SpaceX overtakes Amazon as world’s fifth biggest company

SpaceX staff and guests celebrate the company’s IPO in New York on Friday. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters View image in fullscreen SpaceX staff and guests celebrate the company’s IPO in New York on Friday. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters SpaceX overtakes Amazon as world’s fifth biggest company Value of Elon Musk’s firm at one point rose to $2.97tn just days after its IPO following purchase of AI coding startup Cursor Elon Musk’s SpaceX has overtaken Amazon as the world’s fifth-most valuable company days after its stock market debut . The jump in value came as it agreed to buy the startup behind the AI-powered coding app Cursor for $60bn (£44bn), in an attempt to capitalise on the technology’s success as a coding tool. SpaceX is the parent of Musk’s AI business xAI, which will be able to boost its capabilities in an area – AI systems writing code – that has proven to be a strong commercial success for Anthropic, the rival company behind the Claude chatbot. Elon Musk’s unprecendented accumulation of wealth Read more The group also includes the SpaceX rocket company, social media platform X and the satellite maker and internet service provider Starlink, which is the only profitable part of the business. The news of the Cursor acquisition was announced as SpaceX passed Amazon in market capitalisation, an important measure of value for a publicly listed company. SpaceX shares rose by 13% on opening on the Nasdaq index on Tuesday. At one point its valuation rose as high as $2.97tn, leaping over Amazon’s $2.64tn to become the world’s fifth most valuable company by market value. Its shares later eased back to about 10% up and a valuation of a little under $2.8tn. SpaceX lost $4.9bn in 2025 on revenues of $18.7bn, while Amazon posted revenues of $717bn and net income – a US measure of profit – of $78bn. SpaceX floated at $135 a share on Friday and its shares have risen by approximately 60% since. The float made Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive, the world’s first trillionaire with a fortune of $1.1tn, according to Forbes. It reckons the 54-year-old is now worth $1.4tn. The company had been circling Cursor, owned by the San Francisco-based Anysphere, for months. It said in April it had secured an option to ‌either buy the San Francisco-based firm for $60bn later this year or pay $10bn for a partnership. View image in fullscreen Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman said the strong value of SpaceX’s stock was another boon for the company because it would require fewer company shares to pull off large acquisitions such as Anysphere. Photograph: Kristoffer Tripplaar/Alamy Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at the financial research firm PitchBook, said the deal would not “close the gap” between xAI’s models and those developed by Anthropic and OpenAI. However, he said it made sense to gain access to Cursor’s more than 1 million users. “Owning the tool that professional developers already trust daily is a faster path to enterprise AI revenue than win