SpaceX is trading like a $2T meme stock after its record IPO
SpaceX’s first week as a public company is starting to look less like a conventional stock-market debut and more like a high-leverage crypto asset.
Shares of Elon Musk-led company, trading under the ticker SPCX, extended their post-IPO rally Tuesday as investors piled into one of the smallest public floats ever attached to a company valued in the trillions of dollars.
The stock rose as much as 13% to $210 in early market trading, according to Yahoo Finance data.
This frenzy has also crossed into digital-asset markets, where SPCX-linked perpetual futures have become one of the busiest contracts across crypto trading platforms.
Tiny float turns demand into momentum
SpaceX’s post-IPO rally has been intensified by the unusually small amount of stock available for public trading.
The company sold 555.6 million shares in its IPO, raising $75 billion. The sale later expanded to 638.9 million shares and about $85.7 billion in proceeds after underwriters exercised their overallotment option.
Even after the additional shares, only a narrow slice of SpaceX’s equity entered the public market. This is because the company has about 13 billion shares outstanding, meaning the IPO released only a small portion of its total stock.
Thus, Musk and other insiders still control most of the company, while lockup agreements limit how much additional supply can reach the market in the near term.
Thierry Borgeat, co-founder of Arvy, said that structure created an exceptionally tight supply setup for a company of SpaceX’s scale, with index funds, retail traders, and momentum buyers all chasing a limited number of tradeable shares.
Crypto analyst Colin Talks Crypto drew a similar comparison to digital-asset markets, arguing that SPCX is behaving like a token with a heavily restricted release schedule.
He said the small liquid float can help drive sharp early gains, but warned that later unlocks could create sell pressure as more shares become available for trading.
That imbalance has made each wave of demand more powerful. With few natural sellers on the other side, buying from retail investors, index-linked funds, and speculative traders can move the stock sharply higher.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer pointed this out, saying the stock was behaving like a meme stock because it had “no sellers.”
As a result, the pressure has helped SpaceX climb more than 50% from its $135 IPO price just days after its record listing.
Crypto platforms turn the rally into a leverage trade
The same supply pressure that has driven SpaceX higher in the stock market has spilled into crypto derivatives, where traders are using leveraged contracts to chase the rally around the clock.
SPCX traded at $222.52 over the past 24 hours, up $48.12, or 27.6%, according to CoinGlass data. Futures volume jumped 501.5% to nearly $9 billion, while open interest climbed to $813 million, signaling a sharp increase in both trading activity and capital committed to the market.
These contracts give traders synthetic exposure to SpaceX’s share price through a crypto-native product that trades continuously and allows leverage. That structure has turned the post-IPO rally into a 24-hour speculation cycle, extending the stock-market frenzy beyond regular trading hours.
For a stock such as SpaceX, where public supply is limited, and social media is helping shape the narrative in real time, that kind of market can intensify price swings.
The leverage has already forced a sharp unwind. CoinGlass data showed more than $30 million in SPCX positions liquidated over 24 hours as price volatility exceeded 35%. Short liquidations accounted for about $19 million of that total, compared with roughly $12 million in long liquidations.
That liquidation profile shows how the rally has fed on itself. When short sellers are forced out, exchanges automatically buy back exposure to close their positions.
That buying can push prices higher, forcing more bearish traders to exit. The same mechanic has fueled violent rallies in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and smaller tokens during crowded positioning events.
For SpaceX, the loop is now clear. A thin public float drives the stock higher. The rising share price pulls more traders into perpetual futures. Short liquidations add more forced buying. The derivative market then reinforces the perception that the rally still has momentum.
Together, those markets have transformed SpaceX’s first week as a public company into a cross-asset momentum trade.
An AI deal gives SPCX's rally a new catalyst
The rally gained another narrative boost after SpaceX announced an agreement to acquire Anysphere, the software company behind the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.
The firm stated:
“SpaceX has exercised the option to acquire Cursor in an all-stock transaction with the goal of building the world’s most useful AI models. For the past few months, SpaceXAI has been jointly training a model with Cursor, which will be released in Cursor and Grok Build soon.”
Quinn Thompson, chief investment officer of Lekker Capital, described the deal as a clever use of SpaceX’s newly elevated equity value.
He said the company was using a low-float, retail-inflated stock price to buy real businesses before the lockup period expires, calling it a creative way to turn post-IPO momentum into acquisition power.
Moreover, the deal gives investors a fresh reason to treat SpaceX as a broader technology platform rather than a company defined only by rockets and satellites.
Musk has increasingly positioned the business across launch services, Starlink, defense systems, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and enterprise software.
That broader identity helps explain why some investors are willing to support a valuation that appears stretched against current revenue. Bulls are looking beyond today’s sales and betting that SpaceX can become critical infrastructure across several large markets at once.
The Anysphere transaction fits that view. Cursor has become one of the most closely watched AI coding products, competing in a market where OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other technology companies are racing to automate software development.
Bringing Cursor into SpaceX would deepen Musk’s exposure to enterprise AI while potentially giving Anysphere access to greater computing resources.
For traders, the immediate effect is simpler. The deal keeps the growth story expanding while the stock is still in its early price-discovery phase.
In a market already driven by scarcity, leverage, and social-media momentum, a major AI acquisition gives buyers another reason to stay involved and short sellers another risk to manage.
Valuation math tests the rally
The harder question now is whether SpaceX can hold its valuation once investors shift from momentum trading to fundamentals.
Henrik Zeberg, a macro strategist at Swissblock, warned that the rally looks more like late-cycle speculation than the start of a durable bull-market advance. He said:
“This is NOT what you see at Bull Market Take-Offs. This is the Final Phases of a Bull Market. And people speculating in SpaceX will lose a lot of money … unfortunately!”
That skepticism is sharpened by the scale of SpaceX’s valuation. Charlie Bilello, chief market strategist at Creative Planning, noted that the company’s market value has climbed above $3 trillion, putting it ahead of Amazon and near Microsoft.
The comparison is striking because those companies generate far more revenue and substantial annual profit, while SpaceX is still producing losses.
In view of this, Bilello stated:
“SpaceX is a great company and will go on to do great things. But a few months from now we will look back at this moment as peak mania. Investors are pricing SpaceX stock as if the future has already happened.”
That leaves investors paying years in advance for execution. If SpaceX keeps growing quickly, wins large contracts and turns its AI push into a meaningful business line, the premium may hold.
But if growth slows, losses persist or locked-up shares begin entering the market, the same structure that powered the rally could start working in reverse.
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