SpaceX nearly doubled its revenue in its first earnings report since going public, but investors were less impressed by the price of the company's AI ambitions.
April-June revenue reached $7.8 billion, up 92% from $4.1 billion a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street expectations, fueled by Starlink — which now counts 12 million subscribers — and an AI business that grew roughly 250%. Total operating losses narrowed to $143 million from $970 million.
The AI division, which includes xAI, Grok, X and a rapidly expanding data-center operation, generated revenue from compute contracts with Anthropic, Alphabet's Google and Reflection AI. But the capital spending behind it was staggering: more than $18 billion in the quarter, including $15.83 billion on AI infrastructure — up from $749 million a year earlier.
"We're building AI compute capacity at scale faster than anyone else, we believe, and we're significantly improving our AI models," Elon Musk said on the post-earnings call. He promised a $100 billion revenue run-rate by December, a less-than-one-year payback on AI compute, more than two gigawatts of computing capacity this year and close to ten gigawatts by the end of next year, built exclusively on Nvidia hardware.
SpaceX also said it plans to launch at least 1,000 next-generation V3 Starlink satellites within a year and to take on mobile carriers directly — President Gwynne Shotwell said she expects to snatch "quite a few" T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon customers.
Shares fell 7.5% in after-hours trading, and the stock is down 8% since the June IPO that valued the company at about $1.75 trillion. The expiry of the post-IPO lock-up period, starting Thursday, could release another wave of shares onto the market. Analysts note the central question — whether Starlink's profits can bankroll the AI push until it stands on its own — remains open, though AI's operating losses narrowed this quarter.
