SpaceX briefly surpassed Amazon to become the fifth-most valuable company in the world on Tuesday, nearly eclipsing Microsoft before the company’s shares pared back those gains before the market closed. The newly public company’s stock had already climbed 20% on Monday, its first full day of trading, and Tuesday’s news that SpaceX is acquiring AI coding company Cursor, along with the start of options trading on its shares, sent the valuation spiking to $2.9 trillion.
How SpaceX’s Valuation Briefly Hit $2.9 Trillion
The dramatic valuation spike on Tuesday saw SpaceX’s market cap briefly exceed Amazon’s, which currently sits at roughly $2.8 trillion. At its peak, SpaceX’s valuation came within striking distance of Microsoft, before settling back down as volatility took hold. Traders swapped more than 300 million SpaceX shares throughout the trading day — more than half of the 555 million available on the public market post-IPO, according to data from the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The volatility continued into after-hours trading, which saw SpaceX’s valuation briefly eclipse Amazon’s market cap for a second time before falling again. This wild price action follows the company’s historic IPO on Friday, which saw it debut with a valuation of around $1.7 trillion and raised nearly $86 billion in fresh capital for Elon Musk’s company.
Financial Reality Behind the Market Frenzy
The astronomical valuation stands in stark contrast to SpaceX’s underlying financials. The company posted a $4.9 billion loss on $18.7 billion in revenue last year. For comparison, Amazon turned a $78 billion profit in 2025 on $717 billion in sales. SpaceX has recently added new revenue streams in the form of compute leasing deals with Anthropic and Google, though these are non-binding. The company will also absorb revenue from Cursor when that deal closes in the third quarter.
Why Investors Are Betting Big on SpaceX
The IPO transaction netted SpaceX nearly $86 billion largely on promises that it can create an AI business worth trillions of dollars — a bold claim for a company that recently tore its AI division down to the studs. SpaceX first revealed a collaboration with Cursor in April, at a time when Musk said his AI company xAI — now a part of SpaceX — “was not built right [the] first time around” and that he was rebuilding it “from the foundations up.” SpaceX is making the acquisition with $60 billion in company shares.
SpaceX only made about 4% of its total shares available for trading, which experts predicted would make the stock more susceptible to wild swings. That prediction has proven accurate, as the limited float has amplified price movements driven by news flow and options trading activity.
What This Means for the AI Investment Landscape
The market’s willingness to value SpaceX at nearly $3 trillion despite significant operating losses signals a fundamental shift in how investors assess AI-related companies. Traditional valuation metrics based on current earnings are being set aside in favor of forward-looking projections about AI infrastructure and services. The compute leasing deals with Anthropic and Google suggest that SpaceX is positioning itself as a critical provider of the physical and computational infrastructure required for large-scale AI training and inference, a role that could command enormous revenues if the AI industry continues its current growth trajectory.
The Cursor acquisition further strengthens the narrative that SpaceX is building an integrated AI stack, from foundational compute resources to application-layer developer tools. Cursor’s AI-powered coding platform has gained significant traction among developers, and folding it into SpaceX’s broader AI ambitions gives the company a direct channel to the software development market.
Practical Takeaway for Investors and Tech Professionals
For technology professionals and investors monitoring this space, the key development to watch is whether SpaceX can deliver on its AI revenue promises. The compute leasing deals with Anthropic and Google provide a tangible near-term revenue stream, but the company’s ability to execute its broader AI strategy will determine whether the current valuation is justified. Anyone following this story should pay close attention to the third-quarter closing of the Cursor acquisition and any subsequent announcements about SpaceX’s AI revenue figures. For developers, Cursor’s integration into SpaceX’s ecosystem may bring new features and infrastructure improvements to the coding tool, making it worth evaluating as an AI-assisted development platform regardless of the corporate drama surrounding its parent company.
