SpaceX's AI spending unnerves Wall Street despite promises of quick payoff

Livestream Menu In addressing Wall Street for the first time since SpaceX's IPO, executives tried to make the case that hefty AI investments are paying off within a year. CFO Bret Johnsen said that in the first few weeks of the current quarter, SpaceX contracted an additional $6.7 billion of cloud services revenue "that begins ramping starting in October." Capital expenditures jumped more than sixfold from a year eariler. SPCX The SpaceX headquarters is seen on Monday, Aug. 3, 2026 in Hawthorne, CA. Eric Thayer | Los Angeles Times | After SpaceX spent way more on its AI buildout than analysts expected, executives tried to convince investors on Tuesday that it's all worthwhile, claiming that the company is making its money back within a year. The message didn't resonate, as SpaceX shares sank following the company's first earnings report since its IPO in June. While revenue in the second quarter sailed past estimates, jumping 92% from a year prior, capital expenditures soared over sixfold to $18.4 billion, more than double total sales for the quarter. Well over 80% of SpaceX's capex went towards artificial intelligence, where the company is way behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google when it comes to models and services, and where it's now trying to compete against cloud giants Microsoft, Amazon and Google . The capex figure exceeded the $13.22 billion average analyst analyst estimate, according to FactSet. The stock's 7.5% after-hours dropped mostly wiped out its gains from earlier in the day and left the shares more than 20% below the first trade on June 12. SpaceX stock chart Bret Johnsen, SpaceX's CFO, suggested on the earnings call that investors should start thinking differently about capex because of how quickly it's converting into revenue. "We have been very efficient, to date and I think we'll continue to be," Johnsen said. "On the AI compute side, we're able to deploy capital in such a way that we're getting less than a one-year payback." Days before its record IPO, SpaceX inked a deal with Google that will bring in up to $920 million a month . Prior to that, Anthropic announced a deal that would involve paying up to $1.25 billion a month for three years for compute capacity at SpaceX's Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee. And SpaceX has a separate agreement to provide computing power to Reflection AI for up to $150 million a month. Johnsen said that in the first few weeks of the current quarter, SpaceX contracted $6.7 billion of cloud services revenue "over a six-month period that begins ramping starting in October." Add it up, and the company is on pace to reach $100 billion in annualized recurring revenue , Johnsen said, noting that his numbers assume closure of the $60 billion Cursor acquisition.