SpaceX Overtakes Amazon to Become World's Fifth Most Valuable Company

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has surpassed Amazon to claim the position of the world’s fifth most valuable company, a remarkable milestone for the rocket manufacturer that underscores the growing investor appetite for ventures at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space exploration.

Following its initial public offering on Friday, SpaceX’s shares surged more than 50 per cent from their listing price of $135 to $209, pushing the company’s market capitalisation to $2.78 trillion — comfortably ahead of Amazon’s $2.66 trillion valuation. The IPO raised $85.7 billion, making it one of the largest public listings in corporate history.

The valuation is striking when measured against the two companies’ financial fundamentals. Amazon generated revenue of $716.9 billion in 2025 and posted a profit of $30.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. SpaceX, by contrast, recorded revenue of $18.67 billion last year and reported a loss of $4.3 billion in the first three months of this year. On traditional metrics, the gap is vast — yet investors have chosen to look beyond current earnings and bet heavily on Musk’s long-term vision.

A $60 Billion Bet on AI

Central to that vision is a bold acquisition strategy. SpaceX announced a $60 billion deal to purchase Cursor, an AI coding start-up owned by Anysphere. The purchase, expected to close by the end of September, will be paid entirely in SpaceX shares. The logic, according to the company, is to integrate Cursor’s widely used software development tools with Musk’s broader AI ambitions, including the xAI venture and its Grok language model.

The acquisition signals that SpaceX is no longer content to be viewed solely as a launch services provider or satellite internet operator. The company has outlined plans to deploy AI-powered data centres in orbit and to leverage artificial intelligence in its long-stated goal of establishing a human settlement on Mars.

Sceptics and Believers

Not everyone is convinced. Analysts have questioned whether SpaceX’s share price can be sustained in the absence of clear profitability. The company’s revenue remains a fraction of Amazon’s, and its losses are substantial. The Cursor acquisition, while ambitious, adds another layer of execution risk to an enterprise already juggling Starlink satellite broadband, crewed spaceflight contracts with Nasa, and the development of the Starship mega-rocket.

Yet the market has spoken. Investors appear willing to pay a premium for exposure to what they regard as a transformative platform company rather than a conventional aerospace contractor. The IPO price of $135 valued SpaceX at roughly $1.8 trillion; within days, the secondary market had added nearly a trillion dollars to that figure.

For context, the world’s four most valuable companies — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Alphabet — all sit at or above $3 trillion. SpaceX’s leap into fifth place displaces Amazon and puts the company within striking distance of that elite tier, even as its core space business remains years away from generating the kind of cash flow that would justify such a valuation under traditional accounting.

A Broader Shift

The listing also marks a watershed moment for the private space industry. For years, companies like SpaceX operated as private ventures funded by venture capital and government contracts. The sheer scale of this IPO — and the appetite it attracted — suggests that public market investors are now comfortable backing companies whose primary assets are intellectual property, launch infrastructure and long-duration bets on technology that does not yet exist at commercial scale.

Whether SpaceX can deliver on the extraordinary expectations embedded in its share price remains an open question. What is no longer in doubt is that the company, founded in 2002 with the modest ambition of reducing the cost of reaching orbit, now commands a valuation that places it among the most valuable enterprises on the planet.

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