SpaceX’s AI spending plans rattled markets on Wednesday after the company’s debut earnings report revealed losses far larger than initial headlines suggested, with the stock sliding 9% as investors absorbed the full scale of the company’s pivot towards artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The headline numbers were striking enough. Revenue for the second quarter nearly doubled year-on-year to $7.8 billion, beating the Wall Street consensus of $6.93 billion, according to CNBC. But total spending ballooned to $18.3 billion, more than six times the prior-year figure, with artificial intelligence absorbing the bulk of that outlay.
The real shock, however, lies in the loss figures. The SpaceX Q2 2026 earnings release filed with the SEC records a quarterly net loss of $541 million, an improvement of $467 million from a net loss of $1.008 billion in Q2 2025, but substantially larger than the $143 million figure that circulated early in the day. That $143 million appears to be the operating loss. The half-year figure is starker still: the SEC filing records an H1 2026 net loss of $4.817 billion, against an H1 2025 net loss of $1.536 billion. These numbers supersede the $2 billion figure quoted elsewhere.
The Numbers Behind SpaceX’s AI Spending Plans
Even with those losses, the underlying operating performance is more nuanced than the sell-off implies. The company’s SpaceX 10-Q filing shows Adjusted EBITDA of $3.538 billion for the quarter, up 191% from $1.214 billion a year earlier. The AI segment alone generated revenue of $2.56 billion in Q2, up 247.5% year-on-year, and delivered positive AI Adjusted EBITDA of $1.146 billion.
SpaceX’s management has set a target of $100 billion in annualised recurring revenue by year-end 2026, according to the Q2 earnings call transcript. Elon Musk said on that call that the company’s data centre capacity, currently 1.4 gigawatts, should reach at least 10 gigawatts next year. He added that SpaceX would likely hit $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
‘Data centres are a trivial problem compared to making reusable rockets,’ Musk said.
The ambition is hard to dismiss. But the company’s own results PDF also shows SpaceX moving aggressively to build out this business before it is fully profitable: in June it struck an agreement to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, and it closed multiple cloud services agreements resulting in $14.1 billion of contracted sales. Bret Johnson, head of finance at SpaceX, said capital spending would continue at a ‘very similar’ level for the remainder of the year.
Starlink Carries the Weight
The one business unit currently shouldering the company is its Connectivity segment. Starlink generated segment revenue of $4.29 billion in the second quarter, up approximately 67% year-on-year, with operating income of $1.7 billion, up 79% year-on-year. The $1.6 billion figure that Musk cited on the investor call refers to operating income, not segment revenue.
Brady Wang of Counterpoint Research described Starlink’s subscription numbers as ‘strong’, while Fabien Yip, an analyst at investment platform IG, said it remained ‘a stretch’ to claim the whole company was being underestimated given that Starlink is the only unit generating an operating profit.
Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, put it plainly: because Musk was going ‘all in’ on data centres, SpaceX ‘could soon resemble an AI infrastructure company with an extraordinary space business attached.’ Britzman added that ‘the financial engine over the next few years will increasingly be AI.’
Wendy Souvannarath, chief executive of Carré Partners, which has invested in SpaceX, told the BBC that ‘every tech giant is spending like this right now’ on AI, and that SpaceX expected its AI investment to pay for itself within a year.
The balance sheet offers some reassurance. SpaceX holds approximately $100 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, with a total backlog of approximately $47.5 billion, per its Q2 results. The company raised $75 billion through its June IPO on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, the largest IPO by proceeds on record, according to Britannica.
The stock opened its first day of trading at $150, touched an intraday high of $176, and has since drifted below its $135 IPO price. As of Tuesday’s close, SPCX had fallen 16% from its opening price. The analyst consensus 12-month price target sits at $223, per Yahoo Finance, with estimates ranging from $62 to $800. That spread tells you something: nobody really knows what this company is worth yet, and Wednesday’s sell-off is less a verdict than a question.
The Q3 Cursor closing will be the next inflection point. If that deal closes on schedule and contracted AI revenue continues to compound, Musk’s trillion-dollar claim shifts from fantasy to forecast. If capital spending stays elevated and the losses widen further, investors will have good reason to wonder whether they are financing the world’s most ambitious infrastructure build or simply underwriting the world’s most expensive pivot.
