google. It's a bet that SpaceX's real future lies in becoming a cloud infrastructure player, not a space company. Goldman Sachs has set its target at $205. Raymond James analyst Brian Sigual, meanwhile, carries a Street-high $800 target, which would value the company at $10.4 trillion. Galloway's co-host Ed Elson noted that Sigual, too, should probably consider fiction writing.
Galloway's skepticism runs deeper than mere number-crunching. He drew a direct line to WeWork's catastrophic 2019 IPO attempt, when underwriters approved a prospectus that measured profitability using "community adjusted EBITDA"—a metric that conveniently excluded the company's actual real estate costs. Galloway famously called it "EBITDA before everything else," and his viral critique of that filing became one of his signature moments. The parallel he's drawing now is uncomfortable: the same major financial institutions that failed to police WeWork's accounting gymnastics—Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup—are now underwriting SpaceX and carrying buy ratings on the stock. "The institutions we used to trust to do this, you cannot trust," Galloway said.
He also took a swipe at Tesla, calling it "a meme stock" as shares fell roughly 15 percent in a single week. The broader point seemed to be that markets are pricing in fantasies, not fundamentals.
Prediction markets are telling a different story than the bulls. On Polymarket, traders give SpaceX only a 21 percent chance of closing July above $120, and just 2 percent odds of finishing above $140. The most likely outcome, priced at 60 percent, is a close above $110. A separate contract betting on a Tesla-SpaceX merger by year-end has drawn nearly $880,000 in volume and carries 16 percent odds—a sign that some traders see a dramatic restructuring as more plausible than a sustained rally.
The near-term catalyst is unavoidable. SpaceX will report its first public earnings on August 4. Two days later, on August 6, a lockup tranche of roughly 911 million shares is set to expire, meaning insiders and early investors can begin selling. Adam Jonas himself has noted that many investors expect the stock to drift toward $100 as that selling pressure hits. The question now is whether the market's skepticism—embodied in Galloway's withering critique and reflected in prediction market pricing—will prove prescient or merely premature.
Citações Notáveis
That person should be writing romantic comedies where people bump into each other at the grocery store and in aisle eight decide they're in love— Scott Galloway, on the Morgan Stanley analyst
The institutions we used to trust to do this, you cannot trust— Scott Galloway, on major financial institutions vetting prospectuses
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