SpaceX Targets $300: Morgan Stanley Calls It the Cheapest AI Play

SpaceX (SPCX) closed up 7.6% this week at its highest level since June, and Morgan Stanley isn't being subtle about it: the bank is maintaining an overweight rating with a $300 price target against a current price near $171. That's a 75% implied upside, and the analysts are calling it one of the cheapest ways to play the intersection of space, defense, and the AI economy. Yes, you read that right. SpaceX. Cheap. In a sentence together.

Bloomberg's stock movers coverage highlighted a stacked catalyst calendar for the company. Starship Flight 15 is expected by October 19th, and if you've been following the program, each successful test has historically moved the stock. Layer on top of that some anticipated AI product releases and high-value NeoCloud deals that could meaningfully re-rate the business, and you've got a setup that feels more like a coiled spring than a sleepy aerospace name.

The rebranding angle is also worth watching. Elon Musk announced that SpaceX's AI division will be renamed SpaceX AI, following President Trump's executive order to officially refer to AI as "superintelligence." Whether that's marketing genius or just Elon being Elon, the market clearly liked the vibes, with the Nasdaq up nearly 1% on the same day the news dropped and tech billionaires collectively gaining $845 billion through September 30th, the most ever for any nine-month stretch.

The bull case here is pretty clean: SpaceX sits at the rare crossroads of physical AI infrastructure (Starlink, satellite compute), defense contracting, and consumer broadband, all of which are getting tailwinds from the current policy environment. The White House AI task force, led by Jay Clayton, is deliberately avoiding heavy regulation, which is great news for any company building at this speed.

The bear case? SPCX is not cheap in the traditional sense. It's a private-market-adjacent vehicle, the valuation math depends heavily on Starship commercial success and NeoCloud monetization actually materializing, and a 7.6% single-day move tells you the stock is trading on vibes as much as fundamentals right now. If Starship Flight 15 blows up (literally), this trade reverses fast.

Still, when Morgan Stanley is calling something the cheapest entry into the space and intelligence economy at a 75% discount to fair value, and the catalyst list reads like a hype reel, it's hard to look away. The rocket either lands or it doesn't. The trade is equally binary.