SpaceX stock is on the rise again: What’s behind the rocket and AI company’s October rally?

Shares of SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) are having a good October so far, reaching highs not seen since June, when Elon Musk’s space and AI company made its debut on the Nasdaq.

The stock rose over 18% in the last week, closing Monday at $171.09—higher than its IPO day close of $160.95 for the first time in three months. 

Overall, SpaceX hasn’t had the most successful time on the market, so why the sudden turnaround? 

It comes down to a few things. For starters, last week was promising for SpaceX, with the company launching multiple successful missions.

It was responsible for a crewed NASA mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and launching Google’s homegrown Tensor processing units into space, where the chips will orbit Earth in a capabilities test. 

Morgan Stanley’s vote of confidence

The next boost for SpaceX came on Sunday, courtesy of Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas.

In a note about SpaceX’s stock, Jonas encouraged investors to take advantage of lower SpaceX share prices before the company reaches a few upcoming milestones, Yahoo Finance reports. 

Jonas explained: “We believe future AI product releases, Starship progress, and additional neocloud contracts showing continued pricing around $30-50/watt are all upside-skewed catalysts that can push the stock closer to our $300/share price target.” 

Musk-Trump relationship appears to be cooling off

On Monday, shares of SpaceX closed 7.63% up, growing by over 1.2% more during premarket trading on Tuesday. 

Notably, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also seems to be back on better terms with his—for lack of a better word—frenemy, President Trump.

Last Wednesday, Musk was appointed a co-lead of Project Meridian, the government’s new initiative to understand the “future of warfare.” 

Then, on Sunday, Musk backed up Trump’s recent statement that super intelligence, or SI, sounds better than artificial intelligence. He told a commenter on X that SpaceXAI would be changing to SpaceXSI.