SpaceX stock soared nearly 20% Monday in the company's first full day of public trading, extending a record-breaking debut that has already pushed the rocket and satellite firm's valuation past $2 trillion. The rally came on heavy volume, about 120 million shares changed hands by midday, as retail and institutional investors piled into what some analysts warn is an extraordinarily expensive bet on the future.
The company opened at $150 a share Friday on the Nasdaq and closed that day up 19.6% at $192.45, the New York Post reported. Friday's session alone saw trading volume break past 500 million shares, a number that approaches the roughly 580 million shares traded during Facebook's 2012 debut, a benchmark that stood unchallenged for more than a decade.
Monday's continued surge means SpaceX shares have roughly doubled from their IPO price in a matter of days. For a company that lost nearly $5 billion in 2025, that kind of market enthusiasm tells you something about where investors believe the American economy is headed, and who they trust to take it there.
SpaceX reported $18.7 billion in revenue last year. That is a real business generating real cash. But the company's spending dwarfs its income. Annual capital expenditures hit $20.7 billion in 2025, producing that $5 billion net loss. Starlink, Musk's satellite internet service, which has become a major government contractor, was the sole profitable division.
The spending has only accelerated since. In the first quarter of 2026, SpaceX burned through $10.1 billion. Artificial intelligence accounted for $7.7 billion of that figure, a reflection of the February merger between SpaceX and Musk's AI startup, xAI. For context, SpaceX's total spending in the same quarter a year earlier was $4.1 billion. The company has more than doubled its quarterly burn rate in twelve months.
When SpaceX filed for what many expected to be the largest IPO in history, the question was whether public-market investors would accept those numbers. Friday and Monday answered emphatically: yes.
Elon Musk, never shy about setting ambitious targets, posted on X Sunday that SpaceX "might be able to reach" roughly $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. He went further in a second post.
"I would be surprised if revenue is not greater than $1T in 2031."
That projection, from $18.7 billion today to $1 trillion in five years, would require revenue growth of roughly 50-fold. No company of SpaceX's size has ever achieved anything close to that pace. But Musk has a track record of making forecasts that sound absurd and then delivering results that, while often behind schedule, eventually reshape entire industries.
The market is clearly giving him the benefit of the doubt. SpaceX's valuation above $2 trillion prices in enormous future growth across its rocket launch business, Starlink's expanding satellite internet footprint, government contracting, and now AI through the xAI merger.
The IPO itself was a milestone long in the making. For years, the company resisted going public. When COO Gwynne Shotwell finally signaled to investors that SpaceX was ready for a public listing, it marked the end of a long internal debate about whether the company's capital-intensive model could withstand the scrutiny of quarterly earnings reports.
Not everyone is buying the euphoria. CFRA slapped SpaceX with a "sell" rating on Friday, setting a 12-month price target of $115, nearly 29% below Friday's closing price. The firm pointed to what it called concerns about the company's trajectory.
"The company's extremely ambitious growth strategy, elevated valuation expectations and significant capital intensity."
That is Wall Street-speak for: this company spends far more than it earns, its stock price assumes everything goes right, and the growth plan requires enormous continued investment with no guarantee of returns.
Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owns went even further, telling investors ahead of the IPO that his firm values SpaceX at just $63 per share, roughly a third of Friday's closing price. Owns called the stock "overvalued."
The gap between the bulls and the bears here is staggering. CFRA sees the stock falling to $115. Morningstar sees fair value at $63. The market pushed shares past $192. Somebody is going to be very wrong.
Scott Martin, a partner at Kingsview Wealth Management, offered perhaps the clearest explanation of the disconnect between SpaceX's current financials and its stock price.
"Investors aren't buying today's fundamentals, they're buying Elon Musk, Starlink, AI, space infrastructure and the belief that SpaceX will dominate industries that don't fully exist yet. That's exciting, but it also means expectations are getting very high."
Martin added a note of caution for anyone chasing the rally.
"Can the stock continue to rise? Absolutely. But after a nearly 16% jump on top of a record IPO, investors should recognize that a lot of future expectations are already being priced in."
He is right on both counts. The potential is enormous. So is the risk. SpaceX is not a mature, dividend-paying utility. It is a company burning $10 billion a quarter while its founder promises trillion-dollar revenues that are years away, if they arrive at all.
The IPO has already created substantial wealth for early shareholders and employees. Many of the people who built SpaceX's rockets and satellite network over the past two decades now hold stock worth far more than their salaries ever suggested. That wealth creation, potentially minting thousands of new millionaires, is one of the genuine success stories of American capitalism.
The February merger with xAI adds a dimension to SpaceX that did not exist a year ago. AI spending now dominates the company's quarterly outflows, $7.7 billion out of $10.1 billion in the first quarter of 2026. That is not a side project. It is the main event.
Musk has shown no signs of slowing down on AI investment. The merger effectively turned SpaceX from a space-and-satellite company into a space-and-AI conglomerate, with all the promise and all the capital demands that entails.
The company's IPO filing itself flagged risks that come with that ambition. Among the disclosures: concerns about the xAI integration, including issues related to its Grok chatbot that the company identified as potential financial risks to investors. Whether the market cares about those warnings right now is another question. Monday's 20% jump suggests it does not.
The bigger picture is that SpaceX under Musk is attempting something no company has tried: simultaneously dominating commercial space launch, building a global satellite internet network, competing in the AI arms race, and maintaining massive government contracts. Each of those businesses alone would justify a large public company. Combining them under one roof, and one stock ticker, creates both extraordinary upside and concentrated risk.
SpaceX now faces the reality every newly public company confronts: quarterly scrutiny. Musk has operated for years with the luxury of private ownership, free to spend aggressively without explaining every dollar to public shareholders and analysts. That era is over.
The company's board has already structured Musk's compensation around audacious milestones, including targets tied to a Mars colony and a $7.5 trillion valuation. Those are not typical CEO pay benchmarks. They reflect a company, and a leader, operating on a different timeline than most of Wall Street.
For conservative investors who value tangible results over speculative narratives, the tension is real. SpaceX builds things. It launches rockets. It connects rural communities to the internet. It serves the U.S. government. Those are concrete achievements. But a $2 trillion valuation on $18.7 billion in revenue and a $5 billion loss requires a leap of faith that not every prudent investor should take.
The market has spoken loudly in SpaceX's first days as a public company. Whether it spoke wisely is a question that will take years to answer. In the meantime, the American private sector just reminded the world what it can build when bureaucrats step aside and builders step up.