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SpaceX has delivered its first-ever quarterly business report, which showed revenue nearly doubled but its spending skyrocketed.
The company, run by Elon Musk, builds space rockets and Starlink internet satellites and owns the social media platform X. It began trading on the US stock market in June.
SpaceX said its revenue had grown 92% to $7.8bn (£5.8bn) compared with a year ago, but its spending was up more than 550% to $18.3bn, on top of a net loss of $2bn during the first six months of the year.
Its stock fell nearly 9% in after-hours trading. Musk said during a call with financial analysts and investors afterwards that people seemed to be "underestimating" SpaceX.
He cites Starlink, the one part of the company that is currently making a profit, bringing in $1.6bn in the second quarter. Musk said he expects that business to grow exponentially in the coming years.
"It's not out of the question that, at some point, Starlink will operate most of the world's internet," Musk said.
He also spoke of an expected and rapid growth of SpaceX's emerging line of business selling compute power needed for artificial intelligence (AI) projects to other companies, which currently include Google and Anthropic.
Although SpaceX currently has 1.4 gigawatts of such compute power ready to use, Musk said that sometime next year that capacity should hit at least 10 gigawatts through its ongoing development of data centres.
Musk said during the call: "Data centres are a trivial problem compared to making reusable rockets."
Making rockets is SpaceX's core business, but the company's space segment showed a $542m net loss against $962m in revenue for the second quarter.
SpaceX's AI business also lost $1.2bn during the quarter, on revenue of $2.5bn.
Bret Johnson, head of finance for SpaceX, said during the call that the company's capital spending would continue at a "very similar" level for the rest of the year.
Nevertheless, Musk said that SpaceX would likely hit $1tn in revenue by 2030, a year earlier than he thought just six weeks ago.
Despite this optimism, shares of SpaceX fell by more than 7% in after hours trading on Tuesday, wiping out gains made during the day.
Tech analyst David Nicholson said SpaceX's expenses did not come as a surprise and that he views the stock as a investment for the future - not something that can be "rationalised on the fundamentals in the near-term."
He added that he plans to invest in the company soon, crediting its long-term vision and growing confidence in the technology being developed at Musk's electric car firm, Tesla.
"Consider it an emotional investment in something I want to be part of," said Nicholson from The Futurum Group, a market research firm.
Responding to Musk's comment that investors were "underestimating" the firm, Brady Wang from Counterpoint Research said the subscription numbers for Starlink are "strong", but it is the only SpaceX business unit making an operating profit.
The firm's AI business is still losing money as spending rises, so it is "a stretch" to say the whole company is being underestimated, said Fabien Yip, an analyst from investment platform IG.
Controversies around Musk's politics have moved the needle for some investors before and remains a "live risk" for SpaceX too, she added.
SpaceX has struggled to hold on to investor enthusiasm despite making history with the largest-ever public listing and then briefly eclipsing the market valuation of established titans like Microsoft and Amazon.
Shares of the space technology company have steadily drifted down in price since reaching an on-the-day high of $176 in June.
It has been trading lower than its original $135 per share debut price for the last several weeks.
Facts Only
SpaceX began trading on the US stock market in June.
Quarterly revenue increased 92% to $7.8bn.
Quarterly spending increased more than 550% to $18.3bn.
A net loss of $2bn occurred during the first six months of the year.
Starlink generated $1.6bn in the second quarter.
The space segment reported $962m in revenue and a $542m net loss for the second quarter.
The AI business reported $2.5bn in revenue and a $1.2bn loss during the quarter.
Current AI compute power capacity is 1.4 gigawatts.
SpaceX shares reached a high of $176 in June and debuted at $135.
Stock prices fell over 7% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
Executive Summary
SpaceX has released its first quarterly business report, revealing a period of aggressive expansion characterized by rapidly growing revenues and exponentially higher spending. While total revenue grew by 92% to $7.8bn, costs surged by over 550% to $18.3bn, contributing to a $2bn net loss over the first half of the year. The company's financial health is currently split: Starlink is the sole profitable unit, while the core space segment and the emerging AI compute business continue to operate at a loss.
Market reaction has been volatile. Shares have declined from their June peak and are currently trading below the initial debut price. Elon Musk maintains an optimistic outlook, projecting $1tn in revenue by 2030 and emphasizing the scalability of AI data centers. However, analysts are divided. Some view the current losses as a necessary "emotional investment" in long-term technological vision, while others argue that the heavy losses in the AI sector and the reliance on a single profitable business unit suggest the company may be overvalued.
Full Take
The strongest version of this narrative is that SpaceX is executing a high-stakes "blitzscaling" strategy, prioritizing infrastructure dominance in satellite internet and AI compute over short-term profitability. By absorbing massive losses now to build 10 gigawatts of capacity, the company is attempting to create a moat that would be impossible for competitors to bridge later.
The pattern here is the tension between "fundamental" valuation and "visionary" valuation. The market is attempting to apply traditional accounting—where a 550% increase in spending against a $2bn net loss is a red flag—while the leadership is pushing a narrative of inevitable exponential growth. This creates a cognitive gap where the stock price becomes a proxy for faith in Elon Musk’s personal track record rather than the current balance sheet.
Rooted in the paradigm of "disruptive innovation," the unstated assumption is that the technical difficulty of reusable rockets serves as a proxy for the ease of scaling data centers. This is a significant leap in logic, as the challenges of energy procurement and chip acquisition for AI are distinct from aerospace engineering.
The human agency implication is the concentration of critical global infrastructure—internet and AI compute—under a single private entity. If the $1tn revenue goal is met, the second-order consequence is a level of systemic influence that transcends traditional corporate power.
Patterns detected: none
Counterstrike Scan: A coordinated influence campaign would likely use "The Visionary" playbook, suppressing the loss figures and amplifying the 2030 revenue targets to create FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) among retail investors. This content does not match that pattern, as it provides specific loss data and includes critical analyst perspectives.
Bridge Questions:
1. If Starlink is the only profitable unit, what happens to the company's stability if a competitor disrupts the satellite internet market?
2. How does the ability to build rockets translate to the ability to manage the energy and cooling requirements of 10-gigawatt data centers?
3. To what extent is the stock price reflecting the technology of SpaceX versus the perceived brand equity of its CEO?