SpaceX Briefly Topped Amazon’s Market Cap. The Better Buy Is Amazon.

Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) priced its IPO at $135 a share on Friday, June 12, 2026, and within hours of opening for trading, the company’s market cap had crossed $2 trillion. For a brief window in the days after the debut, SpaceX traded above Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

By the close on June 23, the rocket maker had given back some of those gains. SpaceX’s market cap sat at around $2 trillion against Amazon’s roughly $2.54 trillion on the day SpaceX priced, per CNBC’s IPO live blog. Amazon trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 28. SpaceX trades at a price-to-sales ratio of over 100. The scale of the underlying businesses explains part of that gap. Amazon booked $80 billion in operating income last year on $717 billion in revenue. SpaceX posted an $18.7 billion top line and a $2.6 billion loss from operations.

How SpaceX Briefly Crossed Amazon’s Market Cap

The June 12 debut was the largest IPO in history. SpaceX priced at $135 a share, opened near $174 on the Nasdaq, hit an intraday high of $176.52 within hours, and SpaceX’s debut testing the Magnificent Seven label put the company into a market-cap tier previously held only by Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon.

1. June 12, 2026: IPO prices at $135 a share, opens near $174, hits an intraday high of $176.52.
2. June 12, 2026 (close): Shares settle at $160.95, lifting the market cap to about $2.2 trillion.
3. June 12, 2026 (after-hours): Stock climbs to $166.76, adding roughly $80 billion to the market cap.
4. June 23, 2026: Shares settle near a $2 trillion market cap after early gains cool.

The first trading day closed with SpaceX at $160.95 a share, putting the market cap just above $2.2 trillion. Per the live blog of the SpaceX debut, the stock kept climbing in after-hours trade, reaching $166.76 by 6:30 p.m. ET and lifting the market cap by another $80 billion. That put SpaceX within striking distance of Amazon’s roughly $2.54 trillion market cap on the same day. In the days that followed, SpaceX pushed above Amazon briefly before settling back.

Per the analysis published June 26, 2026, by the close on June 23, SpaceX’s market cap was around $2 trillion, with Amazon’s market cap roughly $2.54 trillion on the day SpaceX priced. The headline since the debut has been SpaceX’s market cap. The numbers behind that headline did not start on June 12. They start with two businesses at different stages of scale.

The Numbers Behind the Headline

Amazon’s 2025 results, filed in the company’s annual report, anchor the gap in plain numbers. Revenue rose 12% to $717 billion, AWS grew 20% to $129 billion, and operating income reached $80 billion, per Amazon’s 2025 shareholder letter filed April 9, 2026. The fourth-quarter earnings release confirms the same revenue, AWS, and operating income totals for the full year.

SpaceX, by contrast, generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 and reported a $2.6 billion loss from operations, per the Motley Fool comparison piece. Separately, CNBC and The Information reported a wider loss closer to $5 billion once the xAI business is included. SpaceX grew 33% on a percentage basis last year, faster than Amazon’s 12%. The percentages look comparable until the bases are put side by side.

Amazon’s 2024 revenue was $638 billion and its 2025 revenue was $717 billion. The difference is roughly $79 billion in additional revenue added in a single year, per the company’s filing. As Brett Schafer wrote in The Motley Fool, that single-year increment is around four times the entire size of SpaceX’s 2025 business. The growth rate gap is one comparison. The base gap is another, and the base gap is the larger of the two.

The percentages obscure the distance. SpaceX’s 33% pace starts from $18.7 billion in 2025 revenue. Amazon’s 12% pace starts from $717 billion. The two multiples investors now have to compare, a price-to-sales over 100 for SpaceX and a price-to-earnings of 28 for Amazon, sit on denominators that are not the same kind of number.

Where SpaceX and Amazon Actually Compete

Amazon and SpaceX do compete in two places, and not in a third. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, generated $11.4 billion in 2025, up 50% year over year. AWS, Amazon’s cloud division, generated $129 billion in 2025, up 20% year over year, per the shareholder letter. Both businesses sell computing and connectivity at scale to enterprises, governments, and consumers, and both are investing aggressively in the AI data center buildout that Wall Street is underwriting on SpaceX’s behalf.

• Satellite internet: SpaceX’s Starlink at $11.4 billion in 2025 revenue versus Amazon Leo, which has more than 200 satellites in orbit and is the third-largest low Earth orbit network operating today, per the Amazon shareholder letter.
• AI and cloud: SpaceX’s AI business, which now includes xAI, generated $3.2 billion in 2025 revenue, including revenue from the company formerly known as Twitter. AWS generated $129 billion in 2025, up 20% year over year.
• Rocket launches: SpaceX booked $4 billion from its launch business in 2025. Amazon does not compete in this market, and the orbital launch opportunity is much smaller than the satellite internet or AI compute markets SpaceX is chasing.

SpaceX’s launch business is not where the investment case lives. The investment case lives in broadband and AI compute, where the company estimates an addressable market of more than $1 trillion across those sectors. That is the runway the $2 trillion market cap is meant to be funding. Amazon has its own competing bets. Amazon Leo is operational today with more than 200 satellites in orbit, per the shareholder letter. Project Kuiper-style spending is layered on top of AWS, which is the unit Amazon leans on for AI infrastructure and which generated $129 billion last year at 20% growth, per the same letter.

The two companies are running similar races, but they are running them at different distances from the finish line. Starlink is the incumbent in satellite broadband. AWS is the incumbent in cloud. SpaceX’s AI business is younger than AWS and starts from a smaller base, with Amazon’s capex program and AI infrastructure stack already embedded in the existing $717 billion business.

The Bull Case Wall Street Is Pitching

Wall Street is making a specific bet to justify SpaceX’s valuation. Per Evercore ISI research analysts, SpaceX’s AI division is expected to deliver $755 billion of sales by 2031, up from $3.2 billion last year, per a person familiar with the forecasts. Much of that case hinges on the cloud computing bet inside the $1.77 trillion IPO, not on the rocket business itself, on the projections underwriters are taking to clients.

Goldman Sachs’s research team has laid out a different but related target. The Goldman analysts see total revenue hitting $474 billion in 2030, with AI revenue soaring roughly 100 times to nearly $322 billion that year, per Wall Street forecasts behind the bull case. CFRA Research, by contrast, put a sell rating on SpaceX at IPO with a 12-month price target of $115, well below the $135 IPO price. The gap between Evercore’s $755 billion AI figure and CFRA’s $115 price target is the size of the disagreement.

It was a hard pill to swallow even there. The growth levels that would be required within the AI segment and with premium multiples, which simply have to be astronomical, kind of borderline comical, to get to the valuations we’re talking about.

Keith Snyder, a senior analyst at CFRA Research, made the comment on CNBC’s Closing Bell the day of the IPO. Snyder assigned SpaceX a 12-month price target of $115.

The Evercore and Goldman forecasts are not small claims. Going from $3.2 billion in AI revenue in 2025 to $755 billion in 2031 is the kind of ramp that requires SpaceX to capture the bulk of the AI infrastructure market, year after year, for five straight years. CFRA’s $115 target assumes much of that ramp fails to materialize.

Why Amazon’s Multiple Already Reflects Reality

Amazon’s P/E of 28 sits on a number that already exists. The $80 billion in operating income Amazon booked in 2025 is the basis for that multiple, and Amazon’s $129 billion AWS business is the unit most exposed to the same AI tailwind SpaceX is selling. Investors buying Amazon are not paying for a 2031 forecast. They are paying a 28-multiple on 2025 earnings with the AI capex story already embedded in the existing business. The market has had time to stress-test the AWS revenue line, the operating margin, and the free cash flow profile.

SpaceX’s P/S over 100 sits on a different number. The $18.7 billion in 2025 revenue is the denominator, and the $2 trillion market cap is the numerator. The Motley Fool analysis argues the math gets more comfortable only at a 100% annual revenue growth rate sustained for several years, a pace neither company has ever printed. To justify that ratio on 2025 sales alone, SpaceX would need its revenue to scale to a multiple of the current base within years, not decades.

Both companies have real potential. Amazon’s AWS business is a direct play on the same AI infrastructure demand SpaceX is selling, and Amazon is investing about $200 billion in capital expenditures across the company in 2026, per the shareholder letter. SpaceX has the lead in satellite broadband and a credible path to orbital data centers, per its prospectus context. The choice between them is not a choice between a good business and a bad one. It is a choice between a stock priced on 2025 earnings and a stock priced on a 2030 scenario. As the Motley Fool analysis concludes, Amazon is the better buy for investors over the next few years.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did SpaceX go public and at what price?

Space Exploration Technologies priced its IPO at $135 a share on Friday, June 12, 2026, and began trading on the Nasdaq the same day under the ticker SPCX. The deal raised about $75 billion at an initial market value of $1.77 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history.

What is SpaceX’s market cap now?

Per the Motley Fool comparison piece published June 26, 2026, SpaceX’s market cap was around $2 trillion after the close on June 23, 2026. The stock had crossed $2.2 trillion in after-hours trading on the IPO day before giving back gains through the first two weeks of trading.

Did SpaceX actually surpass Amazon’s market cap?

Yes, briefly. Per CNBC’s IPO live blog, SpaceX’s market cap reached about $2.21 trillion on June 12, putting it within striking distance of Amazon’s roughly $2.54 trillion on the same day. SpaceX crossed Amazon in the days that followed, then settled back to around $2 trillion by the June 23 close.

What is Amazon’s P/E ratio compared to SpaceX’s?

Per the comparison piece, Amazon trades at a P/E of 28 against 2025 operating income of $80 billion. SpaceX trades at a P/S of over 100 against 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion. The two multiples are not directly comparable because SpaceX is lossmaking at the operating line and has no meaningful trailing earnings to anchor a P/E.

Why does SpaceX trade at such a high multiple?

Wall Street is underwriting a forecast. Evercore ISI sees SpaceX’s AI business reaching $755 billion in sales by 2031, up from $3.2 billion in 2025. Goldman Sachs sees total revenue at $474 billion by 2030, with AI revenue alone soaring roughly 100 times to nearly $322 billion. Both projections require SpaceX to capture a large share of the AI infrastructure market over five years. CFRA Research disagrees, assigning SpaceX a sell rating with a $115 price target on IPO day.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Investing in equities involves risk, including the loss of principal. Figures cited are accurate as of publication and sourced from primary filings, IPO-day reporting, and named analyst notes; consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.