Cathie Wood isn't flinching. While SpaceX shares have shed 48% from their all-time high of $225.64 down to roughly $116.95, the Ark Invest CEO is doubling down on her conviction that Elon Musk's company could become the single most consequential business in history.
The numbers are uncomfortable, and Wood knows it. A $106 billion stock unlock is scheduled for August 6, 2026, a date that has short-term investors bracing for more selling pressure. Most fund managers would be quietly trimming exposure. Wood is doing the opposite, and she has a specific reason: Starlink.
Satellites, data centers and a very long time horizon
Starlink already controls 70% of the satellites currently in orbit. That kind of infrastructure dominance is exactly what Wood is betting on. Her argument goes beyond basic internet connectivity. Orbital data centers, she says, could cut cloud computing costs and accelerate AI workloads in ways that ground-based infrastructure simply can't match. It's a speculative thesis, but not a random one. The economics of moving compute off-planet are real, even if the timeline is debated on Wall Street.
That debate is the crux of the tension. Wood thinks in decades. Most institutional investors think in quarters. When a stock is down nearly half from its peak and a massive unlock is approaching, the short-term crowd tends to win the narrative, at least temporarily.
Alongside SpaceX, Wood has been vocal about Bitcoin as a separate but related bet. Her reasoning is that both assets represent a kind of decentralization, one operating in low Earth orbit, the other running on a distributed ledger. She frames BTC as a hedge against inflation and geopolitical instability, an argument she's been making for years. With economic tensions running high through 2025 and into 2026, she believes capital fleeing traditional market volatility could flow toward crypto.
Critics have a point when they call SpaceX overvalued at current levels, and Bitcoin speculative. Those aren't unfair labels. But Wood's track record includes calls that looked absurd for years before they paid off, and a few that simply didn't. The August 2026 unlock date will be a real stress test. If the stock absorbs that supply without a deeper collapse, the bull case gets considerably easier to defend.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Crypto and equity investments carry significant risk.
