Star Metro - After three sessions, SpaceX already among world's most valuable companies

Shares of SpaceX, formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp., finished up nearly five percent at $201.80, giving it a market value of $2.64 trillion.

That placed the company a hair below Amazon's $2.65 trillion at the end of Tuesday's session after leading the online shopping platform most of the day. SpaceX also briefly eclipsed Microsoft, which is fourth on the list.

The latest rise came as SpaceX announced it will acquire artificial intelligence coding startup Cursor for $60 billion, a deal designed to further cement the Texas-based company near the nexus of the AI boom.

The SpaceX fever partly stems from enthusiasm over its growth potential, including AI. But at least as important are dynamics that have nothing to do with the company's operations or profit outlook.

"There is no valuation support for this market cap as it's all retail excitement meeting a very small float and no institutional sellers," said Eric Clark, a portfolio manager and chief investment officer at Accuvest Global Advisors.

"It's just a momentum trade and retail excitement plus active growth managers wanting exposure," Clark said in an email that described SpaceX's growth potential as a "five-to-10-year game."

Shares of SpaceX have soared more than a third in three sessions since last week's IPO, which raised a record-breaking $85.7 billion.

"There's a bit of a mania involving AI and anything that could be one of the beneficiaries of the spending on AI," said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers.

Co-founded by Musk in 2002, the rocket startup has expanded into a major satellite operator and has also folded in Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, which includes social media platform X.

- Cursor -

SpaceX's acquisition of Cursor marks its latest big AI investment. Founded in 2022, San Francisco-based Cursor specializes in AI for software development, particularly for business uses.

An acquisition had looked possible after the two companies had announced a partnership in April that included a clause for Cursor to be potentially bought by SpaceX for $60 billion.

Cursor's emergence has coincided with the growth of "vibe coding," whereby online users build applications with AI-generated code.

At its last funding round in November, Cursor was valued at $29 billion. Tuesday's deal more than doubles that sum.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX said the all-stock deal was expected to close in the third quarter and that Cursor would become a wholly owned subsidiary.

In May, SpaceX announced plans to invest $55 billion to build a "Terafab" semiconductor factory in Texas, producing chips for AI and robotics.

Also last month, AI startup Anthropic announced a partnership with SpaceX under which it would pay for use of the compute capacity at SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center in Tennessee.

- Bubble? -

These ventures have cemented investor belief that SpaceX resides at the nexus of key AI developments. Investor consensus also continues to propel Musk, already the world's wealthiest person, whose role as Tesla CEO also brings exposure to new developments in autonomous driving and robotics.

SpaceX's lofty ambitions for AI are expected to consume capital for at least the next few years. It reported a loss of $4.3 billion last year.

The company's valuation puts it within striking range of Microsoft, currently worth $2.92 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance. Nvidia is first with nearly a $5.1 trillion valuation.

But portfolio manager Clark expects SpaceX's "bubbliscious" valuation to ebb once additional shares hit the market.

IPOs historically see "big" drawdowns during the first year, Clark said. "That should happen when the float expands and people get a chance to match the fundamentals via the first quarterly report with the valuation and market cap."

Clark said SpaceX may one day justify such a valuation but "momentum, euphoria, and hype is a fickle beast, and this market is out of line across many stocks for now."

X.Boucher--SMC