SpaceX shares fall after debut earnings report highlights AI spending

In short: SpaceX beat sales expectations in its first earnings report as a public company, but its plan to spend heavily on AI data centers worried investors and the stock fell.

What happened

SpaceX said quarterly revenue was $7.8 billion, above analysts’ estimate of $6.82 billion and up 92 percent from a year earlier. The company also reported a net loss of about $541 million, which was smaller than analysts expected.

Even with those results, SpaceX shares dropped about 10 percent in early trading on Wednesday. Investors reacted to the company’s capital spending, which is money used to build long-term assets like buildings and equipment.

SpaceX reported almost $16 billion in capital spending focused on AI, about double the previous quarter and higher than Wall Street expected. The company said it expects to keep spending at similar levels for at least two more quarters.

Elon Musk told investors SpaceX plans to grow its “computing capacity” from 2 gigawatts by the end of this year to closer to 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027. Computing capacity here is the amount of data center power it can run (like expanding a factory so it can produce more). Musk also said SpaceX will rely exclusively on Nvidia hardware for future infrastructure.

SpaceX’s AI revenue more than tripled from the prior quarter to $2.56 billion, helped by leasing data center space to other AI groups, including Anthropic and Google.

Why it matters

AI services need huge amounts of electricity and specialized computer chips, and that costs a lot upfront. SpaceX’s report shows the company is leaning hard into being a data center provider, not just a rocket and satellite business. For regular people, this can affect everything from internet service and energy demand to how expensive and available AI-powered products become.

Source: Arstechnica