SpaceX shares fell sharply on Wednesday, August 5, after the company’s first-ever public earnings report revealed a massive surge in artificial intelligence spending that spooked investors.
The company led by Elon Musk started trading on the U.S. stock market in June, reporting quarterly revenue nearly doubled to $7.8 billion from a year earlier. But spending rose to $18.3 billion, marking revenue more than six times the previous year’s figure.
The biggest portion of spending is attributed to AI infrastructure. The shares fell by 9% after the news was announced.
On the whole, SpaceX reported a loss of $143 million in the quarter ended June, and $2 billion in the first half of the year. Investments made in AI constituted 86% of the total expenditure made by the company, which amounted to $15.8 billion in the second quarter itself.
During an investor call, Musk acknowledged that people seemed to be “underestimating” SpaceX. He put emphasis on Starlink, the company’s profitable satellite internet division, which is expected to bring in $1 trillion in revenue by 2030.
He highlighted the explosive growth of SpaceX’s AI compute business, which is providing compute power to Google and Anthropic, among others at present. According to him, the capacity will go up to at least 10 gigawatts next year, increasing from 1.4 gigawatts currently.
Despite Musk’s optimistic views, analysts were cautious. Matt Britzman of Hargreaves Lansdown said that by going “all in” on data centres, Musk was making SpaceX resemble “an AI infrastructure company with a remarkable space business bolted on.” The rocketry business of SpaceX, which forms the main part of the business, incurred a net loss of $542 million on revenues of $962 million.
The share price has fallen steadily from its all-time high of $225 in June, to trade currently around $116. There may be further selling pressure due to the expiry of the lockup period on Thursday, when up to 911.5 million shares could enter the market
2026-08-06 01:11:00
