SpaceX shares drop below stock market debut price with more than $1trillion wiped off

SpaceX, the Internet and rocket company owned by Elon Musk, has seen its shares drop below the price at which they debuted on the stock market in June. Shares in the company fell to $132.62 (£98.24) on Wednesday, below the initial listing price of $135 on 12 June. By the end of Wednesday, SpaceX shares were 41% lower than their peak of $225 they reached days after the initial public offering.

It means SpaceX has seen more than $1Trillion wiped from the value of Musk's conglomerate.

SpaceX's bonds issued in late June have also sold off sharply.

If the share price drops much further, it will mean shareholders who purchased stock around the time of its flotation will lose money on their investment. Short sellers targeting SpaceX shares are sitting on an estimated $8.7 billion in paper profit since the Rockets-To-Ai firm's Ipo, as its stock slipped below the Ipo price. About 185 million SpaceX shares are now sold short, representing roughly 29% of the company's publicly Tradable float and about $25 billion in bearish Wagers, according to data and analytics firm Ortex Technologies. Short sellers are rapidly increasing their bets against SpaceX, driving bearish positioning to nearly one-third of the company's public float as the struggling stock hovers around its Ipo price.

Reference Sources

1. dailymail - SpaceX shares drop below stock market debut price with more than $1trillion wiped off
2. thesunmy - SpaceX selloff raises concerns as lockup expiry looms
3. thestarmy - Short sellers rack up $8.7 billion profit as SpaceX slips below IPO price -Ortex
4. cnbc - Short sellers load up against SpaceX as stock retreats back to IPO price
5. latimes - SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading

China's rare earth curbs endanger $6.5tn of Western industry, IEA says

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that the full implementation of China's rare earth export curbs could put $6.5Tn of downstream production outside the country at risk each year if fully implemented. Rare Earths are a group of 17 metals used in small quantities, but essential to products ranging from cars and aircraft to electronics and weapons systems.

If the controls take full effect, about $6.5Tn of production across the automotive, high-tech, defence, and energy sectors could be exposed to supply disruptions, the IEA said in its global critical minerals outlook report.

The US and Europe would account for nearly half of the economic impact, the report added. To address those weaknesses, the report argues that countries should work multilaterally to stockpile 11 "high-risk" materials that would require an initial purchase of $9.2Bn and with a net annual cost of $900M, the agency said.

While the figures are "significant," they are "quickly dwarfed" by the potential impact of supply disruptions, it said. Export curbs by countries including China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe have turned the risks of supply chain concentration into reality, the IEA said.

Reference Sources

1. bloomberg - IEA Sees $6.5 Trillion At Risk if China Imposes Rare-Earth Curbs
2. nikkei - China's rare earth curbs endanger $6.5tn of Western industry, IEA says

Chinese AI start-up Moonshot to launch model challenging Anthropic’s lead

Chinese AI start-up Moonshot is set to release Kimi K3, China's largest AI model to date, with 2Tn-3Tn parameters, in the coming days.

The number of parameters refers to the size of the model's neural network, with a higher count generally leading to greater capabilities.

The model is expected to exceed the performance of Anthropic's opus 4.8 by mainstream benchmarks, but its capabilities are likely to fall short of fable, a powerful model that Anthropic has suspended after the us raised concerns over its hacking capabilities.

The launch of K3 could challenge the industry consensus that Chinese AI models are eight to 12 months behind US ones in terms of performance. Being open weight would also pose a significant challenge to US labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, whose expensive frontier models remain closed.

While the latest models from the US continue to outperform Chinese tools at the most complex tasks, a growing cohort of US tech investors and executives has warned that the gap is narrowing.

Moonshot is also said to be raising fresh capital in a round that would value it at $31.5 billion.

The company in May raised $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation.

The news comes amid a fresh debate on the value of paying AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic for their expensive, Closed-Source models.

Reference Sources

1. ft - Chinese AI start-up Moonshot to launch model challenging Anthropic’s lead
2. techcrunch - Moonshot’s upcoming Kimi 3 is expected to close the gap with Anthropic’s Opus 4.8

The CommonWealth English daily news digest is a service curated by CommonWealth English team with the help of AI tools.  

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Uploaded by Ian Huang