{"id":483149,"date":"2026-06-18T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/483149\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T06:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:00:18","slug":"michael-burry-is-tempted-to-short-elon-musks-spacex-but-says-its-not-enticing-enough-for-fundamentally-a-small-space-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/483149\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Burry is \u2018tempted\u2019 to short Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, but says it\u2019s not enticing enough for \u2018fundamentally a small space company\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Investor<\/a> Michael Burry\u2014of Big Short fame\u2014considered antagonizing the richest man on the planet over the IPO of his latest company.<\/p>\n

Burry said he had been tempted to bet against SpaceX<\/a>, the rocket company owned by Tesla<\/a> CEO Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

SpaceX went public last week, and its stock has already gained more than 25%. The company\u2019s valuation since then has soared close to $3 trillion, even overtaking Jeff Bezos\u2019s Amazon<\/a> at one point.<\/p>\n

But for every optimist backing Musk\u2019s bid to establish a human colony on Mars is an investor on earth wondering if the plan will ever take off. Burry, in typical form, was open in asking that question.<\/p>\n

In a Substack post, the analyst best known for predicting the housing crash before the 2008 financial crisis said he had reviewed a number of trading options for betting against Musk\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not involved with SpaceX now. Neither short nor, ahem, long,\u201d Burry wrote<\/a> Tuesday, per CNBC<\/a>. Put options on the shorter end\u2014expiring in June 2027, for example\u2014cost roughly $13 with the stock trading at around $212, Burry reported. A put ending December 2026 was priced at around $6.75, he added.<\/p>\n

Burry was \u201ctempted by that one. But no thank you,\u201d he wrote of the short option.<\/p>\n

He isn\u2019t sold on the eye-watering valuation of Musk\u2019s latest venture, which he described as \u201cfundamentally a small space company, a niche telecom, a bedeviled social media company, and a CoreWeave-light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investors did get a chance to peek at the company\u2019s financials ahead of its IPO in the form of an S-1 filing<\/a>, which revealed that while revenue is up, so too are losses. As Fortune previously reported,<\/a> Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is growing at a steady clip\u2014full-year revenue of $18.7 billion in 2025 increased roughly 33% from $14.1 billion in 2024\u2014but its losses are also accelerating.<\/p>\n

As of March 31, SpaceX has racked up an \u201caccumulated deficit\u201d of $41.3 billion, with a $4.27 billion net loss in Q1 of this year, compared with $528 million in the year-ago quarter.<\/p>\n

Fortune also reported on David Trainer\u2019s analysis<\/a> from research firm New Constructs, which revealed that nearly 80% of the capital expected to be generated by the IPO was spoken for. From the S-1 filing, Trainer discovered that $62.8 billion (or 78%) of the forecasted $80 billion in capital was already dedicated to insiders and vendors. Specifically, SpaceX pledged to pay more than three-quarters of the proceeds to third parties, Valor Equity Partners (a large shareholder), Musk X Corp., and xAI investors for repayment of debt, and EchoStar<\/a> for \u201cthe Spectrum Acquisition Closing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bet against Musk <\/p>\n

Musk is a notoriously busy man\u2014variously running EV manufacturer Tesla, launching SpaceX onto the market, helping oversee the running of social media company X, and managing a controversial stint in the Trump administration last year\u2014but even then, he finds time to push back at those who move against him.<\/p>\n

His feud with Microsoft<\/a> cofounder Bill Gates is particularly well-known, and last year he revived a years-old argument with claims that Gates still held a \u201ccrazy\u201d short position against Tesla.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Gates hasn\u2019t fully closed out the crazy short position he has held against Tesla for ~8 years, he had better do so soon,\u201d said Musk in a\u00a0November post.<\/p>\n

The bad blood began in 2022 when Gates reportedly shorted, or bet against, Tesla\u2019s stock to the tune of $500 million, earning him a text from Musk and \u201csuper mean\u201d behavior, Gates said in a later interview with Musk biographer Walter Isaacson. At the time, Musk asked Gates if he had taken a short position, which he confirmed, but added he wanted to work with the Tesla CEO on philanthropy.<\/p>\n

Musk reportedly responded: \u201cSorry, I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burry may, at some point, feel compelled to bet against SpaceX\u2014but Musk hasn\u2019t taken such slights lightly in the past.<\/p>\n

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investor Michael Burry\u2014of Big Short fame\u2014considered antagonizing the richest man on the planet over the IPO of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[242664,516,83406,111,139,69,147,80452,392,1503,213956],"class_list":["post-483149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-david-trainer","tag-elon-musk","tag-michael-burry","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-social-media-company","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-tesla-ceo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}