Spacex closed up 7.6%, reaching a new high since June, helping Musk "regain" his trillionaire status

SpaceX shares surged nearly 8% on Monday, pushing Elon Musk’s net worth back above the trillion-dollar mark. This rally was driven by a bullish report from Morgan Stanley analysts released the previous day, which described the stock as ‘undervalued’, alongside a series of recent milestone flight missions by the company.

At Monday’s close, SpaceX stock was priced at $171.09, reaching its highest level since mid-June. According to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, Musk’s net worth increased by approximately $30.6 billion that day, bringing his total wealth to about $1.03 trillion, topping the billionaire rankings.

This marks Musk’s return to the trillion-dollar club for the first time since SpaceX’s initial public offering in June this year.

Since bottoming out in early August, SpaceX stock has rebounded by approximately 58%. Morgan Stanley set a price target of $300 for the stock, about 75% higher than Monday’s closing price, and recommended that investors position themselves before the company’s next Starship test flight and Q3 financial results.

Morgan Stanley analysts released a research report on Sunday stating that at current prices, SpaceX’s value is clearly underestimated.

The report highlights potential catalysts such as “upcoming AI product launches, Starship development progress, and new cloud service contracts,” maintaining an ‘overweight’ rating.

Last week, SpaceX accomplished several historic flight missions within a single day, including a manned mission for NASA, transporting astronauts to the International Space Station, and launching Google’s AI chips into orbit.

Analysts noted that if SpaceX attempts to recover the Starship’s upper stage in the next test flight, it could become “the most significant positive catalyst since the IPO.” In previous tests, the Starship’s upper stage always splashed down in the ocean, with reusability yet to be demonstrated.

Starship is the largest rocket ever built by humans, designed for both the upper stage and booster to be safely recovered and reused. SpaceX plans to use Starship to deploy Starlink satellites into orbit, as well as handle other commercial and government cargo and crewed missions.

Beyond its core aerospace business, SpaceX’s artificial intelligence division has also become a major driver behind the stock’s rise.

The company entered the AI space through the acquisition of Musk’s xAI and further expanded by acquiring the code editor Cursor. Although its self-developed Grok large model still lags behind OpenAI and Anthropic in market influence, SpaceX is generating considerable revenue by leasing computing power to clients such as Google and Anthropic.

On the government contract front, according to FedScout data, SpaceX has received more than $12.7 billion in cumulative contract revenue from the U.S. Department of Defense, with the share of defense business continuously increasing.

On Wednesday, September 30, the Pentagon appointed Musk as co-head of “Project Meridian,” which aims to identify weapons, technology, and military capabilities needed for the United States in future wars.

On the branding front, Musk announced last weekend that he is renaming his AI subsidiary from SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, aligning with the executive order signed by President Trump on September 29 this year.

The order requires government agencies to use “super intelligence” (SI) instead of “artificial intelligence” in official terminology. However, as of Monday, no official name change steps have yet been implemented.

SpaceX went public on Nasdaq on June 12, with an IPO price of $135, issuing 555.6 million shares and raising $75 billion, surpassing the record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019.

In its first week of trading, shares peaked at a closing high of $201.80 on June 16, before gradually retreating and bottoming out in early August. Following the current rebound, SpaceX stock is up approximately 27% from its IPO price, with Musk holding around 82.4% of the company’s voting rights.

Financially, SpaceX is expected to achieve revenue of $18.67 billion in 2025, up 33% year-on-year; however, due to heavy investment, net profit turned from $791 million last year to a loss of $4.94 billion.

According to Forbes’ estimates, Musk’s current net worth exceeds that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by over $628 billion, with Bezos’ estimated net worth around $371.5 billion.