SpaceX earnings show $7.8 billion revenue, shares fall late

SpaceX earnings showed $7.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, but heavy AI spending and a $541 million loss weighed on shares.

The company disclosed the figures Tuesday in its first quarterly report since becoming public. Revenue rose 92% from the prior-year quarter, yet investors focused on the cost of building an AI business beside SpaceX’s older launch and satellite-internet operations.

Shares first moved higher after the report, then reversed to a 4% decline in post-market trading. The move extended pressure on a stock that priced at $135 in June, rose above $225 after the listing, and has since traded below its IPO level.

Starlink carries the profit load

Connectivity remained the economic center of the company. SpaceX said the segment, built largely around Starlink, generated $4.3 billion in revenue, up 66% from a year earlier, and was the only unit to report operating profit in the quarter.

Starlink’s subscriber base doubled to 12 million during the period. The service relies on thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit and sells broadband to households, while also pushing into aviation, maritime and other corporate markets.

That matters because the connectivity unit is funding a company whose other ambitions still demand cash. SpaceX reported total capital expenditures of $18.4 billion for the quarter, a level that dwarfed its net loss and framed the earnings release less as a margin story than a capacity-build story.

AI spending dominates the quarter

The AI division is the newest and most expensive part of the business. SpaceX created the unit after its February acquisition of xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence startup, and the company said new cloud service agreements helped drive revenue.

AI revenue rose to $2.6 billion, more than tripling from the comparable quarter last year. The growth came with a sharp cost profile: AI-related capital expenditures reached $15.8 billion, or about 86% of companywide capex.

The company’s own market framing is unusually large. In securities filings, SpaceX estimated its overall addressable market at $28.5 trillion and placed the AI opportunity at about $26.5 trillion, compared with estimates putting the U.S. economy above $30 trillion.

Those figures give investors a reason to underwrite the spending, but they also raise the burden of proof. A company that built its public reputation on rockets and satellite broadband now has to show that cloud and AI infrastructure can convert revenue growth into durable margins.

Launch wins support the core

The space segment is smaller than connectivity and AI by revenue, but it remains central to SpaceX’s strategic position. The unit reported $962 million in quarterly revenue, up 29% from the previous year’s comparable period.

Government launch demand helped anchor that business. SpaceX secured a $1.6 billion Space Force launch order in late July, after earlier national-security satellite awards from the same military branch valued at roughly $6.5 billion.

The company also continued testing Starship, its largest rocket system. Late last month, SpaceX launched another test flight that demonstrated an ability to deploy a larger Starlink satellite model the company calls "V3".

The next test for investors is not whether SpaceX can grow revenue; this report showed it can. The question is whether Starlink’s profits and launch contracts can absorb AI infrastructure spending long enough for the new unit to prove operating leverage.

If AI cloud demand keeps rising, the heavy capex could give SpaceX a third large revenue engine alongside connectivity and launch. If the cost curve stays ahead of monetization, the company’s public-market story will remain tied to cash burn, share volatility and the gap between Musk’s market-size claims and reported earnings.