SpaceX Shares Climb 6% as Starship Nears Orbital Flight

SpaceX shares gained 5.89% to trade at $151.94 on Wednesday morning, following the company's announcement that Starship Flight 14 — the rocket's first orbital attempt — is set for September 22.

The move lifted the company's market capitalisation above $2 trillion, compared with Tuesday's closing price of $143.49. Investors view the upcoming flight as the point where Starship transitions from a test vehicle to a revenue-generating satellite launcher.

What SpaceX Has Planned for Starship Flight 14

A 75-minute launch window opens shortly after 8 a.m. EDT from Starbase in south Texas, subject to regulatory clearance.

Starship is scheduled to reach an altitude of roughly 275 kilometres, complete six orbits around Earth and fly for about 10 hours before landing in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. The Super Heavy booster will descend into the Gulf of Mexico, with no attempt to recover either stage.

The payload consists of 26 Starlink V3 satellites, marking the first operational batch carried by Starship. Three of those satellites have cameras to capture images of the heat shield after deployment. All 13 previous flights, including a July attempt delayed by weather, remained suborbital.

Smaller competitors have already achieved orbit. German launch firm Isar Aerospace reached orbit on its second flight earlier this month.

Why Investors Are Pricing In a $3 Trillion SpaceX

ARK Invest's Cathie Wood shared her own valuation calculations on Wednesday. ARK researcher Sam Korus estimates that Starlink generates about $19 million annually per terabit per second of capacity, and a fully loaded Starship carries 61 Tbps.

Her comments come as market attention shifts toward a third business line. SpaceX reports its operations under three segments: Space, Starlink and AI compute. Motley Fool analyst Adam Spatacco argued on Wednesday that the AI unit could push the stock's valuation to $3 trillion.

Anthropic pays roughly $1.25 billion per month for access to Colossus capacity. Google is adding about $920 million per month this autumn.

Among 34 analysts tracked by TipRanks, 26 rate the stock a buy. The average price target stands at $232.07, with a high of $800 and a low of $75.

Flight 14 represents the next major challenge. Achieving 10,000 flights per year would require 27 launches per day — a pace no launch company has ever approached.