In the days since making its monumental debut public offering, SpaceX has stole the financial world’s imagination, quite a lot, in the process. Elon Musk’s aerospace and artificial intelligence firm’s stock rose by more than 10% in premarket trading on Tuesday, June 16, 2026, as it extended a post-IPO rally to a market capitalization approaching an incredible $2.8 trillion. If it continues along the path, SpaceX will soon be the fifth-largest publicly traded company in the world, trailing only Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc.
The stock, which jumped more than 19% on Monday, closed at about $211.80 per share. Assuming these gains persist, SpaceX’s market value would surpass the $2.8 trillion mark and be close to Amazon’s $2.87 trillion valuation. This is a remarkable rise for a company that until last week had been private for almost 20 years.
The public markets have reacted to the enthusiasm that borders on euphoric. A staggering 510 million shares valued at close to $84 billion changed hands on SpaceX’s first day of trading, outpacing all other IPOs so far this year. The stock was trading at $150 on opening day, a 11% premium over the $135 price when it went public, before settling Friday at $160.95, valuing it at about $2.1 trillion on its first day.
This has had an impact on the wider market. The successful IPO has quelled concerns that the market could have no more of a giant IPO, which could be the basis for additional high-profile offerings of AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic later this year. The SpaceX launch is viewed as an encouraging sign for the wider tech industry as the AI revolution moves forward and investor interest in the venture is high. The surge in SpaceX shares has been driven by a general rise in investor appetite for companies with deep technology and dreams of the future, industry observers say.
However, beyond this remarkable market performance are a set of more complex factors. Despite its technological capabilities and lofty aspirations, SpaceX’s financials are a stark contrast to its lofty valuation. In 2025, the company’s revenue amounted to around $18.7 billion, which is a respectable 33% rise from the previous year, but its net loss during the year was $4.94 billion. The firm has made a sharp turnabout from 2024, when it posted a $791 million profit. The losses have been ongoing in 2026, and in the first quarter alone, the company has reported another loss of $4.3 billion.
The biggest factor of these losses has been SpaceX’s relentless push into AI, especially its xAI unit that hosts the Grok AI assistant and has data centers. The AI segment had an operating loss of almost $6.4 billion in 2025, and spent $5 billion on research and development and $12.7 billion on capital expenditures. These investments highlight Musk’s space-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) data center vision, as well as his desire for SpaceX to be a bridge between aerospace and AI—an investment that has investors excited and concerned.
What is amazing about this valuation is putting Amazon to it. Amazon is currently one of the world’s largest e-commerce and cloud infrastructure firms with combined revenue exceeding $600 billion in 2025 and handsome profits being reported, the company is traded at around three times this year’s revenue and 28 times this year’s earnings. Amazon’s revenue will increase 14% a year on average and its earnings per share will rise 21% a year on average, as it pursues its dominant cloud business, growing advertising business, and continued e-commerce growth, according to analysts.
By comparison, SpaceX is valued over 100 times its revenue, even the most bullish estimates of growth. SpaceX would still look extremely highly valued at a multiple of 58 times its projected revenue in 2028 if its revenue increases at 30% compound annual growth rate until 2028. To put that in perspective, many of the established players in the orbital rocket business are trading on much lower valuations and those in satellite internet services are trading on much more solid grounds based on current financial performance.
Despite the worries, investors seem prepared to gamble on SpaceX’s future prospects. According to the company, its total addressable market is $28.5 trillion — the largest market opportunity in history, the company says in its IPO filing. The thesis is based on three pillars: the leading position in commercial space launches, the satellite broadband business Starlink, and the development of artificial intelligence capabilities. For over 40% of all mass lifted into orbit worldwide in the last three years, SpaceX claims first place in the commercial space industry.
The Starlink division is proving to be the company’s most profitable, with an operating profit of $4.4 billion in 2025 and nearly $7.2 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Starlink’s satellite internet segment’s viability and growth potential were highlighted by its operational profit of around $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026. The AI division, on the other hand, is still running at a big loss, as the company expands its infrastructure and capabilities.
Investors are now wondering if SpaceX can maintain its trajectory and outpace Amazon at $3.5 trillion and possibly even Microsoft at $3.1 trillion before Apple at $4.53 trillion and Alphabet at $4.63 trillion. Under the assumption that the Microsoft stock price doesn’t move drastically, SpaceX shares would have to reach around $230 to surpass Microsoft.
However, even as the stock keeps climbing skywards, there are some voices of caution. There are certain analysts that cite the small float, less than 5% of SpaceX’s shares were sold in the IPO, as a reason that could cause volatility and big price corrections. Other people report that the company could need to sell more stock, or borrow more money, to finance its plans for sizeable expansion, and this could either mean that the existing shareholders would have a smaller stake in the company or that the company would be more financially risky.
