In its first quarterly filing as a public company, SpaceX reported sharply higher revenue but remained unprofitable. The aerospace and AI company said quarterly revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, topping expectations, while recording a loss of $541 million as it plowed money into Starlink, spacecraft development and artificial intelligence projects.
Capital spending was heavy: SpaceX disclosed $18.4 billion in capital expenditures for the quarter. On an accompanying earnings call, founder Elon Musk framed the company’s efforts as ambitious and advancing rapidly, saying SpaceX is launching more satellites than the rest of the world combined, building a satellite network whose user base is growing quickly, and preparing a heavy-lift rocket that could transform launch capability. He also reiterated plans to deploy orbiting AI data centers as soon as next year, calling those efforts “not some far future, distant thing.”
Despite the operational momentum, SpaceX’s share price has been volatile since the company completed what was billed as the world’s largest initial public offering in early June. The IPO reportedly raised about $75 billion. Shares began trading at $150, spiked to a mid-June intraday peak of $225.64, but had fallen well below the offer price, closing at $125.33 on Tuesday after the earnings release. More than $1 trillion in market value has been erased since the mid-June high. The stock jumped more than 9% before the results were announced, only to give much of that gain back in after-hours trading.
Analysts say the price swings reflect a market wrestling with how to value a company that is spending heavily on both space infrastructure and AI, and that blends highly speculative long-term projects with existing commercial businesses. There is also short-term selling pressure ahead: a lockup period that has kept many employees and early investors from selling shares is set to expire on Thursday, at which point the publicly tradable float will more than double.
Concerns about valuation are heightened because SpaceX remains in the red: in the first quarter it reported a net loss of nearly $4.3 billion. Some analysts point to competitive challenges in AI as a reason the company has been monetizing spare computing capacity. Cory Johnson, chief market strategist at Epistrophy Capital Research, noted that part of SpaceX’s revenue is coming from renting out data-center capacity that became available because the company’s own AI product, Grok, has not gained traction against rivals. That makes for a useful near-term revenue source, he said, but not a substitute for a leading large language model in the longer term.
Johnson argued that much of the early post-IPO enthusiasm was driven by retail investors buying into Musk’s vision rather than detailed business analysis. He also pointed to the relatively small public float — roughly 5% of total shares — which created a supply-demand imbalance and helped push the price higher initially. Some indexes, including the Nasdaq 100, eased their inclusion rules for the new issue, further amplifying demand.
Kathleen Curlee, a senior research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said the market may be undergoing an adjustment as investors search for a more realistic price for SpaceX stock. She warned that the company’s AI investments are “basically eating up” profits that Starlink might otherwise be generating, and added that the viability of space-based data centers and other AI initiatives remains uncertain.
SpaceX’s broader ambitions remain sweeping: Musk has long spoken of missions to the Moon and Mars, and earlier this year SpaceX acquired xAI as it expanded its AI footprint. The company is also developing the reusable Starship heavy-lift rocket, a program that has faced development delays.
The reaction to SpaceX’s earnings will be watched closely by other large AI enterprises considering public offerings this year. Observers say the episode highlights a lesson for high-profile IPOs: a small float and strong storytelling can lift a stock initially, but over time market participants will demand clearer evidence of durable profitability and competitive advantage.