SpaceX’s AI Boom Couldn’t Hide Its Spending Shock

SpaceX’s AI Boom Couldn’t Hide Its Spending Shock
SpaceX’s first report card as a public company showed a company growing at warp speed—and spending as if the destination were still far beyond the horizon. Investors applauded the sales surge, then punished the bill for chasing Musk’s AI-and-space vision.

For the quarter ended June 30, SpaceX reported $7.81 billion in revenue, up 92% year over year and above expectations. Starlink connectivity remained the largest business at $4.29 billion, while AI revenue rose 247% to $2.56 billion and space brought in $962 million. The market’s initial enthusiasm reversed after the release: shares, already under their June IPO price, fell more than 8% in after-hours trading.

Musk used the call to make the upside case even bigger. He moved his $1 trillion annual-revenue target to 2030, adding that there was “a non-zero chance” it could arrive in 2029. The company’s finance chief, Bret Johnson, argued its resources would support investment in “Starship, Starlink Broadband and Mobile satellites, and our AI platform” while preserving disciplined capital allocation.

But the earnings exposed the central tension: AI is becoming SpaceX’s growth engine before it becomes its profit engine. Another account of the results put AI revenue at $2.6 billion—more than triple the prior year—while saying the unit lost $1.5 billion and capital expenditures reached $18.37 billion. It also reported a narrower overall quarterly loss of $143 million, underscoring differences in how the filings and business lines were read.

Musk then doubled down on infrastructure, saying SpaceX would build “exclusively on Nvidia” because Vera Rubin was “the best architecture.” He echoed that commitment on X, declaring that Nvidia GPUs were exclusive because “they are the best.” The move sharpens the company’s bet on AI compute—including in orbit—but also adds supplier concentration to investors’ concerns over an already lavish expansion plan.

The growth story is undeniable. So is the question now haunting the stock: how much cash will it take to make Musk’s futuristic promises pay?

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