Key Takeaways
- President Trump’s accounts bought between $1 million and $5 million of SpaceX’s 5.35% notes due July 2031 on Aug. 18, according to his August financial disclosure.
- The notes are the safer place to be right now, because bondholders get paid before shareholders and Starlink is the only part of SpaceX making money.
- SpaceX’s capex ran about $14 billion ahead of its operating cash in 2025, and second-quarter capex alone was $18.4 billion, most of it for AI.
President Donald Trump is lending money to SpaceX (SPCX).
His August financial disclosure shows his accounts bought between $1 million and $5 million of SpaceX’s senior unsecured notes on Aug. 18. Those notes pay 5.35% a year and mature in July 2031.
With the way SpaceX is paying for its AI build, that’s the smarter seat.
TIKR tracks 38 analysts on SpaceX. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on SpaceX, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See SpaceX’s Analyst Ratings
What exactly happened
The SpaceX notes were one of 517 trades on Trump’s August disclosure. He bought them two days before he signed a national space transportation policy meant to expand US commercial launches, and that timing has raised conflict-of-interest questions.
The White House has said Trump’s investments are managed independently, without his input. And a few million dollars is a small position. Whoever made the trade, though, the reasoning behind owning SpaceX’s debt instead of its stock holds up…
Bondholders get paid first
SpaceX has been borrowing heavily, and its total debt rose about 60% in 2025:
And that was before June, when SpaceX sold $25 billion of senior unsecured notes, according to its second-quarter filing. It used the money to repay bridge financing and for general corporate purposes. By June 30, its 10-Q showed $38.4 billion of debt principal.
The reason for the borrowing is simple. The business doesn’t generate enough cash to pay for what it’s building…
In 2025, capex ran about $14 billion ahead of operating cash. And the spending is speeding up: second-quarter capex alone was $18.4 billion, nearly all of 2025’s total, and $15.8 billion of it went to the AI segment.
This is where the notes and the stock split. In the second quarter, Connectivity, the segment that holds Starlink, earned $1.56 billion of operating income on $4.29 billion of revenue. AI revenue more than tripled to $2.56 billion, but the segment lost $1.25 billion, and Space lost $542 million.
Bondholders get paid out of Starlink’s cash, plus the $100 billion of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities SpaceX held at the end of June. Shareholders get what’s left over.
Even Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives, one of the stock’s loudest bulls, makes the case in terms a bondholder would like: “We think the contracted backlog in AI and the cash generation of Starlink give SpaceX the capacity to service it.”
The stock carries the AI bet
For shareholders to earn a return, $15.8 billion a quarter of AI spending has to pay off. Trump’s notes only need SpaceX to keep making its payments through 2031.
More borrowing may be on the way. The first reported that SpaceX is in talks to borrow $40 billion more to buy Nvidia (NVDA) chips: about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt. The talks are reportedly still early. Taking on more debt shrinks the cushion for every lender, and all of that debt still ranks ahead of the stock.
The trade-off for bondholders is that 5.35% a year is all they’ll ever get.
That said, for someone like me…I want the upside, thanks. Especially after a blockbuster 3Q report.
So what is SpaceX stock actually worth?
TIKR lets you forecast the future price of any stock in less than a minute. Just enter a few assumptions into TIKR’s valuation model and see what SpaceX could be worth. Start from Wall Street consensus estimates, or adjust the inputs to reflect your own view of the business. It’s free to use.
Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
