SpaceX Stock Surges Above $160 as Starship Rally Sends Market Cap to $2.2 Trillion

SPCX rose more than 3% in early trading after gaining 7.35% on Friday, taking the stock to roughly $164. The move leaves SpaceX around 22% above its $135 IPO price, though still well below the record $225.64 reached shortly after its June market debut.

The recovery is notable because SpaceX spent much of the summer unwinding its post-IPO rally. Shares briefly fell below the offering price in July, with the IPO selloff erasing more than $1 trillion in market value from the peak.

Starship Is Rebuilding the Bull Case

The latest rally comes after SpaceX finally sent Starship into orbit on Flight 14, a milestone investors had been waiting for after repeated delays and technical setbacks.

The Sept. 28 mission reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, although one Raptor engine shut down early and the flight ended sooner than initially planned. The successful deployment still marked a major step for a vehicle that SpaceX ultimately wants to use for much larger satellite payloads and higher-frequency launches.

That is a sharp reversal from July, when the launch abort added pressure to a stock already trading below its IPO level.

SpaceX is now entering another busy launch stretch, including missions for the U.S. Space Development Agency, NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office. The company was preparing another SDA launch after Monday’s first attempt was automatically aborted, while the rocket and payload remained in good condition.

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Starship is only one part of the valuation story.

SpaceX’s expanding Starlink network and AI infrastructure plans remain central to long-term growth expectations. Analysts have increasingly tied the stock’s valuation to future satellite capacity, launch economics and AI-compute demand rather than rockets alone.

That also creates execution risk. SpaceX shares fell in September after reports that the company was slowing parts of its AI expansion because of reliability and construction problems.