SpaceX Stock Jumps 5% to $167, Making Elon Musk a Trillionaire Again - Why Morgan Stanley Says It's Still Cheaper Than the AI Megacaps

What Happened

SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) shares jumped roughly 5% in Monday trading on October 5, rising from Friday's close to around $167 a share. The move was large enough on its own to make headlines, but the number that actually traveled furthest was a different one: the rally pushed Elon Musk's net worth back above $1 trillion, according to Forbes' real-time wealth tracker, up an estimated $30.6 billion from where he'd finished the week. Musk had crossed the trillion-dollar threshold once before, making him the first person ever to do so, only to dip back below it as SpaceX shares cooled off in the weeks since. Monday's move put him back over the line.

The immediate trigger was a note from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who reiterated his "Overweight" rating on SpaceX and kept his price target at $300 a share - a level that, if reached, would value the company at roughly $4 trillion and implies something like 88% upside from Friday's close. Jonas has been one of the loudest bulls on SpaceX stock since well before its IPO earlier this year, and Monday's note was at least the fourth or fifth time since August that Morgan Stanley has reiterated or expanded on that bullish case, each time tying it to a different piece of news: a planned $100 billion Louisiana spaceport in August, a "discounted exposure" argument in September, and now a valuation argument tied to the AI buildout heading into two upcoming Starship test flights.

Adding a bit of extra color to the day, Musk also used the occasion to rename the company's in-house "SpaceXAI" effort to "SpaceXSI," a nod to President Trump's recent suggestion that "artificial intelligence" ought to be rebranded "super intelligence." It's a small, almost cosmetic move, but it reinforces the framing Wall Street has increasingly adopted around SpaceX: this is no longer purely a rockets-and-satellites story, it's an AI infrastructure story that happens to be run by a rocket company.

Why Morgan Stanley Thinks SpaceX Is Still Undervalued

The core of Jonas's argument isn't a simple price-to-earnings comparison - SpaceX, like most capital-intensive growth companies, isn't earnings-positive in a way that makes P/E ratios especially meaningful yet. Instead, Morgan Stanley leans on a metric called EV/EBIT/growth, which divides a company's enterprise value-to-operating-earnings multiple by its expected growth rate. The idea is to normalize for the fact that a company growing at 80% a year "deserves" a much higher valuation multiple than one growing at 8%, so simply comparing raw multiples across companies at different growth stages is misleading. On that growth-adjusted basis, Morgan Stanley puts SpaceX's ratio at around 0.3 times, which the firm estimates is roughly 40% below the median for its basket of AI megacap peers - the Nvidias, Microsofts, and Metas of the market that have carried this year's AI trade.

The growth assumptions behind that math are aggressive by any standard. Morgan Stanley's model has SpaceX revenue climbing from about $18.7 billion in 2025 to $319 billion by 2030, and all the way to $3.3 trillion by 2040 - with the bulk of that later growth coming not from launch services or Starlink subscriptions, but from AI infrastructure and compute. That's the real thesis underlying Monday's note: SpaceX's existing businesses (reusable rockets, satellite internet) generate real, growing cash flow today, but the valuation case for a $4 trillion company rests on SpaceX becoming a meaningfully large AI infrastructure player over the next decade, leveraging things like its satellite network, launch cadence, and balance sheet to compete for a slice of the AI buildout that has mostly gone to traditional hyperscalers and chipmakers so far.

It's worth being clear-eyed about what that means for risk. A valuation built on where a company might be in 2040 is inherently a bet on execution over a very long horizon, and Morgan Stanley's own framing - that SpaceX trades at a discount specifically because the market hasn't yet priced in that AI-driven growth - is itself an admission that most investors don't currently buy the thesis at face value. The stock's heavy reliance on continued bullish analyst notes to drive each leg higher, rather than, say, quarterly earnings beats, is itself a sign that the AI infrastructure story is still more narrative than demonstrated financial reality.

The Broader Market Context: AI Megacaps Led a Record Nasdaq Day

SpaceX's jump didn't happen in isolation. The Nasdaq Composite climbed to a fresh all-time high on Monday, with AI-adjacent megacaps broadly higher: Meta Platforms rose more than 2%, Microsoft gained over 1%, Nvidia added more than 1%, and Tesla - Musk's other major holding - rose nearly 2% as well. That backdrop matters for how to read Monday's SpaceX move: part of it is company-specific (the Morgan Stanley note, the Starship news, the rebrand), and part of it is simply SpaceX riding the same AI-led risk-on wave lifting the rest of the sector. The 10-year Treasury yield, meanwhile, hovered near 5.3% - a reminder that even as equity risk appetite stayed strong, the bond market continues to price in a world of persistently higher long-term rates, which makes the market's willingness to pay up for distant 2040-style growth stories somewhat more notable.

There's also a mechanical reason SpaceX's stock moves get outsized attention right now: the company was added to the Nasdaq 100 earlier this year in a rebalancing event that triggered an estimated $15 billion in passive index-fund buying, meaning a far wider swath of retirement accounts and index funds now have direct exposure to every SpaceX headline, for better or worse.

What's Next: Starship Flight 15

Part of Monday's optimism is forward-looking. SpaceX successfully flew Starship into orbit for the first time last week, and the company's next major test, Flight 15, is provisionally targeted for no earlier than October 19, though SpaceX has a long history of slipping its own announced launch windows and this date should be treated as soft. Flight 15 would use the fourth pair of the newer Block 3 Booster and Ship vehicles, flying from Starbase in Texas. A clean flight would further validate the hardware that underpins both SpaceX's satellite deployment ambitions and, increasingly, the data-center-in-orbit concepts that companies like Google have begun testing on SpaceX rockets. A setback, on the other hand, would be a real test of how much of Monday's rally was built on execution confidence versus simple AI-trade momentum.

What to Take Away From This

• A single analyst note can move a stock meaningfully when the stock in question is both relatively new to public markets and central to a dominant market narrative. SpaceX has had several of these Morgan Stanley-driven rallies since its IPO, each one reinforcing a thesis rather than reflecting new operating results.
• Growth-adjusted valuation metrics like EV/EBIT/growth can make an expensive-looking stock look "cheap" relative to peers, but only if you accept the growth assumptions baked into the model. A company trading at a discount to peers on a growth-adjusted basis is a bet that the growth materializes as projected - not a statement that the stock is objectively inexpensive.
• Headline net-worth milestones (like Musk crossing $1 trillion) are a function of concentrated stock ownership, not diversified wealth, and they can reverse as quickly as they appear. Musk's net worth is highly levered to SpaceX and Tesla share prices specifically, which makes the headline figure volatile day to day.
• Index inclusion changes how much a single company's stock news matters to ordinary investors. Once a stock joins the Nasdaq 100, moves like Monday's ripple through a far wider set of passive funds and retirement accounts than before.

FAQ

Why did SpaceX stock jump 5% on October 5?

The move was driven primarily by a Morgan Stanley note reiterating an "Overweight" rating and a $300 price target, alongside a broader rally in AI-linked megacap stocks that pushed the Nasdaq Composite to a record high the same day. News of SpaceX's in-house "SpaceXAI" effort being renamed "SpaceXSI," and anticipation of the upcoming Starship Flight 15 test, added to the day's momentum.

How did this make Elon Musk a trillionaire again?

Musk's personal net worth is heavily concentrated in his equity stakes in SpaceX and Tesla. Forbes' real-time wealth estimate tracks the market value of those holdings, so a roughly 5% jump in SpaceX's share price, combined with gains in Tesla that same day, was enough to push his estimated net worth from just under $1 trillion back above that threshold - an increase of about $30.6 billion in a single trading day.

Is a $300 price target and $4 trillion valuation realistic for SpaceX?

That depends entirely on whether SpaceX's revenue actually grows the way Morgan Stanley's model assumes - from roughly $18.7 billion in 2025 to $319 billion by 2030 and $3.3 trillion by 2040, with most of that later growth coming from AI infrastructure rather than rockets or satellite internet. It's an aggressive, multi-decade growth assumption, and the price target should be understood as a bet on that specific thesis playing out, not a conservative base case.

What is Starship Flight 15 and why does it matter for the stock?

Flight 15 is the next scheduled test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket system, provisionally targeted for no earlier than October 19, following Starship's first successful orbital flight the prior week. A successful flight would reinforce confidence in the hardware underpinning both SpaceX's satellite and potential AI-infrastructure ambitions, while a failure could puncture some of the momentum behind Monday's rally.

Related reading: SpaceX's Nasdaq 100 Inclusion Triggers $15 Billion in Passive Buying, Google Sends AI Chips Into Orbit on a SpaceX Rocket

Sources

This article is an original synthesis and analysis based on the reporting below, not a reproduction of the original articles. Please check the source articles directly for the most current figures.

• Wall Street is getting bullish on SpaceX again ahead of test flights - CNBC
• Musk becomes trillionaire again as SpaceX stock rises - Invezz
• SpaceX Climbs 5% as Musk Renames SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, Morgan Stanley Reiterates $300 Target - 24/7 Wall St.

⚠️ This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Market conditions change constantly - always verify the latest data before making investment decisions.