Coverage spread: 2 sources — 2 left
Lean ratings via AllSides / Media Bias-Fact-Check. How this works.
Where they agree
- SpaceX reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company on Tuesday, with revenue beating Wall Street forecasts.
- Starlink subscriber growth and connectivity revenue drove much of the beat, and Musk touted Starlink’s potential to deliver most of the world’s internet.
- Despite beating estimates, SpaceX shares fell sharply in after-hours trading, landing below the IPO price.
- The company’s valuation remains above $1 trillion even after losing significant value since its June IPO peak.
Where they differ
- CBS News centers its report on the revenue beat, narrower net loss, and Musk’s Starlink commentary; NBC News centers its report on the surprise surge in AI-related capital spending.
- NBC News reports the specific AI capex figure ($15.8 billion, nearly double the prior quarter) and ties it directly to the stock’s reversal; CBS News does not detail capital expenditure figures.
- NBC News raises investor speculation about a possible SpaceX-Tesla merger and mentions a new Nvidia satellite partnership; CBS News does not mention either.
- CBS News includes analyst commentary on investor skepticism toward long-term promises like Mars missions, sourced to Emarketer and Goldman Sachs; NBC News omits this framing entirely.
What SpaceX reported
SpaceX released its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company on Tuesday, roughly two months after its June initial public offering. The company posted second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion, beating analyst forecasts of $6.8 billion (per FactSet), and narrowed its net loss to $541 million, down from a $1 billion loss in the same quarter last year. All three of SpaceX’s main business lines — Space, Connectivity, and AI — came in ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, according to Vital Knowledge analyst Adam Crisafulli.
The Connectivity unit, anchored by Starlink, remains the company’s biggest revenue source: $4.3 billion for the quarter, above the $3.8 billion analysts expected, as Starlink’s subscriber count doubled year-over-year to 12 million. On a call with analysts, CEO Elon Musk said it’s plausible that “at some point, Starlink will deliver the majority of the world’s internet.” The Starship division brought in $962 million, and the AI unit — which runs the Grok chatbot service through xAI — booked $2.6 billion in revenue.
The AI spending that spooked investors
Despite the revenue beat, investors zeroed in on capital expenditures tied to the AI business. Spending there hit $15.8 billion, well above the $13.09 billion Bloomberg-tracked analysts expected and roughly double the prior quarter’s figure. That AI spending made up the bulk of SpaceX’s total quarterly capital expenditure of $18.4 billion. The company’s overall 2025 results, cited in a regulatory filing, showed $18.7 billion in annual revenue against a net loss of more than $4.9 billion, underscoring how costly the buildout remains even as sales climb.
How the stock reacted
SpaceX shares had already lost nearly half their value since the IPO, falling from an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16 to well below the $135 offer price. On earnings day itself, the stock initially surged as much as 9% during regular trading — helped by news of a new satellite partnership with Nvidia — before reversing sharply after the report landed. Shares fell about 6.5% to 7% in after-hours trading, dropping to roughly $116.40, below the IPO price. Even after the slide, SpaceX’s valuation remains above $1 trillion, keeping it among the world’s most valuable companies, though it has already erased roughly $1 trillion in value since its peak amid investor jitters over AI spending and anticipated sales of stock by company insiders.
Analysts offered mixed reads on investor sentiment. Emarketer’s Gadjo Sevilla told AFP that investors are less interested in long-range promises — like a future Mars mission — than in near-term signs the stock’s value can recover. Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan struck a more favorable tone in a July note, saying SpaceX has a track record of delivering on projects many in the industry once considered implausible.
What else is in play
NBC News reports growing investor speculation that SpaceX could eventually merge with Musk’s other major company, Tesla, a move that would concentrate even more of his business empire under one structure. Separately, CBS News notes that Musk is likely to face continued questions about the testing timeline for Starship, the rocket NASA is counting on for future missions. In an unrelated but coincidental item, CBS News also carried a brief video segment reporting that a SpaceX rocket is expected to strike the moon and leave a crater roughly 16 feet wide, though no further detail on that event was included in the available text.
How the coverage differs
CBS News frames the earnings story mainly around the top-line numbers — revenue beating forecasts, the shrinking net loss, and Starlink’s subscriber growth — and leans on Musk’s own comments about Starlink’s ambitions. NBC News, by contrast, foregrounds the AI capital-spending surge and its role in spooking investors, giving more attention to the after-hours stock reversal, the Nvidia satellite deal, and the Tesla merger speculation. CBS also flags the wider gap between the $135 IPO price and the post-earnings after-hours price, while NBC emphasizes the intraday trading swing — a 9% gain erased into a loss — as the more telling signal of investor anxiety over AI costs.
Why this matters
SpaceX’s IPO in June was the largest in history and briefly made Musk the world’s first paper trillionaire. This earnings report was the first real test of whether the company’s public valuation can be squared with its financials, and the results show a business growing fast on paper — especially through Starlink — while spending enormously and unevenly on AI infrastructure. The volatile stock reaction suggests investors remain unsettled about how quickly that spending will pay off, and about governance questions like potential insider selling and a possible Tesla tie-up.
Sources
Featured photo: NASA Johnson Space Center via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)