SpaceX rose for a third consecutive session on Tuesday, surpassing Amazon to become the world's fifth-largest company by market capitalization. SpaceX shares closed up 4.8%, pushing its market value to $2.65 trillion, about $8 billion higher than Amazon. When the stock was at intraday highs, Elon Musk's rocket and artificial intelligence company once surpassed Microsoft in market value, briefly becoming the world's fourth-largest company by market value.
At least part of the rally stems from the limited number of SpaceX shares available for trading on the market, with tradable shares accounting for only about 4.2% of total equity on the first day of listing. This could cause stock prices to fluctuate more dramatically, causing large changes in market value.
SpaceX's stock price has risen 49% from the IPO price of US$135 per share, indicating continued strong investor demand and easing market concerns that the record-breaking IPO is too large to be digested by the market. The stock performance paves the way for potential public offerings this year by artificial intelligence rivals Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, both of which are expected to be valued at around $1 trillion.
Angelo Kourkafas, senior global investment strategist at Edward Jones, said: "We are seeing signs that investors are still willing to fund companies that are high-growth, capital-intensive, and have higher valuations. So, to some extent, this is a sign of risk appetite that we have not yet seen investor weakness in growth companies."
Retail investors are also an important force behind SpaceX's strong start. Data from Vanda Research shows that the amount of shares bought by retail investors in the first two trading days of SpaceX's listing was equivalent to the amount of shares they bought in the entire U.S. stock market last week.