Musk Claims 100 GW/Year Solar Order; Singulus Doubles Then Sinks

A single X post added EUR 122.8 million to Singulus Technologies' market value on Wednesday — twice the size of the order that caused it — and Thursday took a fifth of it back. Elon Musk wrote at 6:47 PM Eastern on November 10 that "SpaceX has ordered 100 GW/year of HJT solar manufacturing equipment from Singulus in Germany. This is for Starmind to create a sentient sun." The post had roughly 4.9 million views by Wednesday.

Starmind is SpaceX's planned fleet of solar-powered satellites built to run AI computing in orbit. The counterparty is a 325-person machine maker in Kahl am Main, Germany, that once made its name pressing CDs and DVDs.

What's actually signed?

Singulus published its version after the German market closed, slightly ahead of Musk. The contract covers a turnkey production line for heterojunction (HJT) solar cells, worth more than EUR 60 million (about $66 million), shipping in the first half of 2027 and supporting satellite production at SpaceX's Bastrop, Texas plant. Singulus says the partnership is meant to scale "to support more than 100 GW of production equipment" — no per-year figure. That number is Musk's.

Mike Nicolls, SpaceX's senior vice president for Starlink, said the deal "gives us a high-performance manufacturing path for solar cells for our Starmind satellites." Read plainly, SpaceX is betting it can make solar cells faster than any factory on Earth does today. The hard limit: one EUR 60 million line is all Singulus has on paper.

What would 100 GW a year mean?

The U.S. installed 43.2 GW of solar in all of 2025, per SEIA and Wood Mackenzie, and held about 298 GW total by mid-year, with forecasts near 44 GW of annual additions through 2030. Musk's 100 GW a year is 2.3 times last year's national installations — about a third of every panel America has ever mounted, repeated annually. Three years of it would match the entire U.S. fleet.

The number tracks SpaceX's pre-listing filings, which describe a long-term goal of putting up to 100 GW into orbit yearly, requiring thousands of launches annually. The published satellite design draws up to 250 kW at peak, so 100 GW of cells covers roughly 400,000 satellites a year before losses. SpaceX has asked the FCC to approve up to one million Starmind satellites, with first launches planned for the second half of 2027.

On Wednesday, Musk explained his orbital math: "100GW in space is roughly equal to 800GW on Earth," because ground solar "must be paired with massive batteries to continue powering compute at night."

Who is Singulus?

Founded in 1995 as a management buyout from Leybold, Singulus still lists optical disc lines alongside coating equipment for solar cells, semiconductors and medical packaging. Its 2025 results: EUR 48.3 million revenue (about $53 million), a EUR 14.2 million net loss, EUR 6.2 million cash at year-end. The first SpaceX line alone is 1.24 times a full year of sales and 72% of the EUR 83 million the company forecasts for 2026.

SpaceX is also its lender. The partnership began in March, with SpaceX providing "significant funding" then and again in October, when Singulus took a roughly EUR 22.75 million subordinated secured loan to repay its former largest shareholder.

How the stock traded

Singulus closed Tuesday at EUR 12.70 on Xetra. Wednesday: open EUR 18.80, intraday high EUR 27.30, close EUR 26.50 — up 108.7% on 799,838 shares versus 147,033 the day before. Thursday afternoon it sat at EUR 21.90, down 17.4%. With 8,896,527 shares out, the company was worth EUR 113.0 million Tuesday night, EUR 235.8 million Wednesday night and EUR 194.8 million Thursday afternoon. The shares closed at EUR 1.465 on January 2 — still up 14.9 times year-to-date after the pullback.

One retiree shows the spread. Gary, 67, a retired aerospace engineer with $2.4 million, put $25,000 (EUR 22,598 at 1.1063 dollars per euro) into Singulus after reading the post. Buying Wednesday's open of EUR 18.80 got him 1,202 shares, worth $35,239 at the close — a $10,239, 41.0% one-session gain, trimmed to a $4,122 gain after Thursday. Buying near the EUR 27.30 high left him down $4,940, 19.8%, inside 24 hours. Buying Wednesday's close cost him $4,336, 17.4%.

What should a SpaceX holder take from it?

For SpaceX investors, the order is small change: $66 million against the $85.7 billion raised in the June listing. SpaceX traded at $143.78 Thursday morning, 6.5% above its $135 IPO price and 28.8% below its June 16 record close of $201.80. What the contract signals is that Starmind has moved from a filing to a factory order with a delivery date. Neither company has disclosed the first line's output capacity or cell efficiency.

Gary's three outcomes on the same $25,000 — from a $10,239 gain to a $4,940 loss — turned on the hour he clicked. A stock that doubles in a day on one order has already priced in orders that don't exist yet. If you want the Starmind story, size the position so Thursday doesn't matter.