SpaceX (SPCX) shares jump 19% as Musk reaches $1tn

SpaceX (SPCX) closed at $160.95 in its first public session, 19 per cent above the $135 IPO price, giving the year’s biggest listing an immediate public-market test. The pop validated demand for the offer without settling what the company should be worth after the allocation rush.

The gain pushed SpaceX’s market value above $2.1tn. Yahoo Finance data showed a $2.107tn market capitalisation by early Sunday, and CNBC’s tally of Musk’s holdings after the Nasdaq debut put the chief executive past $1tn in net worth.

That close changed the argument around SpaceX. Private rounds had a scarcity premium and a long line of strategic buyers. Public shareholders now own a company priced among the world’s largest listed technology names, with the same old demands still attached: rockets that have to fly, Starlink subscribers that have to stay, AI infrastructure spending that has to produce cash.

Shares opened at $150 and reached $176.52 before settling near $161, CNBC said in its first-day trading account. The range kept the stock well above the offer price but below the strongest early trades. Monday will give the cleaner read on whether buyers defend the post-IPO valuation once the debut mechanics fade.

The valuation test

The hard part starts now.

The bull case is that SpaceX is being bought as infrastructure for the next computing cycle, not as a conventional aerospace manufacturer. Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC the company had entered the same portfolio conversation as the biggest AI and cloud names.

It includes some of our old favorites – Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta. Now it includes SpaceX.
Source: Gil Luria, D.A. Davidson, via CNBC

That comparison helps explain why demand held even after a large retail allocation. Steve Westly, the former Tesla board member and clean-tech investor, told CNBC that retail investors bought $100bn of shares. If earnings wobble, that base could make the stock harder to steady.

Retail investors bought $100 billion in shares, and you’ve got to ask the question, are some of them going to get panicky if SpaceX misses a few quarters, because this stuff is not easy to do.
Source: Steve Westly, CNBC

The caution is not only about sentiment. Yahoo Finance financials showed SpaceX with a $4.937bn annual net loss for 2025, giving its first quarterly reports as a public company more weight than a typical growth IPO. The market is paying upfront for scale, launch cadence and Starlink cash generation before public filings have built much of a record. That leaves less room for a messy first report than the first-day move implied.

Matthew Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, made the valuation risk explicit in the same CNBC survey. He said the IPO went well but that SpaceX looked “much too overvalued.” Hot listings often face that first-year problem: a premium multiple needs operating updates quickly enough to replace listing scarcity with evidence.

The listing has already created trading around the trade. MarketWatch reported before the debut that funds built for bullish and bearish SpaceX bets were being prepared. Products like that can amplify intraday moves once liquidity thins after the opening allocation rush.

Crypto desks are watching the same speculative capital. The Block argued the IPO could pull risk appetite away from bitcoin-linked trades, a sign SpaceX is already being treated as a cross-asset reference point rather than a stand-alone aerospace listing.

For Musk, the trillionaire label is the clean headline. For shareholders, the more durable question is whether SpaceX can trade like a mega-cap technology platform while spending like a company still building the next layer of space infrastructure. The 19 per cent jump answered the demand question. The earnings question starts with the next filing.