SpaceX's Double-Edged Quarter: Record Revenue Meets a $60 Billion AI Pivot and a Crowded Lock-Up Calendar
Published on 08/20/2026 at 10:31 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The arithmetic of SpaceX's current moment is striking from almost any angle. Revenue in the second quarter climbed 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates of roughly $6.9 billion. Adjusted EBITDA surged 191% to $3.5 billion. And yet the stock closed at €119.66 on Wednesday, down 3.5% on the day, as investors weighed a fresh wave of share supply against the company's increasingly aggressive spending posture.
The tension is not hard to parse. SpaceX is simultaneously executing on multiple fronts — launching rockets at a record pace, absorbing a $60 billion acquisition, and pouring capital into artificial intelligence infrastructure at a scale that has some analysts questioning the payoff timeline. The result is a stock that has gained 10% over the past month but remains 38% below its 52-week high of €194.46, with a 2.4% decline over the past seven sessions.
The Lock-Up Calendar Keeps Getting Fuller
Wednesday's sell-off came ahead of Thursday's release of 319 million previously restricted shares, roughly 7% of the company's locked-up stock. It is the second major unlock since the June 12 initial public offering — early August saw 911.5 million shares, about 20% of restricted holdings, become tradable. That earlier release produced a counterintuitive result: the stock rose 6.1%. Whether history repeats itself is an open question, but the calendar offers little respite. Another approximately 700 million shares are slated for release on September 1, keeping supply-side pressure in focus for weeks to come.
Regulatory filings have also shed light on who sits on the shareholder register. Alphabet holds 551.2 million shares, Fidelity 302.6 million, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund 154.1 million, and Nvidia 123 million — a blue-chip roster that underscores the institutional conviction behind the stock, even as the unlock schedule tests near-term demand.
A $60 Billion Bet on AI Software
The acquisition of Anysphere, maker of the Cursor coding assistant, is now complete. An 8-K filing with the SEC dated August 14 confirms the roughly $60 billion all-stock deal has closed. SpaceX's stated rationale is integrating machine learning more deeply into its aerospace software pipelines — a strategic bet that aligns with the company's broader push into AI, where quarterly revenue jumped 247% to $2.56 billion.
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That growth comes at a cost. Capital expenditures reached $18.4 billion in the quarter, well above the roughly $13 billion analysts had modeled, with $15.8 billion of that directed to the AI segment alone. The stock initially fell about 8% in after-hours trading when those figures were released, reflecting investor unease about the scale of the investment cycle.
Operational Tempo Shows No Signs of Slowing
The launch cadence remains extraordinary. On Saturday, SpaceX sent up two Falcon 9 rockets for Globalstar and the US Space Force just 38.5 minutes apart — a record — bringing the year's Falcon 9 tally to 96. Tuesday's Starlink 17-50 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base marked the 100th flight of 2026, with the Starlink constellation now exceeding 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.
The connectivity business continues to compound. Starlink revenue rose 66% to $4.3 billion, with operating profit of $1.66 billion. Subscriber numbers doubled year over year to 12 million, though average revenue per user slipped from $85 to $66 per month as international expansion and cheaper tiers took hold. The space segment grew 29% to $962 million but posted an operating loss of $542 million.
CFO Bret Johnsen told analysts the company is on track to hit a $100 billion annualized recurring revenue run rate by year-end, and has contracted an additional $6.7 billion in cloud services revenue over the six months starting in October. Elon Musk, meanwhile, has flagged Starship Flight 14 for late August, pending regulatory approval, with plans to deliver functional payloads to orbit and attempt catching the upper stage with the launch tower. Musk's longer-term ambition: at least one flight per day within a year.
Not everything has gone smoothly. A Falcon 9 upper stage that lost control in early August left an 18-meter-wide crater near the Einstein crater on the moon, confirmed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. And Chinese competitor LandSpace successfully recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket, a technological milestone that narrows the gap with SpaceX's reusable architecture.
Analysts Stake Out Extremes
The valuation debate is unusually wide. Argus upgraded SpaceX from Hold to Buy with a $160 price target, citing robust compute capacity growth and rapid payback on AI investments. Bernstein's Doug Harned raised his target to $248 with an Overweight rating, pointing to orbital data centers as a significant long-term opportunity. UBS reaffirmed a Buy with a $210 target, anchoring its thesis on Starlink subscriber growth.
At the other end of the spectrum, Phillip Securities' Glenn Thum maintains a Sell rating with a $75 price target — a 46% discount to the stock's level at the time — expressing doubts about revenue sustainability. The next quarterly results, due November 3, will offer the first test of whether the AI spending spree is translating into the kind of returns that would narrow that gap.
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