What $135 (or more) a share buys: a rocket business, Starlink, and a very, very large bet on AI
Why it matters: The largest IPO in history did two things at once: it made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, and it quietly converted a privately held rocket company into a stock that millions of investors may soon own whether they chose to or not. SpaceX isn't asking Wall Street to price its launches or its satellites. It's asking the market to bet that a rocket company is on its way to becoming one of the most valuable AI companies on Earth, and to start paying for that future today.
Nvidia still dominates, but AI demand is lifting the rest of the chip market
Bottom line: Demand for AI infrastructure has been reshaping how investors value chipmakers, and recent results from key suppliers have strengthened the view that compute-intensive workloads will continue to grow. The effect has been evident with CPU vendors as of late. AMD's stock traded at $278 on Thursday, putting its market value at about $454 billion. Intel's rally from early March pushed the stock toward $68 and lifted its market cap to just under $340 billion. Arm's shares, meanwhile, traded close to $165, valuing the company at roughly $174 billion.
Bottom line: Despite Big Tech pouring trillions into AI initiatives and building massive new data centers, the expected returns may never materialize. Analysts warn that the hype far outpaces reality, creating a precarious financial bubble that could have ripple effects across the broader economy.