SpaceX shares rose 7.63% on Monday, reaching their highest level since mid-June, and with this rally, Musk has once again become a trillionaire.
The surge followed a Sunday report from Morgan Stanley analysts who called SpaceX "cheap" at current prices and highlighted "upcoming AI product launches, Starship progress, and more neocloud contracts." They recommended buying the stock with a $300 price target, implying roughly 75% upside from Monday's closing price of $171.09.
Late last week, SpaceX completed multiple historic flights in a single day, including a crewed mission to the International Space Station for NASA and another launch that carried Google AI chips into orbit.
Morgan Stanley analysts advised investors to buy SpaceX shares ahead of the company's next planned test flight of its giant Starship rocket and before its third-quarter earnings report expected in late October.
Starship is SpaceX's next-generation spacecraft and the largest rocket ever built, designed to be fully reusable with both its upper stage and booster capable of safely returning to land on Earth. The system is expected to dramatically advance SpaceX's business by delivering the company's Starlink satellites into orbit and carrying cargo and crews for other companies and institutions.
Analysts wrote that if SpaceX attempts to catch the Starship upper stage spacecraft with the launch tower on its next test flight, it could become "the biggest positive catalyst since the IPO." In previous test flights, the Starship upper stage splashed down in the ocean but has not yet been proven reusable.
SpaceX is also getting a boost from its artificial intelligence business, which stems from last year's acquisition of Musk's xAI and was expanded through the recent acquisition of Cursor. Although the company's self-developed Grok model has yet to take off compared to leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, SpaceX is generating substantial revenue by renting computing power to the likes of Google and Anthropic.
Musk is also benefiting from his close relationship with the Trump administration. On Wednesday, the Pentagon appointed Musk as co-lead of "Project Meridian," which involves determining the weapons, technologies, and military capabilities the United States may need for future warfare. A significant portion of SpaceX's revenue comes from the U.S. government and increasingly from defense contracts. According to FedScout data, the company has earned more than $12.7 billion to date through its work with the Department of Defense.
Musk said over the weekend that he would rename SpaceX's AI division SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, embracing President Trump's new branding.
On Monday, as his company's stock soared, Musk was notably absent from a New York City Council hearing where city officials questioned AI leaders and researchers about how AI technology should be regulated. Representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta testified. City Council member Shekar Krishnan noted: "AI has taken over our economy, inflated valuations, stolen our public land for data centers, and driven up the net worth of AI CEOs like Elon Musk, who has become our first-ever trillionaire."
According to the Forbes real-time billionaires list, Musk's current net worth stands at $1.03 trillion, factoring in his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
SpaceX went public on June 12 and hit a record closing price of $201.80 on June 16. The stock then began to decline, bottoming out in early August. Since then, the shares have risen about 58%. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.