By William Gavin and Joy Wiltermuth

Elon Musk's company made a splash earlier this week with a $25 billion bond deal, less than two weeks after it raised tens of billions of dollars in cash

SpaceX creditors are expressing some doubt about the company's longer-duration bonds, only days after their debut.

SpaceX made a splash earlier this week with a $25 billion bond deal, less than two weeks after it raised tens of billions of dollars in cash through its record initial public offering.

Yet those bonds are trading considerably weaker only a few days after they were issued, signaling increased scrutiny of the artificial-intelligence spending blitz. At the same time, semiconductor shares and other technology stocks showed weakness on Friday.

SpaceX's (SPCX) bond sale was one of the largest AI debt financings yet and attracted major demand, up to $98 billion. That made it one of the five largest peak order books of 2026 in the U.S. investment-grade bond market, according to Informa Global Markets.

On Friday, SpaceX's bonds were among the top traded debt in the U.S. investment-grade market, eclipsing volumes seen in other names including Nvidia (NVDA), Meta Platforms (META) and several large investment banks, according to MarketAxess data.

Of the top 10 most actively traded bonds on Friday, three were those issued by SpaceX. Despite the volume, however, SpaceX's 5.35% bonds weren't rallying but rather weakening as investors demanded more spread, or extra compensation to offset the perception of their growing risks. The bonds were last spotted at a spread of 112 basis points above risk-free rates, versus 106 basis points two days earlier.

"There's been a lot of issuance in AI and tech in general," said Mike Sanders, head of fixed income at Madison Investments, on Friday.

He noted that SpaceX, in particular, comes with a "lot of hope" for a company that is both losing money and has an uncertain road to profitability. The company took a $2.59 billion operational loss in 2025 and warned in its prospectus that it cannot predict when it will achieve profitability.

Spreads gapped out even more on longer-duration SpaceX bonds, according to MarketAxess, signaling that the market may be concerned about the company's long-term future. Much of SpaceX's future is tied to moonshot ideas, including putting up to 1 million data centers in Earth's orbit and sending rockets to Mars.

The poor performance of longer 30-year SpaceX bonds, which have widened by about 30 basis points in their first week of trading, has been notable, according to Sanders. "That's a pretty big move," he said.

The high volume in the bond market echoes SpaceX's first few days in the equities market. On its first day of trading, June 12, more than 522 million shares exchanged hands. Just 112 million Nvidia shares were traded that day.

After an initial few days of high volume, both the amount of shares being traded and SpaceX's stock price have declined. SpaceX is trading at about $153 per share, slightly above its debut price on the Nasdaq, as of Friday's close. It peaked at $225.64 per share on June 16, SpaceX's second full day on the market.

SpaceX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

-William Gavin -Joy Wiltermuth

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