SpaceX roared past Amazon’s market valuation on Tuesday and briefly topped that of Microsoft, rapidly scaling the list of the world’s most valuable companies on a topsy-turvy trading day fuelled by frenzied action in the firm’s newly listed option contracts.
SpaceX shares rose 4.8% to close at US$201.80, giving Elon Musk’s company a market value of roughly $2.65-trillion — some $800-billion more than its value when it sold its record initial public offering last week and about $10-billion more than that of Amazon, until Tuesday the fifth-largest US-listed firm by market value.
Shares surged early on Tuesday as investors bet on Musk’s sprawling empire that spans rockets to AI, even though the stock carries a higher valuation than the other trillion-dollar behemoths.
“It’s a $2.5 trillion company, but it certainly feels like one of those meme stocks, the way it’s trading,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading. “We’ve seen momentum in the past; they just tend to run and you have to be very, very careful with these types of names.”
A big driver of Tuesday’s gains was the launch of options in SpaceX stock, which confer the right, though not the obligation, to buy or sell the shares at a certain price by a stated date. They are often used by traders seeking to cash in on rising interest in a stock or to wager that shares will rise or fall quickly.
Enormous
More than 500 000 SpaceX options contracts changed hands within the first hour of trading and more than a million by early afternoon, according to Trade Alert data. SpaceX’s heavily bullish options trading volume likely helped lift the stock early in the session, said Brent Kochuba, founder of options analytics service SpotGamma.
A surge of options volume can at times cause an underlying stock to also swing as options dealers, who facilitate trading by taking the other side of options trades, buy and sell shares to square their own risk.
Read: SpaceX wants to fly a rocket every 53 minutes
“If you’re a market maker, you can’t hedge SpaceX with anything else other than SpaceX,” he said.
Trading volume in SpaceX shares was enormous, with turnover in the rocket company’s shares, reflecting the approximate dollar value of the day’s trades, the highest among large US-listed firms at $61-billion.
Analysts and portfolio managers said investors should brace for volatility due to the relatively small float and high valuation of SpaceX.
The company reported sales of $18.67-billion last year and a net loss of $4.94-billion after merging with money-losing xAI, in contrast to many of Wall Street’s big technology companies that have posted bumper profits.
On Tuesday, its market value surpassed Amazon’s at $2.65-trillion and briefly topped Microsoft’s $2.92-trillion. Next up are Apple, Alphabet and Nvidia, all above $4-trillion in market value.
The rally could continue, analysts said, as SpaceX is set for fast-track inclusion in the Nasdaq 100, which will soon make it a major holding for passive funds and ETFs that track the index, creating a fresh source of demand for its shares.
Read: SpaceX locks in $60-billion Cursor deal
FTSE Russell and MSCI are also set to add the stock to their indexes effective 26 June and 29 June, respectively.
SpaceX also said on Monday that its underwriters had exercised the “greenshoe” option to purchase additional shares, increasing the total proceeds from its initial public offering to $85.7-billion from the $75 billion it raised last week. — Shashwat Chauhan, Medha Singh and Sruthi Shankar, with Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Anirban Sen, (c) 2026 Reuters
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