By Jordan Fitzgerald | Updated on Jun 12, 2026 at 09:19 PM
When it comes to the interconnected companies of Elon Musk, Tesla Inc. is no longer the big man on campus.
The $75 billion initial public offering of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, propelled the company’s value above $2 trillion on Friday, surpassing Tesla’s own 13-digit market capitalization of around $1.5 trillion.
Until this week, Tesla was essentially the only way for ordinary investors to include Musk’s ventures in their portfolio. Now that SpaceX is publicly available, the company and its broad holdings — from artificial intelligence to space travel — have immediately turned into a more attractive alternative at a time when Tesla is bogged down by weak fundamentals and struggling car sales .
SpaceX stock jumped 19% in its trading debut, making Musk the world’s first trillionaire · . On its own first day on the public market in 2010, Tesla’s shares rallied even more, some 41%. The stock has surged roughly 25,000% since then, compared with a 610% jump in the S&P 500. On Friday, though, it rose just a bit more than the broader market.
Retail flows into Tesla started strong this morning, but since SpaceX opened, “there’s only been one stock on retail’s radar,” according to Vanda Research’s Viraj Patel.
“AI is the new EV,” he said, calling SpaceX “the new rockstar kid on the block.”
Musk’s ambitious vision, and Tesla’s stock success over the past 16 years, have earned him a legion of retail investor acolytes . BNP Paribas analyst James Picariello estimated in April that the cohort owns 40% of Tesla’s shares. Going into the IPO, retail investors had placed orders worth $100 billion for SpaceX shares.
Many Musk fans are hoping SpaceX sees similar, if not greater, growth than Tesla, given its broad ambitions. But SpaceX may end up plagued by the same valuation concerns that have faced Tesla for years.
“There’s only about 15 companies that are worth a trillion dollars today,” said Rand Millwood, investment advisor at Guardian Wealth Advisors. “If you look at those companies, most of them have been around for a long time. They’re very successful, cash flow positive, all those kinds of things, and that’s not SpaceX.”
To avoid dividing investor attention, some analysts think a merger between the two firms could be coming. Both ventures see overlapping use cases in AI, robotics, and mobility — and a leader who has a habit of unorthodox corporate dealmaking.
Millwood, though, said that it’s possible that having multiple publicly traded Musk ventures will create a rising tide for both.
“There’s so much of a tie-in across all of the Elon companies,” Millwood said. “People think he’s the genius of our time, which he may be to some extent, so anything he’s involved in, they’re going to want to be a part of.”