SpaceX overtakes Amazon to become world's fifth most valuable firm

**Rahul Tandon** (0:01)
SpaceX is now worth more than Amazon.

**Eileen Burbage** (0:03)
They're investors who track SpaceX are doing so, not based on financial fundamentals or performance.

**Peter H. Diamandis** (0:10)
Elon's not driven by money. He's one of the greatest wealth creators. He's creating value.

**Rahul Tandon** (0:16)
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Rahul Tandon, is SpaceX on course to become the most valuable company on the planet? We'll try and answer that question. And we hear from a father who's worked in the AI industry. He's developed a job guide for his 17 year old daughter.
But we're gonna start the program by talking about Elon Musk and SpaceX. We have been focusing a lot on that over the past few days, but it is now valued at over $2.5 trillion, and that's just after three days of public trading. Let's give you some perspective on that. It means that SpaceX is now worth more than Amazon. That makes it, I think, the fifth most valuable company on this planet. Peter H. Diamandis is an entrepreneur in New York, and he's a big fan of Elon Musk.

**Peter H. Diamandis** (1:12)
I think the real story, he's made 5,000 SpaceX employees into millionaires. He's made hundreds of them into centimillionaires, maybe billionaires.
And again, it's launching a brand new capability. Elon's not driven by money. He's one of the greatest wealth creators, not by, you know, by, you know, stealing from people. He's creating value over and over again. I don't think you want to, you know, disrupt this value creation engine that Elon has.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:45)
Let's bring in George Conway, Chairman of Brighton Securities. He is somebody who's creating a lot of wealth, Elon Musk, isn't he?

**George Conway** (1:55)
No question. I mean, I think the increase in market cap at SpaceX over the last few trading days is close to two, I was going to say two billion. I got to get a new vocabulary. Two trillion dollars, just an increase over the last few days. That pace won't continue, but that's value creation.

**Rahul Tandon** (2:14)
It is. We're going to come back to George in a minute, but let's bring in Eileen Burbage, who is a founding partner of the London-based company Passion Capital. She invests in technology companies. She's originally from the US, so is she surprised at SpaceX's current valuation?

**Eileen Burbage** (2:30)
I did think that it was possible because I think that retail investors and other investors who track SpaceX are doing so not based on financial fundamentals or performance, but because they're buying into a really well-marketed opportunity and vision or promise.

**Rahul Tandon** (2:47)
Shall we just talk about the fundamentals? Amazon's revenue last year was $717 billion, net income $78 billion. SpaceX's sales were just $19 billion.
It had a net loss of $5 billion. So those numbers are extraordinarily different, aren't they?

**Eileen Burbage** (3:04)
I do think people are buying because they see it as an opportunity to invest in that vision and the promise of what's to come. They see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They see it as an opportunity to support Elon Musk as an individual and the cult of his personality, but they're not doing it for any financial reasons. The only financial reasons are that they think others will be buying after them as well, which will bring up the share price from when they purchased.

**Rahul Tandon** (3:29)
Which so far is what has happened.

**Eileen Burbage** (3:30)
Has happened, yes, indeed. But I think it might continue to happen, especially because the Nasdaq and Russell Footsie indices have allowed fast entry. So you're going to see within the next couple of weeks, SpaceX added to those indices, which means there will be forced buying. And I do think there will be there for even additional uplift to the price. And then who knows what happens after lockups and overtime.

**Rahul Tandon** (3:53)
Is this a wider trend, do you think? Of course, investors look at fundamentals, but technology is moving so quickly now, that it's not just financial fundamentals that people will look at. It is whether or not a company could be a leading player, a world that could be very different in a few years time.

**Eileen Burbage** (4:11)
Yes, I think that is true. And of course, we're going to see anthropic and open AI come to the public market soon as well, or at least later this year. But I don't think that it necessarily rationalizes exactly what's happening with SpaceX as well. I would say that there is a lot of Elon Musk in the purchase decision of this particular stock, just like Tesla has traded at multiples that are unprecedented for automakers, for example.