SpaceX's second-quarter revenue rose 92% to $7.81 billion after it began renting spare computing capacity to Anthropic and Google, with AI segment revenue tripling to $2.56 billion. The stock closed at $154.72 on Sept. 22, about 3% above its $150 first-trade open, after a 50% peak-to-trough drawdown in July. Capital spending of $18.37 billion in the quarter ran at 2.35 times revenue, leaving the durability of the rental model unresolved.
Space Exploration Technologies reported second-quarter revenue of $7.81 billion, up 92% from a year earlier, after signing deals to rent spare computing capacity to Anthropic and Google — a business line that did not exist in its first quarter as a public company.
"The rental agreements are a smart way to use infrastructure we already built, not the long-term growth driver," Chief Executive Elon Musk said on the company's Aug. 4 earnings call, according to a transcript published by Investing.com. Musk framed the contracts as evidence the company has multiple levers to pull rather than a permanent change in its revenue mix.
The numbers behind that framing are large. AI segment revenue reached $2.56 billion in the quarter, up 247% from $737 million a year earlier and more than triple the $818 million booked in the first quarter, according to the company's Q2 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AI adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $1.15 billion, against a $609 million loss in the prior quarter. Connectivity, the Starlink business, added $4.29 billion, up 66% as subscribers doubled. Space segment revenue rose 29% to $962 million.
The cost of producing that growth is the part the stock reacted to. Capital expenditure hit $18.37 billion in the quarter, 2.35 times revenue and nearly double the $10.11 billion spent in the first quarter, with $15.83 billion of it inside the AI segment. That works out to $6.18 of capital spending for every $1 of AI revenue recognized. SpaceX shares fell about 8% after hours on the report despite beats on revenue, earnings per share and adjusted EBITDA, and closed at $125.33 on Aug. 4 — roughly 44% below the $225.64 intraday high set June 16.
SpaceX opened at $150 on June 12 and closed at $154.72 on Sept. 22, a gain of about 3% across its first 100 sessions as a public company. The path between those two points was not flat: the stock lost more than half its value from peak to trough in July, bottoming at $107.01 on July 28, before recovering through August and September. Market capitalization stands near $2.1 trillion on 13.18 billion shares outstanding, a valuation that puts the company alongside the largest technology names rather than the aerospace peers it competes with on launch contracts.
Two lockup tranches have already cleared. Up to 911.5 million restricted shares became eligible to sell on Aug. 6, roughly 1.4 times the number sold in the IPO and enough to lift the tradable float from about 4.8% of the company to roughly 11.8%. The stock rose 6% that day. A second tranche on Aug. 20 knocked shares down 4%, a loss they recovered within days. A performance tranche tied to five of 10 sessions closing above roughly $175.50 did not trigger, and the remaining time-based releases run through Dec. 8, with Musk's roughly 6.4 billion shares locked until June 2027.
The staggered schedule has a second effect: it increases SpaceX's index weight, which forces funds tracking the Nasdaq-100, including the Invesco QQQ Trust, to buy shares as the float expands. SpaceX joined the index on July 7.
The comparison that matters for valuation is not Boeing or Lockheed Martin. It is CoreWeave and Nebius, the neocloud operators that sell GPU capacity on contract and are growing revenue at triple-digit rates. SpaceX's AI segment is now doing the same thing at a larger scale, but the market pays a lower multiple for that revenue than for launch and Starlink, because compute rental is a capital-intensive commodity business with contract terms that reset.
Analyst targets reflect that disagreement rather than resolving it. Published 12-month targets run from CFRA's $115 to Raymond James' $800, with Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas at $300, Goldman Sachs at $205 and Oppenheimer's Timothy Horan at $190, according to aggregations compiled by stockanalysis.com and TipRanks. Morningstar publishes a separate $62 fair value estimate that it states is not a price target, based on a probability-weighted discounted cash flow model. The spread between the low and high ends is roughly thirteen-fold on the same stock.
SpaceX remains unprofitable on a GAAP basis, with a net loss of $541 million in the second quarter, narrowed from $1.01 billion a year earlier. Cash and marketable securities totaled $100 billion against a $47.5 billion backlog. Analysts forecast revenue of $108 billion in 2027, which at the current price implies the stock already discounts several years of 45%-plus compound growth.
The next test arrives with third-quarter results, expected between mid-October and December, which will also trigger a lockup tranche of roughly 28% of restricted shares. Investors will be watching two lines in that filing: whether AI segment revenue keeps compounding after the initial Anthropic and Google contracts, and whether capital spending decelerates relative to revenue. If capex stays near $18 billion a quarter without matching revenue, the rental business looks like a burn rate. If it moderates while AI revenue holds, Musk's description of it as a lever rather than a driver becomes the more defensible reading.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
