SpaceX reported its first quarterly results since its public listing on Tuesday, showing revenue up 92% and a narrower net loss, but the stock fell as much as 12% at the open as investors focused on the billions the company is pouring into artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
Revenue for the quarter ended June 30 reached $7.814 billion, up 92% from a year earlier and above the $6.9 billion analysts had expected. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from $1.008 billion a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA rose 191% to $3.538 billion, nearly double the roughly $2 billion analysts had modeled.
The headline numbers masked a company in transition. The connectivity business, built around the Starlink satellite network, generated $4.291 billion in revenue, up 66%, with global users doubling to 12 million. The government-facing Starshield unit signed more than $6 billion in long-term contracts. The launch business, the company’s original franchise, contributed $962 million, up 29%.
The swing factor was AI. The company’s AI infrastructure unit posted revenue of $2.561 billion, up 247%, and an operating loss of $1.26 billion, better than the $2.39 billion loss analysts had expected. The unit was profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis, at $1.146 billion. But the scale of the spending, and the promise of more to come, spooked investors who had bought the stock on the expectation that AI profits were close at hand. The company ended the quarter with $100 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and an order backlog of $47.5 billion.
The report was SpaceX’s first as a public company. It listed earlier this summer after years of speculation about when the most valuable private company in the world would open its books, and its stock surged at the debut before pulling back sharply in the weeks that followed, with its market value at one point falling by more than $1 trillion from the peak. The first earnings report was never going to be neutral, and it was not.
The market’s reaction echoed the pattern set by AMD hours earlier: strong results, cautious outlook, falling stock. Investors have spent this earnings season punishing companies whose growth comes with heavy spending attached, and SpaceX’s AI unit, however fast it is growing, is still losing money. The question that decided the stock’s direction was not whether the quarter was good, but whether the AI business is on a path to profit that investors can see.
The rest of the company is in strong shape. Starlink’s user base doubling to 12 million in a year makes it the fastest-growing consumer network in the history of satellite communications, and the revenue per user, while declining, remains far above what rivals can offer. Starshield’s $6 billion in long-term contracts show that governments are willing to pay for secure satellite services, a market that barely existed five years ago. The launch business, built on the Falcon family and the newer Starship, continues to carry the majority of the world’s commercial payloads to orbit.
The AI unit is the wild card. Its revenue is growing at triple-digit rates, and its loss is shrinking faster than expected, but the business still requires capital on a scale that makes the company’s $100 billion cash pile look finite. Analysts said the trajectory will define the stock: if the unit can reach sustained profitability while growth holds, the shares will look cheap; if the spending outruns the revenue, the pullback will have further to go.
For a company whose market value has swung by more than $1 trillion since its debut, the first report card showed growth, a shrinking loss and a war chest. It also showed a market that is no longer willing to fund AI ambition without a visible path to profit. SpaceX will report again in three months, and by then the question will be sharper: is the AI business the next Starlink, or the next cautionary tale?
The results also offer a window into how the company is spending its war chest. Beyond the AI unit, SpaceX has committed to building out its satellite constellation, developing Starship’s next iterations and expanding its Starshield work for governments, and executives have said the company intends to keep investing across all three. The $100 billion cash balance gives it room that few companies on earth possess, and the $47.5 billion backlog provides a revenue floor that makes the investment less risky than it looks.
For the broader market, the report adds a data point to the debate over AI capital spending. The cloud providers have signaled plans to spend hundreds of billions on infrastructure, and SpaceX’s AI unit shows what that spending looks like inside a company that started in rockets: fast growth, shrinking losses, and a long road to the profit that investors say they want. The stock’s reaction, down 12% at the open, suggests the market’s patience has a limit, and the next quarter will test it.
