Shares of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) are up 14% in early trading Tuesday, zooming to $219. This pushes the newly public rocket and connectivity giant’s market cap past $2.9 trillion, putting SPCX stock within striking distance of the world’s biggest tech names.
The trigger is a blockbuster acquisition announcement. SpaceX confirmed it will acquire Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion in an all-stock transaction expected to close in Q3 2026, pending regulatory approvals.
The move puts SPCX stock roughly in line with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) stock, which carries around a $2.95 trillion market cap. Combined with Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), CEO Elon Musk’s other publicly traded mega-cap, the pair would sit near Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) roughly $4.3 trillion market cap.
$60 Billion Cursor Deal Fuels the Rally
The Cursor deal is an undeniable catalyst. SpaceX is exercising an option it secured in April giving it the right to either pay roughly $10 billion for a partnership with Cursor or acquire the company for $60 billion later in the year, and it chose the full buyout.
Cursor, founded in 2022, is an AI-powered code editor offering a chatbot assistant, code autocomplete, and autonomous AI coding agents. The startup has roughly $2.6 billion in annualized revenue with rising enterprise sales, and was recently in talks to raise funding at a roughly $50 billion valuation.
SpaceX is framing the acquisition as a push into enterprise AI software, layering developer tools onto its Space, Connectivity, and AI segments. The company generated $4.694 billion in consolidated revenue in the three months ended March 31, so the Cursor business would meaningfully change the top-line mix from day one.
Stacking Up Against Microsoft and Apple
The comparison to Microsoft and Apple is where the caution case starts. Microsoft is solidly profitable, posting a 39% profit margin on $318 billion in trailing revenue. SpaceX, by contrast, is not yet profitable on a consolidated basis.
Apple isn’t a perfect comparison, either. The iPhone maker’s roughly $4.3 trillion market cap is supported by $451 billion in trailing revenue and a 27% profit margin. SpaceX’s enterprise AI ambitions also put it on a collision course with Alphabet‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, whose Cloud unit grew 63% last quarter.
SPCX stock has gone vertical since its debut. priced at $135 on June 11, opened around $150 and closed near $161 on the June 12 debut, then rose 11% to $178 on Monday. Today’s rally further extends the post-IPO run.
Retail Frenzy Meets the Options Launch
Retail demand has been a major engine of the move. SpaceX has been the most-bought stock by retail investors for two consecutive sessions, with around $100 million in net buying Monday, per Vanda Research.
Adding fuel today, stock options on SpaceX begin trading Tuesday, the first time investors can use derivatives on the newly public name. That tends to widen the buyer pool, attract hedging flows, and amplify intraday volatility.
Reddit chatter reflects the speculative tone. Posts framing SpaceX as a “guaranteed lottery ticket” have drawn thousands of upvotes, while skeptical threads questioning whether “price discovery is even real right now” are gaining traction in parallel.
What to Watch
The bull case is straightforward. SpaceX is bolting a fast-growing AI developer tools franchise onto Starlink and its launch business, and retail demand is keeping bids firm into the options debut. Investors who buy the multi-platform thesis can frame today’s move as validation of an enterprise AI expansion rather than froth.
The caution case is just as clear. A $60 billion all-stock deal carries real execution and regulatory risk, SPCX stock is being priced alongside profitable trillion-dollar peers despite no consolidated profits yet, and the rally is powered by a brand-new listing with limited float. Investors may want to size their positions modestly and watch how the stock trades once options market makers and lockup mechanics start setting the tone.
Keep an eye on whether the premarket gains hold through the open, how aggressively the new options chain trades, and any regulatory commentary as the Cursor acquisition moves toward its targeted Q3 2026 close. Those signals will help separate durable enterprise-AI enthusiasm from post-IPO froth.
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