Musk's space company SpaceX overtakes Amazon on the stock market

SpaceX had issued shares at a price of $135 per share; on Tuesday, the price stood at $209.

At one point, following an even sharper rise, SpaceX was also worth more than software giant Microsoft. Chipmaker Nvidia, valued at around five trillion dollars, as well as Google’s parent company Alphabet and Apple, remain significantly more valuable.

Unprecedented Rise in Value

Investors have already driven an unprecedented increase in value of about one trillion dollars for Musk’s space and AI company over the first three trading days since its IPO. Compared to other tech heavyweights, the gap between SpaceX’s current revenue and its market capitalization is dramatically large. However, Musk promises explosive growth in the future, primarily driven by artificial intelligence. This is expected to include data centers in space. Until now, Musk’s AI company xAI—which was absorbed into SpaceX—lagged behind ChatGPT developer OpenAI, its rival Anthropic, and Google.

Musk’s net worth—he became the first person to reach a trillion-dollar net worth last week—rose to just under 1.3 trillion dollars after SpaceX’s first two days of trading, according to calculations by the financial news service Bloomberg.

Demand from Retail Investors

Prior to the IPO, well-performing tech stocks—such as semiconductor stocks—had at times suffered from concerns that an IPO as large as SpaceX’s could draw massive liquidity out of the sector. According to data from Vanda Research, retail investors bought as many shares of the newly listed company during the first two days of SpaceX trading as they did across the entire U.S. stock market last week. This also appears to have paved the way for the pending IPOs of the AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic.

According to a statement released on Monday, SpaceX exercised the IPO’s over-allotment option, which allows the underwriters to sell additional shares. Max Gokhman, Senior Vice President at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, said he was not surprised by the high demand. This is because there were many investors—particularly retail investors—who were initially unable to secure shares.