Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX has overtaken Amazon to claim the rank of the world's fifth most valuable publicly traded firm, capping a dramatic trading session that briefly sent its shares into even more rarefied air.
According to CNBC, SpaceX shares surged roughly 12% at their intraday peak on Tuesday before settling up 4.8% by the close. That left the company with a market capitalization of approximately $2.65 trillion — just above Amazon's — after the dust settled.
The intraday swing was striking enough that SpaceX momentarily leapfrogged Microsoft, whose market cap stood near $2.93 trillion, according to CNBC. The company ultimately closed below that threshold but still secured its new fifth-place standing.
BBC and France 24 both characterize the move as part of a broader, sustained surge for the company, with France 24 describing SpaceX as "surging" into its new position among the world's corporate giants.
SpaceX remains privately held in the traditional sense but trades on secondary markets, making its valuation a closely watched signal of investor appetite for Musk-linked ventures and the commercial space industry more broadly.
The milestone matters because it shows a rocket and satellite company — not a bank, a tech platform, or an oil giant — has elbowed its way into the very top tier of global business, signaling that the commercial space race has become serious enough to reshape how the world measures corporate power.