A charismatic founder with near-obsessive conviction, a business that bleeds money, and a stock price based on a wildly optimistic valuation.
In 1997, Jeff Bezos took Amazon public at a price of $18 per share at a $438 million valuation. The online bookseller’s stock would then crater 90% after the dot-com bubble burst, before flourishing into a $2.6 trillion conglomerate that raked in $77.7 billion last year.
Enter SpaceX in 2026.
Founded by Elon Musk, the company lost $4.9 billion last year, and went public at $135 a share in June, with a valuation that quickly rose to a sky-high $2 trillion.
The two mega-cap companies are primarily known for businesses that have little in common, with Amazon dominating the online retail business while SpaceX has become the world’s leading rocket maker. But look a little closer, and the two companies have strikingly similar silhouettes which seem likely to bump up against each other ever more frequently as they compete on the public market stage.
