SpaceX's Numbers Tell Two Stories: Record Revenue, Record Spending, and a $600 Bull Case

SpaceX's Q2 revenue jumps 92% but capex soars to $18.4B, spooking retail investors and dragging stock 40% below high.

The arithmetic of SpaceX's post-IPO life is getting harder to square. Revenue is compounding at a pace most companies can only dream of, yet the market's mood has soured, retail investors have turned net sellers, and the stock sits more than 40 percent below its 52-week high. The tension is not hard to locate: capital expenditures that have ballooned into the tens of billions.

Retail investors sold a net $4.5 million worth of SpaceX shares on August 7, according to Vanda Research data cited by Reuters — the first net outflow from individual investors since the company's June IPO. The shift in sentiment followed the release of SpaceX's inaugural quarterly report as a public company, which showed second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion, up 92 percent year over year and comfortably ahead of the $6.8 billion consensus estimate. The bottom line also improved markedly: a net loss of $541 million versus a $4.3 billion loss in the first quarter.

The Capex Conundrum

The problem, as investors see it, is not the top line — it's what it costs to get there. Capital expenditures surged to $18.4 billion in the second quarter, more than six times the year-ago figure, with $15.83 billion of that tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. Bloomberg put first-half 2026 investments at $28.5 billion, more than quadruple the prior-year period, and reported that management has signaled a similarly aggressive spending pace for the next two quarters. That spending trajectory has become the central worry for shareholders, even as the company's AI compute capacity has grown from 0.4 to 1.4 gigawatts, with a target of two gigawatts by year-end.

The market's initial reaction to the earnings print was telling: shares rose 9.4 percent in regular trading, then fell roughly 8 percent in after-hours trade once the capex figures landed. The stock closed Tuesday at €115.50, down 3.62 percent on the day, though it remains up 23.58 percent over the past week. The 30-day annualized volatility of 88 percent underscores just how unsettled the trading has become.

Wall Street's Divergent Views

The analyst community is split on what all this spending will ultimately produce. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas has outlined a bull-case scenario of $600 per share — double the bank's official $300 price target — while Argus Research has upgraded the stock to "Buy" with a $160 target. The average price target across 32 analysts tracked by Morgan Stanley sits at $227, and Morningstar assigns just a 7 percent probability to its own $154 "moonshot" scenario.

The bull thesis rests heavily on the pending $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding platform Cursor. Morgan Stanley projects Cursor will contribute $2.5 billion in incremental revenue this year and $13 billion in 2027, with its annualized revenue run rate climbing from $8 billion by year-end to $33 billion by 2030. The bank notes that more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies already use the software tool. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.

Musk's Accelerated Timelines

Elon Musk has added his own fuel to the debate. He now says SpaceX will hit $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 — a year earlier than previously guided — and has claimed that AI revenue will surpass all other income streams starting in September, with the gap widening significantly in the fourth quarter. His medium-term target is $500 billion in total revenue by 2028. CFO Bret Johnsen, meanwhile, has set a more modest near-term marker: an annualized revenue run rate of $100 billion by year-end, a figure Deutsche Bank called "very achievable."

The AI segment itself grew 247 percent year over year to $2.6 billion in the second quarter, and the loss per share of 9 cents came in well ahead of the 24-cent consensus estimate. The company's Nvidia partnership, which centers on Vera Rubin NVL723 systems, is expected to support growth in both the AI business and Starlink, alongside SpaceX's in-house Starmind AI1 satellite payloads for orbital AI applications. CFO Johnsen has pegged the payback period for new data centers at roughly one year.

A Stock Caught Between Ambition and Execution

The shares closed Tuesday at €115.50, down 3.62 percent on the day but up 23.58 percent over seven days. They remain 40.60 percent below the 52-week high of €194.46. The stock traded below its $135 IPO price continuously from July 16 until early August, when it finally reclaimed that level, according to CNBC.

The retail exodus comes at a moment when institutional enthusiasm for the long-term growth narrative is colliding with the reality of persistent losses and an investment pipeline that shows no sign of slowing. Whether the Cursor acquisition and the AI infrastructure build-out can deliver at the pace management promises — and whether the trillion-dollar revenue target is ambition or arithmetic — will be tested in the quarters ahead. For now, the market is pricing in both the opportunity and the uncertainty, often in the same trading session.