All eyes are on SpaceX as the company has filled for an IPO that they hope will value the company at $2 trillion, a valuation that requires a suspension of disbelief akin to flying to the moon. But that’s happening too, so who knows what’s possible. That also gives us a chance to look at some other space companies stretching credulity, see below.

You can find prior notes and the full research archive at https://epistrophy.beehiiv.com.

As always, I’m focused on three things:
1) Technology-driven change;
2) the latest in innovation and startup trends, and;
3) stock fraud.

Companies Discussed

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2. Space Tail 📈 Wags Space Dog 🚀

   1. How a moon launch and SpaceX IPO are boosting shar …

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Space Tail 📈 Wags Space Dog 🚀

How a moon launch and SpaceX IPO are boosting shares of a struggling space stock 

Space, the new frontier. You can see it in the stars, of course, with the exciting launch last week of the moon mission Artemis II – the NASA launch drew 10 million concurrent livestream viewers, in the same atmosphere as this year’s Golden Globes (9m) or Grammys (14m) . And news of a SpaceX filing has the markets salivating for a potential $2 trillion IPO. 

Investors chased “space exposure”, pouring money into the space ETFs. The S&P 500 was up just 3.3% last week, but the space ETFs hit 52 week highs. The  Procure Space ETF (UFO:NASDAQ) was up 7.3% and the DEfiance Drone and Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI:NASDAQ) up 10.1%  

But Houston, we have a problem. 

Pulled into the ETF orbit is Spire Global (SPIR:NASDAQ) – a troubled company contained in both ETFs (as well as the ARK Space & Defense Innovation ETF ARKX:NASDAQ).  The ETFs were compelled to buy more shares of SPIR with those inflows. But that does not mean that things are getting better for Spire – far from it. An examination of the companies recently filed 10-K shows a precipitous decline in many metrics – not what you want to see from a satellite company.

(Filing the 10-K itself is a feat – the company has been unable to file three of its last five 10-Ks or 10-Qs on time and fell out of NYSE listing standards as a result.)

Spire’s product is data, but the machine producing it continues to fall from the sky. The company operates a constellation of LEMUR “nanosatellites”, small CubeSats designed to collect radio-frequency signals from low Earth orbit. 

The company has launched over 200, and continues to say it has a “planned constellation” of 200 satellites. But the number of satellites in orbit – and indeed the satellites themselves – keep falling. Currently the company has just 83 in orbit, including one launched aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 16 last week. In its recent 10-K, the company admits that it “expect(s) to have more than 75 satellites operating… by the end of 2026” – far from 200.

Satellites gradually lose altitude because of atmospheric drag and eventually burn up, forcing the company to replenish the constellation to maintain coverage. Spire’s satellites are typically retired and replaced every two to three years, meaning the constellation is not a one-time investment but an ongoing production line in orbit.

Even with falling launch prices, that replacement cycle is not free. SpaceX — the dominant provider of small-satellite launches — advertises rideshare missions starting at about $350,000 for a 50-kilogram payload to low Earth orbit. Launch costs have dropped dramatically over the past decade, but Spire’s network still requires repeated manufacturing runs, launch bookings and satellite replacements simply to keep the system functioning. What looks from the outside like a software data company is, underneath, a hardware fleet that must be rebuilt in space every few years just to stay operational.

The company recently sold its maritime data business, once a major contributor to revenue and its only profitable business uint. The transaction generated a large accounting gain, but it also removed a substantial operating segment from the income statement. After the sale closed, reported revenue dropped sharply, with quarterly sales falling into the $18–19 million range in early 2025. What remains is a narrower company focused primarily on weather analytics, aviation data services and government programs. The divestiture may have improved the balance sheet, but it also reduced the scale of the operating business.

Spire’s government business remains highly concentrated. One customer grouping described as “multiple U.S. government agencies” represented 24% of revenue in both 2024 and 2025, while three government customers together accounted for 43% of total revenue in 2025. For a company whose revenue fell to $71.6 million in 2025, that implies roughly $17 million from the largest customer cluster and more than $30 million from just three government relationships, leaving the company unusually exposed to the timing, renewal and funding decisions of a handful of public-sector buyers.

NOAA remains a useful example of how that dependence can show up in practice. Spire disclosed a $9.4 million NOAA radio-occultation weather contract in January 2024, followed later that year by a $3.8 million NOAA order. The company itself linked the weaker economics of the later award to a decline in its ARR net retention rate to 93%, down from 98% the year before, acknowledging that the reduced value of the NOAA award was the primary driver of the drop. The customer relationship did not disappear, but the value of the contract stream shrank — a reminder that government revenue in this sector behaves less like recurring software revenue and more like a series of renegotiated procurements.

The 2025 filing broadens the risk beyond NOAA. Following the April 2025 sale of its maritime business, Spire’s remaining operations rely more heavily on government demand for weather, aviation and space-services data. At the same time, the company disclosed that Public Services and Procurement Canada issued a stop-work order on March 2, 2026 for the WildFireSat contract, illustrating how quickly government programs can be delayed or interrupted even after they have been announced. In other words, the company’s shrinking revenue base is becoming more dependent on a smaller set of government programs just as one of those programs has already stalled — a dynamic that turns concentration risk from an abstract disclosure into an immediate operational issue. 

NOAA contracts illustrate how the government business works in practice. Rather than a single long-term agreement, the relationship consists of a series of delivery orders under a broader IDIQ contract vehicle. In 2024, Spire received a $9.4M weather-data award followed later by a $3.8M delivery order. In 2025 the company disclosed an $11.1M contract and a $2.5M pilot program. The pattern is clear: revenue arrives in uneven increments and must be repeatedly competed for, often alongside rival vendors such as PlanetiQ.

Another signal comes from the trading record of Spire’s richly compensated founder and chairman Peter Platzer and his CEO wife, Theresa Platzer, have sold roughly $9–10 million of Spire stock and continue to dump shares, according to Form 4 filings compiled by OpenInsider. 

While the company asks investors to believe in a capital-intensive satellite network, a shrinking post-divestiture business and a revenue base concentrated in a handful of shrinking government customers, the CEO’s household has been doing the opposite: turning stock into cash.

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