SpaceX overtakes Amazon as world’s fifth most valuable company

SpaceX surpassed Amazon to become the world's fifth-most valuable company on Tuesday, propelled by a 13% share surge after it agreed to acquire the AI coding startup Anysphere, maker of Cursor, for $60 billion [1]. The milestone came just days after SpaceX's initial public offering on the Nasdaq [1]. Its market capitalization briefly touched $2.97 trillion before settling at roughly $2.66 trillion, edging out Amazon's $2.65 trillion [1]. The valuation gap is stark against underlying financials: SpaceX lost $4.9 billion on revenues of $18.7 billion in 2025, while Amazon posted $717 billion in revenues and $78 billion in net income [1]. The Cursor deal gives SpaceX's AI subsidiary, xAI, ownership of a tool used by more than 1 million professional developers [1]. Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at PitchBook, said the acquisition represented a faster route to enterprise AI revenue than competing directly on foundation models. "Owning the tool that professional developers already trust daily is a faster path to enterprise AI revenue than winning the model race," Rolfes said [1]. SpaceX had disclosed in April that it held an option to buy Anysphere for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for a partnership [1]. The transaction will be paid in stock and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026 [1]. Bill Ackman noted that SpaceX's elevated share price reduced the dilutive impact of the all-stock deal. "The Cursor acquisition costs materially less in dilution because of SpaceX's high valuation," Ackman posted on X [1]. Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 and later established xAI, became the world's first trillionaire upon the IPO, with Forbes estimating his fortune at $1.3 trillion following the share rally [1][2]. xAI was folded into SpaceX as a subsidiary in 2026 [2]. The combined entity now houses the rocket company, Starlink, social media platform X, and the AI division [1]. Anysphere competes in a coding-tool market led by Anthropic and OpenAI [1]. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, was valued at $965 billion in May 2026, making it the most valuable pure-play AI company [5]. Matt Britzman, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Cursor had built "very impressive coding models relative to cost" despite lacking the scale of its larger rivals [1]. Gil Luria of DA Davidson said the acquisition would "improve SpaceX's position in the frontier model race with Anthropic and OpenAI," adding that Grok needed a coding component enterprise customers could use alongside Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex [1]. Anysphere's backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, Nvidia, and Google [1].