SpaceX's blistering start still faces key tests that will determine the stock's true value

The SpaceX initial public offering was, by all accounts, a major success , and it has stayed red hot out of the gate. On Tuesday, its third day of trading, the stock peaked over $225 a share, before closing well off the highs at $201.68. For much of the day, Elon Musk's rocket-and-AI company had a market capitalization larger than Amazon , which is worth $2.65 trillion. They finished the day roughly even. The question to ask now: Has the IPO and early trading revealed the true demand for SpaceX stock, or are we still in the honeymoon period, when it cannot be overvalued and do no wrong, before reality starts to settle in? That's not to say anything about the company itself; only a fool would bet against Musk given his track record at Tesla . What SpaceX has managed to achieve since its founding over two decades ago is nothing short of legendary. The team is literally launching rockets and working on a fully reusable one, dubbed Starship, that could change the economics of the space industry. The company is placing satellites into low Earth orbit to deliver internet to the masses via its Starlink service. And, with its February acquisition of Musk's xAI , the owner of social media site X and the Grok chatbot, SpaceX is also competing with the best AI companies in the world, while it develops plans to build data centers in space. It also announced a $60 billion deal for AI coding startup Cursor on Tuesday. …