Most stock advice comes with an expiration date. Buy this now, sell that by Friday, watch the earnings report next week.
Jim Cramer just gave SpaceX (SPCX) investors a very different kind of timeline.
During the lightning round of CNBC’s “Mad Money” on Aug. 25, a caller asked whether it was safe to buy SpaceX stock after its slide from summer highs.
Cramer’s answer was blunt. Put it away and give it to your kids, he said. He wasn’t joking, and he wasn’t talking about next quarter.
For investors, that raises a fair question. Is a stock that has been this shaky really something you hand down to the next generation?
Why Jim Cramer is telling parents to buy SpaceX stock now
Cramer has covered markets on CNBC for more than two decades, and he ran a hedge fund before that, so his read on sentiment tends to carry weight with retail investors.
His pitch this time leans on history. He compared SpaceX to the 100-year railroad bonds that funded infrastructure decades before it paid off.
Related: SpaceX stock defies latest Wall Street forecasts
The point is simple. Some assets reward patience measured in generations, not trading days.
Cramer argues that judging SpaceX on a normal 90-day earnings cycle misses what the company is actually building.
He has been consistent on one condition, though. “I would never recommend SpaceX if Musk weren’t involved,” he said on CNBC, tying the whole call to the founder’s ability to raise money and deliver.
What the SpaceX stock price is actually doing
SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share on June 12, in what became the largest public offering in history. It quickly ran up to an all-time high of $225.64 by June 16.
Then the stock gave back most of those gains and touched a low of $104.83 in early August.
As of Aug. 25, SPCX closed at $137.95, up 2.19% on the day. That put it back above its IPO price and gave the company a market cap of about $1.87 trillion.
So the “give it to your kids” call is not a bet on a skyrocketing stock. It comes after a bumpy first few months as a public company.
The earnings and cash burn that spooked Wall Street
SpaceX released its first quarterly report as a public company after the market closed on Aug. 4, and the numbers cut both ways.
Revenue in the second quarter jumped 92% to $7.8 billion, beating analyst expectations of about $6.93 billion, CNBC reported.
The problem was spending. Capital expenditures hit $18.4 billion for the quarter, and the company posted a net loss of $541 million.
Here is what investors reacted to:
- Revenue growth was strong across Starlink and AI compute
- Cash burn ran billions above what Wall Street modeled
- Free cash flow stayed negative
Shares fell 13.6% the day after the report, showing how sensitive this stock is to any sign that the spending won’t slow down soon.
How the share lockup added more pressure
Timing made the drop worse.
Roughly 911.5 million previously restricted shares became eligible to trade on Aug. 6, more than doubling the public float from about 639 million shares to 1.55 billion, Reuters reported.
At the time, that put more than $100 billion in stock in position to trade for the first time.
More supply usually means softer prices, and additional unlocks are spread across a dozen-plus dates into late 2026.
Cramer flagged this exact setup weeks earlier, telling viewers to wait for the lockup to hit before buying. His long-term optimism and his short-term caution were always two separate messages.
What SpaceX is building to justify the price
The generational case rests on businesses that barely exist yet.
Starlink is the profitable engine today, with about 12 million subscribers and a $1.66 billion operating profit in Q2.
That funds everything else.
The bigger swing is AI. SpaceX has turned its Colossus data centers into a compute-rental business, signing agreements with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI, CNBC reported.
Fortune estimates the agreements could generate about $26 billion a year.
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The company also wants to move those AI data centers into orbit, using solar power and the cold of space for cooling.
On Aug. 25, SpaceX announced a $100 billion Starbase spaceport in Louisiana, CNBC reported.
It will be the company’s largest launch site, with construction starting in 2027 and the first launch targeted for 2029.
Where Wall Street disagrees with Cramer
Not everyone sees a generational bargain at these levels.
Morningstar, one of the most respected independent research firms, reaffirmed a fair value estimate of $62 per share after the second-quarter report, arguing the stock still prices in optimistic outcomes for Starship and orbital data centers.
Others are far more bullish. JPMorgan holds an Overweight rating with a $240 target, and Morgan Stanley’s bull case reaches as high as $600, according to according to Investing.com.
That contrast tells you something important. The analysts who cover this stock cannot agree on what it is worth within a few hundred dollars a share.
Skeptics also point to the data center contracts, which are lucrative but can be canceled with 90 days’ notice, making long-term revenue harder to count on.
What this means for you before you buy
If you are considering SpaceX because Cramer said to, a few practical points are worth holding onto.
Before buying SPCX, consider these realities:
- The stock carries high volatility, and more share unlocks are coming through late 2026
- The company is not profitable yet and is spending heavily
- The bull case depends on Starship reusability and orbital AI that are years from proven
A generational holding still requires you to survive the near term without panic-selling.
For most investors, that means sizing the position small enough that a further drop won’t force your hand.
Cramer’s own advice supports this. He warned people not to build a large position into the unlocks.
If you believe in the decades-long vision, dollar-cost averaging into a modest stake gives you exposure without betting the outcome on a single entry price.
The bottom line on Cramer’s SpaceX call
Cramer’s message to parents is genuinely long-term, and it is not a promise that the stock goes up from here.
He is asking investors to accept sharp near-term swings in exchange for a bet on Starlink, AI data centers, and space infrastructure that could take a generation to mature.
The risk is also real. Morningstar’s $62 fair value and the ongoing cash burn are reminders that the price today already assumes a lot goes right.
For readers, the honest takeaway is this. If you buy SpaceX, buy it the way Cramer framed it, as money you can leave alone for years, not capital you will need back soon.
Related: JPMorgan resets SpaceX price target after earnings