SpaceX Rises 49% Post-IPO, Market Cap Nears Amazon

SpaceX rose for a third straight session on Tuesday, surpassing Amazon in market cap to become the world's fifth-largest company.

SpaceX shares closed up 4.8%, pushing its market cap to $2.65 trillion, about $80 billion above Amazon. At the intraday high, Elon Musk's rocket and artificial intelligence company briefly surpassed Microsoft to become the world's fourth-largest company.

At least part of the rally stems from the limited number of SpaceX shares available for trading; only about 4.2% of total shares were tradable on the first day. This could lead to sharper price swings and larger market cap fluctuations.

SpaceX shares have risen 49% from the IPO price of $135 per share, signaling sustained investor demand and easing concerns that the record-breaking IPO was too large to digest. The performance paves the way for potential public offerings this year by AI rivals Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, each valued at around $1 trillion.

"We're seeing signs that investors are still willing to fund high-growth, capital-intensive companies with elevated valuations," said Angelo Kourkafas, senior global investment strategist at Edward Jones. "So in a way, it's a risk-on signal, suggesting we haven't seen investor fatigue in growth names yet."

Retail investors also played a key role in SpaceX's strong debut. According to Vanda Research, retail investors bought as much SpaceX stock in the first two trading days as they had bought in the entire U.S. stock market the previous week.