In the second quarter of 2026, SpaceX's (SPCX -1.02%) revenue surged 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, and it narrowed its net loss from $1.01 billion to $541 million. However, its total capex surged more than sixfold year over year, from $2.83 billion to $18.37 billion. It allocated $15.8 billion of that capex to expanding its AI business. Let's see where all that money went.
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What AI investments did SpaceX make?
SpaceX originally operated two main businesses: its Starlink satellite internet services and its rocket launch services. But in Feb. 2026, it acquired xAI -- which owns Grok, X, and its other AI assets -- in an all-stock transaction to form its new AI business. It also acquired the AI start-up Cursor earlier this month. Elon Musk believes its AI revenue will jump from $3.5 billion in 2025 to $700-$750 billion in 2030.
NASDAQ: SPCX
Key Data Points
To sow the seeds for that expansion, SpaceX spent most of its second-quarter capex on Nvidia's (NVDA -1.51%) data center GPUs and other AI accelerators. The rest was used to deploy, acquire, and build more high-power data centers to increase its active capacity from 1.4 GW today to its target of 10 GW by next year.
That would give it a lot more bandwidth to handle its multi-billion-dollar compute hosting contracts with external enterprise clients. However, the expansion of that unprofitable AI business could offset Starlink's profits and keep its bottom line in the red.
