SpaceX experienced a dramatic rise in its stock price and market capitalization, reaching over $2.6 trillion, surpassing Amazon and briefly Microsoft, on its second full day of public trading. This surge, a nearly 35% increase from its opening price of $150 to closing at $201.80 on Tuesday, was fueled by significant investor enthusiasm following its initial public offering (IPO).
Retail investors have played a substantial role in this demand, with Vanda Research reporting that they bought $225.2 million in SpaceX stock in its first two days, accounting for 75% of all net buying of single stocks. On Monday, SpaceX alone represented nearly three-quarters of all single stock purchases by retail investors. Customers at major US retail brokerage firms like Robinhood, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, SoFi, and E*TRADE received at least one share during the IPO, which allocated about 20% of its shares to retail investors globally.
Adding to the excitement, SpaceX announced an all-stock acquisition of the AI coding agent startup Cursor for $60 billion. Cursor, known for "vibe coding," is expected to bolster SpaceX's xAI unit, helping it compete with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. SpaceX has been making significant investments in AI, spending $12.7 billion last year and $7.7 billion in the first three months of 2026, leading to multi-billion-dollar losses; however, the company anticipates the enterprise AI application market to reach $22.7 trillion.
Options trading for SpaceX also began with high activity, seeing over $1.72 million in volume and $2.8 billion in value traded on Tuesday. Call options outnumbered put options 1.3-1, with open interest showing 424,935 contracts on the call side and 365,538 for puts, totaling 790,473 contracts. Analysts suggest this options activity signals potential volatility, with a projected range of +/-19.9 (9.7%) for the current week's expiration and +/-55.8 (27.2%) for the July 17 expiration, indicating a lower boundary near the $150 opening price. Some analysts, like Morningstar, view SpaceX as highly overvalued at its current price, with a revised price target of $62, though they anticipate an AI revenue boost could raise this to $154-$169 per share.
