The smart money on SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) stock is openly split. Oppenheimer just lifted its price target to $250, while hedge fund manager Michael Burry has publicly studied the short and walked away, calling the trade too expensive rather than wrong.
That nuance matters: Burry isn’t bullish and isn’t currently betting against SpaceX shares either. He wrote that he is “neither short nor… long” SpaceX, leaving Oppenheimer a comparatively constructive voice and Burry as a marker the broader skeptic community is watching.
Broader analyst coverage tilts decisively bullish on SPCX stock. Per Koyfin data, five of six analysts covering SpaceX rate it Buy or Strong Buy, even as the stock trades as a brand-new, highly volatile listing.
The Oppenheimer Bull Case: $250 on an AI Stack
Oppenheimer’s thesis hinges on vertical integration into AI. The firm cites the $60 billion all-stock acquisition of AI coding firm Cursor as proof that SpaceX owns every layer of its AI stack: compute, models, data, and applications, with many more acquisitions expected ahead.
The estimate revisions are aggressive. Oppenheimer says Cursor’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) is running at a $4 billion rate today, up from $1 billion in 2025, and expected to reach $6 billion by end-2026. On that basis, it lifted SpaceX’s expected Q4 2026 AI revenue to $8.75 billion, up from $4.75 billion.
Oppenheimer also frames Starship as the “launch moat” and a NASA-funded route to a lunar supply base, giving the bull case both a near-term AI revenue ramp and a long-duration hardware story. That combination supports the $250 price target.
The Burry Bear Case: Priced for Perfection
Burry’s argument centers on size, not narrative. He called SpaceX “fundamentally a small space company, a niche telecom” and flagged that the company generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 (up about a third year over year) but posted a $4.27 billion loss in Q1 2025 alone and carries an accumulated deficit north of $41 billion, against a market value of about $2.8 trillion.
For context, he compared that market cap to the GDP of Russia (~$2.59 trillion), Italy (~$2.55 trillion), and Canada (~$2.32 trillion), and noted it eclipsed Berkshire Hathaway‘s (NYSE:BRK-B | BRK-B Price Prediction) value 2.5x over in three days. His point: a valuation pricing in rockets, satellites, AI, and Mars leaves little room for upside surprise and ample room for disappointment.
So why isn’t Burry take a short position? The answer has to do with cost. SpaceX’s newly listed options were among the busiest debuts ever, with more than one million contracts on day one, making bearish bets expensive.
Burry examined three $100-strike puts while the stock traded near $212: the December 2028 contract cost about $25, a June 2027 version about $13, and the cheapest, December 2026, about $6.75. Of the cheapest, he wrote, “Tempted by that one. But no thank you.”
The Gap Between Wall Street and the Tape
SpaceX stock currently trades at $179 after a sharp recent pullback, well below Oppenheimer’s $250 target. Retail sentiment has soured in step: the Reddit composite sentiment score hit 12, very bearish, with the dominant thread arguing “institutional money is NOT buying this trash on the open market.”
The composite sentiment index across prediction, social, and news inputs reads 37.27, bearish, with medium confidence, and a 7-day change of -13.99. That’s the gap: the experts lean bullish on SPCX but the crowd is turning bearish, with one of the market’s most famous shorts on the sidelines.
The Takeaway
Both insiders can be right at once. Oppenheimer’s $250 target is grounded in a specific AI revenue ramp and the Cursor integration, while Burry’s view is that the same story is already in the price at a $2.8 trillion market cap. “Too expensive to short” and “too expensive to own comfortably” describe the same observation from different seats.
For SpaceX stock traders, this is a position-sizing question, not a conviction question. Investors should consider keeping their position sizes modest given the listing’s volatility, the absence of standard valuation anchors, and the visible disagreement between credentialed bulls and bears.
Right now, investors can watch three things: Cursor ARR progress against the $6 billion year-end bar, the trajectory of SpaceX’s accumulated deficit, and whether options pricing cheapens enough for skeptics like Burry to re-engage. Those signals could tell you which side of this Wall Street split is being validated by the numbers.
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