SpaceX reached new heights today, surpassing the value of Amazon and using its financial heft to scoop up a vibe-coding startup for a tidy $60 billion in stock.

Why it matters: Elon Musk's AI-and-rockets Goliath is somehow still growing, even as skeptics note that its revenue is paltry relative to its stock value.

The big picture: SpaceX — which jumped another 4.8% today — has added roughly $537 billion in market value in just its first two full days of trading.

• That takes its market cap to more than $2.6 trillion — slightly higher than Amazon and more than $1 trillion above Musk's other big venture, a little company called Tesla.

Zoom in: Today's gains occurred alongside the company's long-anticipated decision to exercise a call option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, according to an SEC filing.

• That deal was made more possible via the surge in market value for SpaceX shares — effectively making it more affordable.

State of play: The Cursor acquisition gives SpaceX control of the company's Composer model, an AI tool that acts as a supercharged software engineer and could serve as a counterweight to Anthropic and OpenAI.

• "Cursor is among the fastest-growing assets in enterprise AI, and paying in richly valued stock is a low-friction way to ensure no rival owns it," PitchBook analyst Franco Granda wrote in a report today.

The bottom line: "When your currency is appreciating this fast, locking up a scarce asset with paper is an easy call, almost regardless of whether Composer ever becomes a real frontier contender," Granda added.

GM is strengthening its battle plan, unveiling a collaboration with Lockheed Martin to work together to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and America's readiness for war, Axios' Joann Muller and Colin Demarest write.

Zoom in: The two companies revealed their collaboration today, which came at the urging of the Trump administration, at the Reindustrialize Summit in Detroit.

• Early conversations are focused on how Lockheed can leverage GM's expertise in high-rate manufacturing, digital engineering and supply chain management, Frank St. John, Lockheed's COO, told reporters at a briefing.

What's next: Specific projects for collaboration will be identified in a few weeks, he said.

Go deeper

"The spike resolves with the Strait; the premium resolves with reconstruction, and that looks more like a 2028 story than a 2027 one."

🚙 Rivian, fresh off last week's launch of deliveries of its new R2 SUV, is laying off hundreds of workers, or less than 2% of its workforce, as it looks to narrow losses. (CNBC)

🤝 Goldman Sachs has advised on more than $1 trillion of mergers and acquisitions so far this year, the fastest any bank has ever reached that milestone. (Bloomberg)

Yum Brands says it will sell Pizza Hut for $2.7 billion, with a Connecticut private equity firm buying everything except the mainland China slice of the pizza chain, Axios Pro's Ryan Barwick writes.

Catch up quick: Pizza Hut's comparable sales have declined for 10 straight quarters, per Reuters, representing about 11% of Yum Brand's operating profits.

• Yum, which also owns chains KFC and Taco Bell, said in November it was looking to sell Pizza Hut.

Between the lines: LongRange Capital will pay $1.5 billion for the chain, with another $75 million in possible earnouts.

• 🇨🇳 Yum China will pay about $1.2 billion for Pizza Hut China.

What we're watching: Fast-food dealmaking has picked up as consumers shift toward value dining.

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