SpaceX stock rose 5.89% to $151.94 on Wednesday morning after the company set September 22 for Starship Flight 14, the rocket’s first attempt to reach orbit.
That pushed its market value to above $2 trillion, up from Tuesday’s stock close of $143.49. Investors read the flight as the moment Starship stops being a test article and starts hauling satellites that earn money.
The 75-minute window opens shortly after 8 a.m. EDT from Starbase in south Texas, pending regulatory approval.
Starship will climb to about 275 kilometers, circle Earth six times and fly for roughly 10 hours before splashing down in the Pacific west of Chile. The Super Heavy booster drops into the Gulf of Mexico, and neither stage will be caught.
🚨JUST INSpaceX is up 5% today after announcing Starship's 14th flight, its first orbital test, is set for September 22.8 politicians including president Donald Trump are holding $SPCX pic.twitter.com/ghn148s8WR
— Insiderwave (@insiderwave) September 16, 2026
The payload is 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first working batch Starship has carried. Three carry cameras to photograph the heat shield after release. All 13 earlier flights, including a weather-delayed July attempt, stayed suborbital.
Smaller rivals got there first. German launcher Isar Aerospace reached orbit on flight two this month.
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest shared her own arithmetic Wednesday. ARK researcher Sam Korus estimates Starlink earns about $19 million a year for every terabit per second of capacity, and that a full Starship load carries 61 Tbps.
Each Starship launch could generate $1 billion in revenue. Elon is aiming for 10,000 flights per year, or $10 trillion in Starship revenues, by 2030. If SpaceX achieves this goal, its $1.75 trillion IPO will be considered, in hindsight, a deep value opportunity! https://t.co/sRyaGM9PBK
— Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) September 16, 2026
Her remarks come as attention shifts to a third business. SpaceX reports Space, Starlink and AI compute as separate segments, and Motley Fool analyst Adam Spatacco argued Wednesday that the AI unit could carry the stock to $3 trillion.
"Not Starship. Not Starlink. This is the part of SpaceX's Business that could Lift it into the $3 Trillion Club."What investors may not fully grasp is that SpaceX is building a 3-headed machine across ▪︎ launch, ▪︎ satellite internet, and ▪︎ AI computing… pic.twitter.com/7b8oR4n6Np
— Brian Basson (@BassonBrain) September 16, 2026
Anthropic pays about $1.25 billion a month for Colossus capacity. Google adds about $920 million a month this fall.
Of 34 analysts tracked by TipRanks, 26 rate the stock a buy. Their average target is $232.07, with a high of $800 and a low of $75.
BeInCrypto laid out the case for buying the dip in early August, when shares sat near $115.
Flight 14 is the next hard test. Ten thousand flights a year works out to 27 a day, a cadence no launch company has come near.