SpaceX (SPCX) shares jumped 11% on Wednesday as of 3:02 p.m. ET, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 0.3% gain and the Nasdaq Composite’s 0.6% rise. The catalyst: a recording of an all-hands meeting in which CEO Elon Musk told employees that AI revenue will surpass all other SpaceX revenue as early as September.
“Our AI revenue — not probably, definitely — will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September, like next month,” Musk said in the recording. He described AI as “an extremely important part of SpaceX’s future.”
The remarks underscore how rapidly SpaceX is shifting its center of gravity from rocket launches and Starlink satellite internet toward AI computing. Musk also laid out a target of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity by the end of next year. At an estimated $30 to $50 per watt, that capacity would translate into annual AI revenue of $300 billion to $500 billion by 2028.
Second-quarter results show the pivot is already underway. Total revenue reached $7.81 billion, up 92% year over year. The AI segment contributed about $2.56 billion, while the connectivity business, including Starlink, and the space business, including rockets, together generated $5.25 billion. AI revenue grew 248% year over year, well above the company’s overall pace.
For Musk’s September forecast to come true, the AI segment would need to more than double within a single quarter. That is not entirely out of reach given large compute contracts already signed with Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google. Goldman Sachs has modeled approximately $15.6 billion in AI revenue for all of 2026.
SpaceX built its reputation on rockets and Starlink, which still accounted for more than 67% of second-quarter revenue. But in February, the company acquired xAI, Musk’s AI venture, in an all-stock transaction valued at $250 billion. The deal brought Grok, xAI’s large language model, and the Colossus supercomputing facilities, which hold more than one million Nvidia H100 GPU equivalents.
Since then, SpaceX has signed several large compute deals. Anthropic is paying $1.25 billion per month to rent capacity equivalent to roughly 325,000 Nvidia GPUs. A separate agreement with Google is worth $920 million per month. If both contracts are fully executed, they would generate about $26 billion in annual revenue.
The AI roadmap is ambitious, but it comes with serious execution risks.
Capital spending is enormous. SpaceX disclosed AI-related spending of more than $25 billion last quarter. Adding more than 8 gigawatts of capacity within 18 months would require significantly more investment. Some analysts see a sizable gap between required spending and expected revenue before 2027, which could force the company to seek outside funding.
The contracts themselves are also less secure than they appear. Existing compute lease agreements allow either party to exit with just 90 days’ notice. That leaves SpaceX exposed to the possibility of spending heavily on infrastructure only to lose the customers it built for.
Power and chip supply are additional constraints. SpaceX’s Colossus 1 and 2 data centers currently rely on methane-burning gas turbines, which have drawn strong environmental opposition. The additional capacity would also require a very large share of Nvidia’s chip output over the next several quarters.
SpaceX shares have fallen 41% since hitting an all-time high of about $226 in mid-June. The stock now trades at roughly 61 times sales, down sharply from 116 times in June but still far above the S&P 500’s average of about 3.8 times.
Analysts expect SpaceX to keep growing revenue rapidly over the next five years, but demand for AI infrastructure will not stay this hot forever. Major customers are already developing their own chips, and rising competition could compress growth and margins across the industry. For long-term investors, the current valuation may warrant waiting for more clarity.
The question now is whether SpaceX’s AI story can support a $1.8 trillion market value when rockets and Starlink are no longer the main narrative. The market will answer with real money.
