By Callum Keown
SpaceX's first trading week will go into the history books.
Elon Musk's company reached an intraday market capitalization of $2.97 trillion at one point on Tuesday, briefly surpassing Microsoft to become the fourth largest company in the world. After falling 8% over the past two days, SpaceX closed Thursday as the sixth largest.
Not a bad week's work.
The rockets and satellites company has jumped 37% from its $135 offer price in its first five trading days, gaining $673.8 billion in market cap over that period.
That gain is a few hundred million dollars bigger than the entire size of Intel--and comfortably the largest following an IPO in U.S. history. The next best is the $86 billion market value added by electric-vehicle maker Rivian in its first five days after going public in November 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data on the 37 U.S. IPOs with a deal value of at least $20 billion since 2000.
SpaceX investors may want to look away now, though--Rivian stock has fallen more than 90% since its record high reached on its fifth trading day. It now has a market cap of just under $21 billion.
A strong start can turn sour but a poor start can become very good indeed.
Facebook's market cap fell $11 billion to $71 billion in its first five days, as the stock dropped 13% after its IPO in 2012. Meta Platforms market cap now stands at just under $1.5 trillion.
The closest comparison--and it's not really close at all--may be Alibaba. The Chinese ecommerce giant added more than $50 billion in value when its American depositary receipts went public in 2014, rising 31% in its first week. The stock then climbed around 250% to its record high in 2020--but has since fallen more than 65%.
However, the past isn't always a reliable guide and SpaceX stock seems intent on creating its own history anyway.
Write to Callum Keown at callum.keown@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 19, 2026 06:41 ET (10:41 GMT)
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