SpaceX (SPCX) Closed the $60 Billion Cursor Deal. What's Next for the Stock?

By AltIndex Research · 12 min read · August 18, 4:33 pm

The $60 billion Cursor acquisition has now closed and with the deal done, and SPCX 32% off its August low, the remaining question is: what happens next for SPCX? Our alternative data has a clear answer on the company and a more complicated one on the stock.

The largest acquisition of a venture-backed startup ever recorded is finished. A SpaceX subsidiary merged into Anysphere, Cursor became a wholly owned subsidiary, roughly 391 million Class A shares went to Cursor's holders, and Cursor told its users it now has access to what it called the largest fleet of GPUs in the world.

That settles the deal and settles nothing about the stock. SPCX has been public for nine weeks, fell 46% to a low of $108.27 in that time, and has run back to $143.34. Here is what our signals say about where it goes from here.

What the Alternative Data Says

Nine weeks of price history tells you very little. Our signals reach back further and split cleanly into two stories: what the company has been doing, and what the market has been doing to it.

Start with the company. At the start of April, SpaceX reported 18,407 employees on LinkedIn. By August 1 that number was 20,561. That is 2,154 people added in four months, growth of 11.7%, with no monthly reading going backwards. The climb began in April, two months before the IPO put $75 billion on the balance sheet, and it did not pause after the Q2 loss or after the August 6 unlock. SpaceX only grows by building capacity it has to staff first, so headcount is the closest thing to a live read on how fast that capacity is going up.

AltIndex LinkedIn Employee Data, April to August 2026

Open roles confirm it. Monthly average job postings ran at 1,305 in April, 1,439 in May, 1,374 in June and 1,517 in July, the highest month since we began tracking the ticker. Hiring intent and hiring completed are pointing the same way, which is the combination that matters. A company can post roles it never fills, and headcount alone can rise on acquisitions. Here the two confirm each other.

AltIndex Job Postings Data, April to August 2026

The people already inside did not change their minds either. Employee business outlook has held between 78% and 80% every month since April and reads 79% today, meaning roughly four in five employees are positive on where the business is going. It did not wobble through the IPO, the drawdown or the unlock. When a workforce watches its own equity fall 46% and its read on the business does not move, that is a reasonable proxy for what people with actual information believe.

Now the market's side, which is mostly about attention and supply. Interest in the company, as opposed to the ticker, shows up in traffic to spacex.com. It ran at 1.8 million estimated visits in March, roughly doubled to 4.1 million in May after the Cursor option was announced, dipped to 3.4 million in June and reached 4.8 million in July, the highest month in our series. That is a 163% increase since March, and unlike the share price it has not given any of it back. This is an interest measure rather than a demand measure, since Starlink subscribers sign up on a different domain, but interest in SpaceX has been building all year while the stock was falling.

Retail attention arrives in bursts, and the bursts are dated. Reddit mentions hit 3,340 on June 16, the biggest day since SPCX listed, the day the Cursor option was exercised and the day the stock set its high. They faded to a few hundred a day through July, then spiked again to 874 on August 4 for the earnings report and stayed elevated through the August 6 unlock. Both bursts landed on turning points: the first at the all-time high, the second within a day of the low.

Reddit sentiment is the more useful half. It has never dropped below 0.54 on a zero to one scale, and its two weakest readings came on July 31 and August 5, the sessions around the bottom. It has since recovered to 0.63. Retail went quiet and nervous at the worst possible moment, which is the usual pattern, but the people still posting never turned against the stock. SPCX ranks ninth on our Reddit stocks toplist today with 295 mentions, ahead of Nebius, GameStop and Tesla.

AltIndex Reddit Mentions and Sentiment Data, June to August 2026

Supply is the other half, and it is the part with dates attached. SpaceX staggered its lockup rather than using a single cliff. The 911.5 million shares freed on August 6 were the opening tranche, more than three times the public float, and the stock rose 6% that day. A further 455.8 million would have come free had SPCX closed 30% above its $135 IPO price, a level of $175.50 it has never reached. Roughly 7% of the locked block comes free about every two weeks from late August through October, and the largest 2026 release, around 1.3 billion shares, is tied to the Q3 report on November 2. The 391 million shares issued for Cursor land on top of all of it. A stock that keeps absorbing that supply the way it absorbed the first tranche is telling you something real about demand.

Our AI Score reads 63, up from 41 on August 5, which puts SPCX back in buy territory. The score is an aggregate of the signals above, so it moved when they did. Analyst targets in our event feed moved just as fast, from $102.93 on August 5 to $163.43 by August 15 before settling at $152.32, about 6% above the current price.

What the Buildout Costs

The signals show the buildout as it happens. The income statement shows the bill, and it only arrives four times a year.

SpaceX reported its first public quarter on August 4. Revenue was $7.81 billion, up 92% year over year, and the loss per share came in at nine cents against a 26 cent estimate. The segment split is where the Cursor deal starts to make sense. Starlink brought in $4.29 billion and $1.66 billion of operating income. The launch and Starship business, the thing most people picture when they hear SpaceX, brought in $962 million and lost $542 million. The AI business brought in $2.56 billion, grew 247% year over year, and lost $1.26 billion.

SpaceX Q2 2026 reported results, three operating segments

That is the segment every signal above is pointing at. It is already more than two and a half times the size of the launch business, it is the only one growing triple digits, and it loses more money than any other part of the company. Paying $60 billion in stock for an AI coding company is a bet that the growth is worth the burn. The burn is real at the company level too. SpaceX lost $541 million in the June quarter and $4.28 billion in the March quarter, with capital spending of roughly $28.5 billion in the first half of 2026.

The Bottom Line

Every signal that measures what SpaceX is doing points the same way. Headcount rose 11.7% in four months without a single down month, job postings sit near the top of their range, four in five employees are positive on the business, and traffic to spacex.com is at its high for the year. The company is building and it is not slowing down. What none of that settles is whether the building pays.

The AI score of 63 is buy territory, but not the strongest reading in its own sector. Redwire scores 74 and AST SpaceMobile 68, both at a fraction of SpaceX's size. If space is the theme you are buying rather than this one name, our best space stocks list ranks the whole sector on the same signals.

Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. AltIndex aggregates publicly available alternative data signals. Past signal performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own due diligence before making investment decisions.