SpaceX surges toward $2.8 trillion, poised to surpass Amazon

SpaceX climbed more than 10% in premarket trading to $212.50, a price that would put Elon Musk’s company near a $2.8 trillion valuation and ahead of Amazon’s $2.66 trillion if the move held. The latest jump extended a rally that began with the most expensive public offering ever attempted and quickly turned into a test of how far investors will chase a megacap growth story.

The company priced its IPO at $135 a share, sold 555.6 million shares and raised $75 billion, more than doubling Saudi Aramco’s previous record IPO haul of about $29.4 billion. At pricing, SpaceX carried an implied valuation of about $1.77 trillion, already placing it among the most valuable public companies in the world before a single share changed hands in earnest.

Trading on June 12 opened at $150, then finished the first day at $160.95 after briefly touching an intraday high of $176.52. More than 500 million shares traded in that debut session, and the stock’s closing value implied a market capitalization of roughly $2.1 trillion. SpaceX’s first-day pop also pushed the company into the same market-value conversation as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Tesla, a rare position for any newly public company.

The wealth effects were immediate. Forbes estimated Musk’s net worth rose to about $1.1 trillion after the debut, making him the first trillionaire on paper. The offering also minted roughly 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees as millionaires, including about 400 whose holdings could be worth at least $100 million. Musk rang the Nasdaq opening bell remotely from Starbase, Texas, while SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and chief financial officer Bret Johnsen were at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. Musk told employees the company had started in a warehouse in El Segundo, a reminder of how far the business has traveled from its early California roots.

What the move signals goes beyond one stock. Investors are still paying up for companies with scale, scarcity and a powerful narrative, especially when the story is tied to Musk’s broader empire of rockets, satellites and AI. But a stock that can add hundreds of billions in value before the market has even settled is also a reality check: this is not just enthusiasm for space exploration, but a broad appetite for the few names that can still pull in massive capital at megacap speed.