SpaceX stock falls 8% as first earnings beat is overshadowed by $18B capex

UPDATED 18:36 EDT / AUGUST 04 2026 AI SpaceX stock falls 8% as first earnings beat is overshadowed by $18B capex by Duncan Riley Shares in Space Exploration Technologies Corp. fell more than 8% in late trading today after the newly public company beat Wall Street on revenue and earnings in its second quarter and disclosed capital spending billions of dollars above what analysts had modeled. It was SpaceX’s first quarterly report since its June initial public offering, the largest on record. For the quarter that ended June 30, SpaceX reported a net loss of nine cents per share on revenue of $7.81 billion, up 92% from $4.07 billion a year earlier. Analysts were expecting a loss of 26 cents per share on revenue of $6.93 billion. On an unadjusted basis, the net loss came to $541 million, narrowing from $1.01 billion, or 34 cents per share, in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 191% to $3.54 billion. Loss from operations was $143 million, against $970 million a year ago. Capital expenditure was the figure that moved the stock. SpaceX spent $18.37 billion in the quarter, more than six times the $2.83 billion it laid out a year earlier and well ahead of the roughly $13 billion analysts had penciled in. The artificial intelligence segment, built on the xAI business SpaceX absorbed in February, accounted for $15.83 billion of it. SpaceX gave no guidance in its earnings release. Connectivity, the segment that houses Starlink, remains the profit engine. Revenue there climbed 66% to $4.29 billion and income from operations rose 79% to $1.66 billion. Starlink ended June with 12 million subscribers, double the count a year earlier and up 1.7 million from March. Average revenue per user held at $66 a month, down from $85. Enterprise and government sales more than doubled, reaching $1.81 billion. SpaceX signed a major agreement with American Airlines Group Inc. during the quarter and activated service on Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, Iberia and Aer Lingus. Starshield, its secure network for government customers, picked up more than $6 billion in multiyear U.S. contracts, mostly from two Space Force awards for low-Earth-orbit communications and sensing constellations. The Federal Communications Commission also approved the transfer of EchoStar Corp. licenses covering 65 MHz of U.S. spectrum. Growth was fastest in AI. Revenue there jumped 247% to $2.56 billion. Cloud services agreements signed during the quarter carry $14.1 billion in contracted sales and delivered $1.6 billion of the segment’s revenue. Compute capacity reached 1.4 gigawatts, up from 0.4 gigawatts a year earlier, as work continued on the Colossus II data center. The segment still lost $1.26 billion at the operating line, though adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $1.15 billion. SpaceX agreed during the quarter to acquire Anysphere Inc., the maker of the Cursor coding tool, for $60 billion, a deal it expects to close in the third quarter. Grok 4.5, its largest model, shipped in July. Space, the original business, is now the smallest of the three segments. Revenue rose 29% to $962 million on 38 launches, 10 of them flown for outside customers. The operating loss widened to $542 million as Starship spending climbed, with research and development in the unit alone reaching $1.08 billion. SpaceX flew Starship V3’s first suborbital mission in May and completed Flight 13 in July, deploying 20 production V3 satellites and relighting a Raptor engine in space. “Revenue growth accelerated across all our business segments and we delivered strong operating leverage, with significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute