Coverage spread: 2 sources — 2 center
Lean ratings via AllSides / Media Bias-Fact-Check. How this works.
Where they agree
- SpaceX’s stock fell sharply (around 9%) after its first-ever earnings report, nearing an all-time low.
- Quarterly AI-related capital spending hit $15.8 billion, well above analyst estimates, driving a sixfold year-over-year increase in capex.
- Revenue and losses actually beat Wall Street estimates, but investors focused on spending growth outpacing revenue growth.
- Musk and SpaceX executives pushed back on concerns, with Musk announcing space-based AI data centers using Nvidia chips and raising his $1 trillion revenue forecast timeline.
Where they differ
- MarketWatch keeps its report brief, framing the stock drop mainly around Morgan Stanley’s $64 billion capex forecast for the year.
- Forbes provides far more granular detail, including exact revenue and loss figures, specific analyst price-target changes from JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, and a direct quote from XTB’s Kathleen Brooks.
- Forbes includes an unrelated aside about a SpaceX rocket fragment crashing into the moon, which MarketWatch omits entirely.
- Forbes highlights the split among analysts (JPMorgan bullish, Wells Fargo more cautious) while MarketWatch’s shorter piece doesn’t detail differing analyst views.
What the earnings report showed
SpaceX released its first-ever earnings report this week, and the numbers sent its stock tumbling. Shares fell as much as 9%, dropping to around $114 and briefly touching $109.23, nearing the company’s all-time low of $104. The company reported quarterly revenue of $7.81 billion, beating Wall Street’s estimate of $6.9 billion, and narrowed its net loss to $541 million from $1 billion a year earlier, with a loss per share of $0.09 versus an expected $0.26 loss. On paper, those figures beat expectations.
What spooked investors was spending. SpaceX said it spent $18.3 billion in the quarter, and $15.8 billion of that went toward AI — well above analyst estimates of $13.2 billion. Capital expenditures for the first half of 2026 totaled $28.5 billion, a sixfold jump from the roughly $7 billion spent in the same period last year. Morgan Stanley now projects SpaceX will spend $64 billion in capital expenditures this year overall.
What the company is telling shareholders
Elon Musk and SpaceX chief financial officer Bret Johnsen used the earnings call to try to calm investor nerves. Johnsen argued that “all capex is not the same,” suggesting AI-related spending shouldn’t be judged by the same standard as other capital costs. Musk went further, announcing plans to build AI data centers in space using Nvidia chips exclusively. He also raised his revenue forecast, now saying SpaceX could top $1 trillion in revenue by 2029 or 2030 — moved up from his earlier target of 2031.
How Wall Street is split
Analysts are divided on whether the spending is a smart bet or a red flag. JPMorgan raised its price target on SpaceX shares to $240 from $225, pointing to what it called “extreme vertical integration” and predicting the AI business alone could generate $100 billion in revenue by 2027 given the fast pace of AI infrastructure buildout and monetization. Wells Fargo took the opposite approach, cutting its price target to $215 from $230. The firm acknowledged SpaceX’s 2027 and 2028 revenue projections look stronger than expected but noted that capital expenditure estimates rose just as much, tempering enthusiasm. Kathleen Brooks, research director at brokerage XTB, told the Wall Street Journal that investors’ central worry is that spending growth is outpacing revenue growth.
Morgan Stanley analysts set a specific line in the sand: if SpaceX shares fall below $100, they wrote last month, it would signal that investors see no value at all in the company’s AI business. Some analysts already assign “zero or negative value” to that side of the business, citing what they call largely uncertain economics around SpaceX’s broader space and connectivity spending.
An unrelated space note
Separately, a stray fragment of a SpaceX rocket that had been drifting in space for roughly a year is believed to have crashed into the moon early Wednesday, according to the BBC. The debris is thought to have struck near the Einstein Crater, on the far side of the moon from the Apollo 11 landing site, in a region that receives sunlight and is visible from Earth. Images confirming the impact had not yet been processed at the time of reporting.
Why the reaction matters
SpaceX’s stock slide echoes a broader tension playing out across the AI industry: companies are pouring enormous sums into AI infrastructure on the promise of future revenue, and investors are increasingly asking how long they’ll have to wait — and whether the payoff will match the spending. For SpaceX, still a private company whose shares trade in more limited markets than public stocks, the divide between bullish analysts betting on rapid AI monetization and cautious ones warning that costs are outrunning revenue captures exactly that debate, now playing out in real time with real dollar figures attached.
Sources
Featured photo: Official SpaceX Photos via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)