SpaceX shares surged more than 12 per cent in early trade on Tuesday, June 17 the third consecutive session of gains since the company’s historic Nasdaq debut last Friday. The rally pushed SpaceX’s market capitalisation to approximately USD 2.8 trillion in intraday trading, overtaking Amazon to become the world’s fifth-largest listed company by market value.
At its intraday peak, SpaceX’s market cap briefly touched USD 2.95 trillion, edging past Microsoft’s USD 2.93 trillion to become the world’s fourth-largest company for a matter of hours before settling back below that threshold.
By the close of Tuesday’s session, SpaceX shares settled 4.8 per cent higher, ending the day at a market cap of approximately USD 2.65 trillion roughly USD 8 billion ahead of Amazon.
To put the pace of this move in perspective: SpaceX listed at an IPO price of USD 135 per share last Friday, June 12, and closed its first day at USD 161 a 19 per cent gain. It then surged another 19.5 per cent on Monday. Tuesday’s additional 12 per cent move in early trade means the stock has now gained nearly 35 per cent from its IPO price in just three sessions.
The latest increase in SpaceX shares added USD 119.1 billion to Musk’s net worth, valued at about USD 1.4 trillion, ranking him more than USD 1 trillion ahead of Google co-founder Larry Page at USD 300.7 billion, who Forbes ranks as the world’s second-richest person. Musk holds 4.8 billion SpaceX shares, giving him a stake of approximately 38 per cent, with an additional 350 million stock options with an exercise price of USD 8.40 per share.
What is driving the surge?
Two catalysts stand out, the first is the Cursor acquisition announced on Tuesday SpaceX confirmed it has entered a formal agreement to buy the AI coding startup for USD 60 billion in stock. The deal signals a serious push into enterprise AI tools, placing SpaceX in direct competition with Anthropic and OpenAI in the developer tools market.
The second is the sheer momentum of a newly listed company with an extraordinary growth story. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, is the company’s only profitable division and its primary revenue engine, with 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries and USD 4.4 billion in operating profit in 2025. With every session, more institutional and index-driven buying kicks in.
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits around SpaceX has been tracking at “extremely bullish” levels, with message volumes at “extremely high” levels.
SpaceX is now closing in on Microsoft valued at approximately USD 2.93 trillion in what has quickly become a four-way race for the top of the global market cap rankings alongside Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
The company is also expected to qualify for fast-track inclusion in the Nasdaq 100, which would trigger automatic buying from index-tracking funds and ETFs adding another structural tailwind to a stock that has already moved faster than almost any major listing in recent memory.
At the stock’s intraday high, the market value of Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company topped Microsoft to briefly become the world’s fourth-largest stock. Whether it can hold that position — and close above Microsoft for a full session — is now the number the market is watching.
