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SpaceX Launches Classified Payload for NRO from Cape Canaveral, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon 9 launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on December 9, 2025 (Paul Hennesy/Getty Images)
to the moon

SpaceX is reportedly valued at around $800 billion ahead of slated 2026 IPO, sending Musk’s net worth soaring

The valuation figure’s more than doubled since July, and is now a much larger part of Elon Musk’s wealth than Tesla is.

Recently there’s been a hell of a lot of noise around Elon Musk’s rocket ship and satellite internet company, SpaceX, so much so that employees received an internal email informing them that the business is entering a “regulatory quiet period,” per Bloomberg reporting this morning.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 and has notched impressive firsts in the decades since, including being the first private company to send humans to the International Space Station five years ago. Now, workers are being asked to refrain from talking publicly about plans for a potential blockbuster IPO next year, the company’s growth, and its valuation.

Thanks to a mid-December insider tender offering, we have a good idea of just how much the latter has jumped in recent years.

SpaceX valuation chart 2025
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Back in July of this year, the company was reportedly selling shares and raising money at a $400 billion valuation, a figure that’s doubled in the months since. In that period, SpaceX has continued its domination across the industry with more affordable space launches and exploration ambitions — per Forbes, the company “now launches more payload into orbit than the rest of the world combined.”

All of this is, obviously, pretty huge for Elon Musk, the SpaceX founder, CEO, and richest person on Earth, who also saw one of his other companies, Tesla, close at a record high yesterday for the first time in almost exactly a year. Indeed, his 42% stake in the $800 billion SpaceX business means that the majority of his reported $648 billion net worth — on paper, as we first noted in February — comes from what had once been a bit of a side hustle alongside his booming EV business.

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Joby announces plans to double its air taxi manufacturing to 4 per month by 2027

Air taxi maker Joby Aviation on Wednesday announced that it’s making investments in equipment, facilities, and employees to double its aircraft output — to four per month — by 2027.

The company said it’s working to finalize an alliance with investor Toyota that will support the increase.

The aircraft will be produced in California and Ohio.

Earlier this year, Joby announced that it had received a $250 million investment from Toyota. The automaker had also made a $400 million investment in Joby in 2020.

The aircraft will be produced in California and Ohio.

Earlier this year, Joby announced that it had received a $250 million investment from Toyota. The automaker had also made a $400 million investment in Joby in 2020.

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Amazon in talks to invest upward of $10 billion in OpenAI at a valuation of more than $500 billion, per reports

Amazon is in discussions to invest in OpenAI, according to multiple reports.

The e-commerce and cloud computing giant could put $10 billion or more toward an equity position in the ChatGPT maker at a valuation of more than $500 billion, as first reported by The Information. The two sides are discussing having OpenAI use Amazon’s Trainium chips, and other potential collaborations in e-commerce as a part of this deal, the reports say.

Marvell Technology, which has been involved in the design process for Trainium and told JPMorgan analysts that it’s secured purchase orders for all of calendar year 2026 for these chips, is up about 3% in the premarket session.

What may potentially complicate or limit the extent of any partnership between OpenAI and Amazon is that Microsoft retains Azure API exclusivity for OpenAI’s models for now, thereby curbing Amazon Web Services’ ability to provide that access to its customers. However, non-API products can be served through any cloud company, and OpenAI is able to train models using Amazon’s computing power, based on the terms of its amended agreement with Microsoft announced in October.

Amazon has also invested in Anthropic, the maker of Claude.

CoreWeave and Oracle, two OpenAI-linked stocks that have gotten shellacked lately, were also up about 2% and 1.2%, respectively, in premarket trading.

The thinking here: OpenAI burns a lot of cash, and money is fungible. The privately held company getting its hands on more cash is presumably good news for all its vendors.

However, those gains evaporated and turned to losses after the Financial Times reported that Oracle’s data center partner, Blue Owl, will not fund a planned $10 billion facility in Michigan.

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IonQ and D-Wave Quantum spike as Jefferies initiates coverage with “buy” ratings

Shares of IonQ and D-Wave Quantum are soaring on Tuesday after Jefferies initated coverage on the stocks with buy ratings and price targets of $100 and $45, respectively.

Rigetti Computing, which Jefferies started with a hold rating and $30 price target, is modestly lower. These three quantum computing companies are all down between 40% and 60% from their October all-time highs.

All 13 analysts who cover D-Wave have a buy (or equivalent) rating, while 75% of the dozen on Wall Street who have a rating on IonQ recommend the stock.

While the speculative AI-linked stocks continue to largely get crushed, this pocket of the market also favored by retail traders is showing some signs of life.

Chip Stocks Bubble

Chip stocks are in a bubble, at least by this definition, says analyst

The definition of a “bubble” is notoriously difficult to pin down. But these analysts applied a Harvard academic’s rubric and found the shoe fits for some popular tech stocks.

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