CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday said SpaceX’s blockbuster debut could pave the way for a new wave of AI-related equity offerings and help create a more constructive backdrop for stocks.

“Never has one initial public offering captivated the minds of Wall Street and perhaps Main Street as much as Elon Musk’s SpaceX,” the “Mad Money” host said.

Elon Musk’s rocket company debuted Friday and finished the session at $161 per share, giving SpaceX a market value of roughly $2.1 trillion. Cramer said the success of the offering could encourage other companies to tap the market soon, particularly AI players such as Anthropic. The startup behind the Claude models confidentially filed for an IPO earlier this month. Additionally, he said companies including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon may decide it’s a good time to sell stock to help fund their AI buildouts — similar to what Google parent Alphabet is doing.

“Bankers work fast these days,” Cramer said, explaining the idea would be to “strike while the iron is hot.”

“I don’t know if they can resist selling stock after seeing how SpaceX played out,” he added.

Cramer also said investors should keep a close eye on developments in the Middle East. While he remains skeptical that peace is fully at hand, a lasting resolution could send oil prices lower and help ease inflation pressures.

“If we get peace, the first thing you have to realize is the process toward lowering inflation will begin with a collapse in the price of oil,” he said.

Cramer said he initially worried the SpaceX offering could overwhelm the market, but now believes its successful debut could help support sentiment and set the stage for a constructive week ahead.

“The success of today’s placement of SpaceX is something to be studied for years,” he said. “It’s a win for the market, and if we get peace, it won’t be stopped.”

With that backdrop, Cramer turned to the shortened trading week ahead.

American Airlines plans to outfit more than 500 of its narrow-body aircraft with Starlink, handing another win to Elon Musk’s SpaceX unit that has made inroads with major carriers for in-flight Wi-Fi.

American was evaluating Starlink and Amazon Leo as recently as March for the service.

The airline announced Tuesday it would install Starlink on about 500 of its narrow-body Airbus planes, like the A321neo, starting early next year. American spokesman said the carrier doesn’t have immediate plans to change providers on its Boeing fleet, which uses a mix of Viasat and Panasonic.

American in January rolled out free in-flight Wi-Fi for members of its frequent flyer program, following United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and others.

Delta in March said it would use Amazon Leo for in-flight Wi-Fi for hundreds of jets starting in 2028. United, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which merged with Hawaiian Airlines in 2024, have selected Starlink.

Carriers are battling for higher-spending customers, including by upgrading once-slow, expensive and clunky in-flight internet to higher speeds. They have also been weighing other revenue streams, like personalized ads for travelers.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is preparing to go public in what’s likely to be a record IPO next month. Its connectivity unit, which includes Starlink, posted revenue of $11.39 billion last year, making up 61% of total sales, SpaceX said in a filing for its initial public offering earlier this month.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday he is growing increasingly concerned about signs of speculative excess in the IPO market.

The “Mad Money” host warned he didn’t want to “end up with another Cerebras,” arguing that the highly anticipated debut of Elon Musk’s SpaceX could fuel another wave of speculative buying.

SpaceX is expected to go public in June and could release its prospectus as soon as next week, CNBC reported Thursday. However, after the blockbuster debut of AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems on Thursday, Cramer said demand for shares of Elon Musk’s rocket company could be even more intense.

Cramer noted that various media reports suggest the offering could value SpaceX — home to Starlink satellite internet, social-media site X, and the Grok chatbot — between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion. While he said he understands investor enthusiasm around Musk and the company’s businesses, he warned the stock could quickly become detached from fundamentals if underwriters release too few shares to the public.

“If SpaceX issues just a sliver of stock…this company could have a $5 trillion valuation,” he said. “SpaceX would create a bubble unto its own,” he said.

Cramer warned that it could be a precedent-setting event for other high-profile artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which are considering public offerings of their own. A wave of massive technology IPOs could begin weighing on the overall market as investors sell existing holdings to raise cash to buy the new issues, Cramer said.

“Remember what I always say,” he said. “The stock market, like any other market, is all about supply and demand. Too much supply and the market breaks down.”

Still, Cramer said the outcome will largely depend on how underwriters structure the deal, urging them to avoid engineering the type of explosive first-day pop that fueled speculative excess during the dot-com era.

“Hope the underwriters act responsibly rather than engineering the pops of a lifetime,” he said. “They did the latter during the dotcom era and that ended horribly.”

Space stocks soared Wednesday following a report that Elon Musk’s SpaceX could file to go public as soon as this week.

Satellite designer AST SpaceMobile and Rocket Lab both jumped about 8%. Rocket maker Firefly Aerospace, which went public in August, climbed 14%. York Space, an aerospace company that held its IPO in January, rose 6% on the news.

According to the Information, the highly anticipated stock market debut for SpaceX could raise over $75 billion. CNBC previously reported that it could be the biggest IPO ever, seeking a $1.75 trillion valuation.

SpaceX acquired Musk’s xAI last month in a deal valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion.

The space sector, which includes companies focused on national defense, has benefited from excitement surrounding SpaceX, President Donald Trump’s plans for a “Golden Dome” defense system and soaring demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The rapid buildout of data centers to support AI has been blamed for rising electricity costs. Sending data centers into space has been proposed as a solution, but faces numerous barriers, including high costs and limited rocket launch availability.

SpaceX currently operates the Starlink constellation, with over 9,500 satellites in orbit. In January, Musk proposed a larger project that would launch 1 million satellites, an effort that’s been staunchly opposed by scientists for environmental threats.

WATCH: SpaceX IPO could be the largest ever

A SpaceX Starship rocket on Wednesday exploded at the Starbase facility in Texas during routine testing in preparation for a launch flight, according to local authorities and live stream footage.

The rocket “experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase” at 11 p.m. local time, SpaceX said on social media, noting “a safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for.”

Local authorities said that Starship “suffered a catastrophic failure and exploded,” with no injuries reported at the time of writing and an investigation is now underway. Live stream footage of Starbase showed the rocket burst into flame, shooting a large fireball into the sky.

Another Starship launch was expected to take place by the end of this month.

It’s been a tempestuous ride for Elon Musk’s mammoth Starship, after three flight launch attempts devolved in fiery glory and air-traffic stopping debris this year to date. Notably, the rocket model has taken off successfully in previous instances, but its vast scale — standing 120 meters (394 feet) tall when factoring in the Super Heavy booster — has raised concerns over its overall reliability and requirements for orbital refueling once in flight.

Yet Musk has clinched his hopes on Starship as the key vehicle for both NASA’s third and fourth Artemis missions — part of a broader plan to return humans to the Moon — due to take place over 2027-2028. The rocket is also set to play a role in launching the Starlab private space station in the transition to commercial space orbiting labs once the International Space Station retires after 2030.

Critically, Starship is also central to Musk’s — and former ally U.S. President Donald Trump’s — broader ambitions to colonize Mars. The rocket is set to ferry Optimus robots to the red planet by the end of 2026, with Musk in March saying, “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”

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The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday that SpaceX’s Starship rocket is grounded until the company and regulator complete an investigation into the midflight failure of the most recent test flight, which forced airlines to divert flights.

The regulator noted in a statement that, while there have been “no reports of public injury,” it has received “reports of public property damage on Turks and Caicos” islands in the Caribbean.

SpaceX must complete the investigation and put in place any required corrective actions before the FAA issues the company with a new license to launch Starship again.

The FAA diverted and delayed dozens of commercial airline flights — including several operated by American Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines — after the Starship rocket exploded and rained down debris minutes after launching on Thursday.

SpaceX said in a statement that it believes a fire in the vehicle led to Starship breaking apart. Videos posted on social media by people in the region showed the rocket detonating in space.

Notably, the FAA says it activated a “Debris Response Area” to warn aircraft of debris falling “outside of the identified closed aircraft hazard areas.”

Before rocket launches, the FAA publishes “Aircraft Hazard Areas” that tell pilots where debris may fall if something goes wrong midlaunch.

SpaceX initially published a statement on its website Thursday that Starship debris fell “into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas,” seemingly contradicting the FAA’s explanation for why a “Debris Response Area” was activated.

As of Friday morning, the latest SpaceX statement did not include that specific language. The company’s website said more broadly that “any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area” after the failure.

The FAA, in response to CNBC’s request for clarification on whether Starship debris landed outside the predefined hazard area, reiterated that its “information is preliminary and subject to change.” SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

SpaceX launched the seventh test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost communication with the upper stage of the rocket that continues on into space.

The company’s webcast showed data stopped transmitting from Starship about nine minutes into the launch.

“We can confirm that we did lose the ship,” SpaceX senior manager of quality systems engineering Kate Tice said.

SpaceX said in a post on X that the ship broke up during its ascent burn and that it would “continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause.” In a later statement, the company said “initial data indicates a fire developed” near the tail end of Starship and destroyed the vehicle.

After the rocket lost communication, social media users posted photos and videos of what appeared to be fireballs in the sky near the Caribbean islands. Starship’s launch trajectory takes it due east from Texas, which means the fireballs are likely debris from the rocket breaking apart and reentering the atmosphere.

In a statement, SpaceX said that Starship debris fell “into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas.” The company establishes these potential risk areas with the Federal Aviation Administration before the launch.

The FAA issued a warning to pilots of a “dangerous area for falling debris of rocket Starship,” according to a notice. Multiple flights above the Caribbean diverted and appeared to be turning around, including commercial and cargo planes of JetBlue, Spirit, and FedEx, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware.

“The FAA briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling. Normal operations have resumed,” the regulator said in a statement.

The airlines did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. As is required for rocket launches, standard air traffic control advisories were in place. Record-breaking demand for both launches and flights means that rockets compete with planes for limited airspace, especially near Florida.

Additionally, the FAA confirmed that it was “assessing” the anomaly that occurred during SpaceX’s Starship flight. The FAA often grounds rockets after midflight failures, requiring that space companies perform a mishap investigation and put in place corrective actions before the regulator issues a new launch license.

The FAA has not received any reports of injuries or property damage from Starship debris, a spokesperson told CNBC.

Starship launched from SpaceX’s private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas, shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET. A few minutes later, the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster returned to land at the launch site, in SpaceX’s second successful “catch” during a flight. It did not catch the booster on the last flight.

There were no people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon Musk’s company was flying 10 “Starlink simulators” in the rocket’s payload bay and planned to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects once in space. This would have been a key test of the rocket’s capabilities, as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites.

While SpaceX didn’t specify what the Starlink simulators were made of, mass simulators are commonly used in rocket vehicle development and are often simple constructions of metal or concrete that weigh roughly the same as the object in question.

Before losing communication, Starship was set to reach space and then travel halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.

As with each previous flight, SpaceX aimed to push development further by assessing additional Starship capabilities, including tests of its heatshield tiles and the trajectory of its intense reentry.

Starship is critical to the company’s plans, even with its $350 billion valuation and already dominant position in the space industry.

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 403 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the full Starship rocket system on six spaceflight tests so far since April 2023, at a steadily increasing cadence.

The Super Heavy booster, which stands 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which launched for the first time in 2022.

Starship itself, at 171 feet tall, has six Raptor engines — three for use while in the Earth’s atmosphere and three for operating in the vacuum of space.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch.

The Starship flying on this launch, tagged as Ship 33, also represents a second-generation version of the vehicle, called “Block 2.”

SpaceX noted that the “significant upgrades” to this vehicle include changes to the flaps on the vehicle’s nose, redesigns of its propulsion system to boost performance, an enhanced flight computer, 30 cameras placed along the vehicle for monitoring the rocket and a reinforced heat shield.

Additionally, the booster for this flight attempt features a reused Raptor engine. That engine flew during the fifth test flight last year.

The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is grounded, pending an incident investigation, after an inflight failure — a rare misfire for the company’s workhorse vehicle.

The mission, known as “Starlink Group 9-3,” launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday evening and was carrying 20 satellites bound for low Earth orbit.

The rocket’s lower first stage, or booster, operated as expected before returning to land. But the rocket’s upper second stage failed to reignite its engine as planned and was destroyed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed.

“Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” Musk wrote in a post on social media. RUD, or “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” is a term SpaceX uses to refer to an explosive or destructive event. The company said in a later update that the engine failure came after a leak of liquid oxygen in the second stage.

Falcon 9 is grounded until the Federal Aviation Administration signs off on SpaceX’s investigation of the incident, the federal regulator confirmed.

“The FAA will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” the agency said in a statement to CNBC.

The Starlink mission was the 69th Falcon 9 launch of the year — with the company averaging a blistering pace of a launch every two to three days in 2024 — but the investigation will likely delay launches planned in the weeks ahead, including two crewed missions: The private Polaris Dawn and NASA’s Crew-9.

SpaceX still deployed the 20 Starlink satellites but noted that the second stage engine failure means the satellites were in “a lower than intended orbit.” In an update Friday afternoon, the company said it made contact with 10 of the satellites in an effort to use the satellites onboard thrusters to climb higher in orbit.

Despite the attempted recovery, SpaceX confirmed that the “enormously high-drag environment” from being in the wrong, lower orbit means the satellites will not be recovered. The 20 satellites will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up.

“They do not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety,” the company wrote in a statement on its website.

Falcon 9 has been on an unrivaled run of success for nearly a decade, chocking up more than 300 consecutive successful orbital launches since its previous inflight failure in June 2015, during the NASA cargo mission CRS-7.

In total, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has launched 354 missions to orbit, with more than 300 of those featuring successful landings and resulting in the reuse of rocket boosters more than 280 times.