LOS ANGELES, California, August 6, 2026 — This week at Hawthorne-based SpaceX, CEO Elon Musk delivered the first quarterly report card since the company’s switch to public ownership—and the numbers provided more than enough to debate on Wall Street. The company, which released figures Tuesday, reported a quarterly revenue of $7.81 billion for the quarter ended June 30, up 92% from a year earlier and ahead of analyst estimates of about $6.9 billion.
The report was significant for the Southern California rocket and satellite maker which went public on June 12 setting a $135 a share initial offering price in one of the largest U.S. public offerings ever. Shares rose 9.4% during regular hours Tuesday to close at $125.33 ahead of expected results, then fell more than 8% after hours on landing with the full report. It also remains below the price at which it launched in the public markets.
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s net loss narrowed dramatically to $541 million from a substantially larger loss a year ago and topped the roughly $1.9 billion loss some analysts had penciled in ahead of the quarter. In terms of financial segment, growth was broad-based across the three reporting segments — space launch, Starlink connectivity and AI.
Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet division that has matured into the company’s most consistent source of revenue, gained $4.29 billion in sales for a 66% increase over previous year. For the new AI division, which centers around the Grok bot and space-based infrastructure inherited through SpaceX guidance at xAI in February, revenue amounted to $2.56 billion — up 247%. That business now sits at the heart of how investors price the company.
Jay Ritter, who is an IPO expert at the Warrington College of Business of the University of Florida told USA Today, “If SpaceX can develop this aspect of its business, it could be a major contributor to revenues in the next few years along with Starlink and terrestrial data centers.”
There were, of course, parts of the report that were not reassuring to investors in the first half of 2026 capital spending soared to $28.5 billion, more than four times what SpaceX spent over the same stretch last year, as the company races to augment AI compute capacity together with its rocket and satellite programs. The spending is largely responsible for why its shares fell despite beating revenue estimates.
SpaceX chief financial officer Bret Johnsen said on the earnings call with analysts that the company is well on its way to hit $100 billion in annualized recurring revenue by year-end, aided by around $6.7 billion of new cloud-services contracts . This will start ramping up starting in October. “Our CEO Elon Musk said it’s even higher, with investors now able to extrapolate $1 trillion of SpaceX revenue by 2030”, it added.
The background filings: Investors can see through. SpaceX filed its quarterly disclosures as a public company with federal regulators. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database.
In Southern California alone, where SpaceX is the largest private employer in Hawthorne and operates Vandenberg and Starbase launch operations, investors are paying as close attention to its earnings report as any local job’s indicator. The company, along with partners Tesla and Intel, also announced plans to create a massive factory in East Texas that will focus on producing AI chips. It is an announcement that describes as securing its own supply chain and reducing computing costs as demand for AI infrastructure rises.
It will be several quarters before we know whether the AI spending turns out to be worth the hype Musk is selling. In the meantime, SpaceX’s first go-round on the public stage revealed a company rapidly expanding in almost all directions and spending even faster, but still in need of convincing the market that both trends can continue together.
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