Musk's SpaceX eyes boost as it lands in Nasdaq 100

Millions of ordinary investors are set to become indirect owners of SpaceX shares next week when the rocket maker and artificial intelligence company is added to a major stock market index.

Elon Musk’s firm, which last month was listed in New York in the largest stock market flotation in history, is set to join the Nasdaq 100, an index of the biggest companies on the tech-focused US stock exchange, which includes Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft.

Its inclusion – before trading begins on Tuesday – will mean that many tracker funds, which are set up to follow the movements of stock market indices and are seen as more balanced investments than individual companies, will be forced to buy into SpaceX to rebalance their portfolios.

The company’s shares initially surged following their debut on June 12, hitting a record high of $225 four days later and making Musk the world’s first trillionaire due to a large amount of his wealth being tied up in SpaceX stock.

But the tycoon lost this accolade a few days later when the shares fell sharply. They were at $162 on Friday, still 20 per cent above SpaceX’s initial flotation price.

Musk’s backers hope he is regaining his reputation after being tarnished by his stint in Donald Trump’s government.

Last week sales at Musk’s electric car firm Tesla reported record deliveries of 480,126 cars in the second quarter of the year, reversing two years of decline.

The recovery was driven by improving demand in Europe, where Tesla bounced back after a slump last year amid controversy over Musk’s political activities.

There is also mounting speculation that the billionaire will merge Tesla into SpaceX, creating a huge conglomerate covering satellite networks through Musk’s Starlink business to social media with X, formerly known as Twitter.

But the company’s AI intelligence division, known as xAI, is seen as a key growth area even though it lags rivals OpenAI and Anthropic, which are also planning to list on the stock market this year.

Interest in the division was piqued last week after reports emerged that SpaceX had shown investors a prototype handset, said to be slimmer than an iPhone, which would run on a new operating system powered by its AI technology.

It follows reports that Musk had become frustrated over Apple’s control of which apps are listed on its app store and had been mulling launching his own rival smartphone to break the tech giant’s dominance of the market.