When SpaceX finally opened its books to public investors in early August, the numbers told a story of a company firing on all cylinders. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 came in at $7.81 billion, comfortably ahead of the $6.93 billion analysts had penciled in, while the per-share loss of 9 cents was far shallower than the 26-cent deficit the Street had braced for. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from $1.008 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Yet the market’s response was anything but celebratory. The stock slipped after the release, and the culprit wasn’t the operational performance — it was the check SpaceX is writing to build its artificial intelligence ambitions. Capital expenditures reached $18.37 billion for the quarter, with a staggering $15.83 billion of that earmarked for AI-related spending. Reuters reported that investor anxiety over that outlay overshadowed what was otherwise a robust set of numbers.
That skepticism isn’t unique to SpaceX in today’s market, but it lands at a delicate moment for the newly listed company. The shares had climbed 21.5 percent since the insider lockup expired just over a week earlier, and the earnings report put a temporary brake on that momentum. Over the past seven trading sessions, however, the stock has still managed a 5.1 percent gain — a sign that the initial jitters over AI spending haven’t derailed the medium-term recovery.
Starlink’s Meteoric Rise
The satellite internet business remains the clearest growth engine. Starlink now counts 12 million subscribers globally, double the figure from a year ago and up 17 percent from the first quarter of 2026. In the United States alone, the Federal Communications Commission’s latest “Section 706” report revealed that Starlink has surpassed 7 million subscribers — a remarkable jump from roughly 2 million at the end of 2025.
The operational constellation now numbers 10,971 satellites, and SpaceX is devoting the lion’s share of its launch capacity to its own network. A Reuters analysis found that roughly 79 percent of Falcon 9 launches are reserved for internal Starlink missions, leaving external customers waiting until 2028. The launch cadence shows no signs of letting up: on a single Tuesday in August, SpaceX lofted 24 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base and another 29 from Cape Canaveral.
That relentless pace continued through the week. The Starlink 10-19 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral on August 11 with 29 V2 Mini Optimized satellites, following a one-day delay, with the Falcon 9 first stage landing successfully on the droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” The next day, Starlink 17-49 departed from Vandenberg, and another Falcon 9 mission was already on the docket for later in the week.
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A Bold Push Into Mobile
The earnings call also carried a strategic surprise that unsettled telecom investors. Gwynne Shotwell said SpaceX intends to use EchoStar spectrum to build a terrestrial mobile network, putting the company in direct competition with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Reuters noted that the move rattled US telecom investors, particularly given the absence of a concrete launch date or commercial rollout details.
On the hardware front, Elon Musk said during the call that the next Starship flight would be attempted in August, pending regulatory approval. That mission would include the first attempt to catch the upper stage on solid ground using the launch tower — a test flight now expected toward the end of the month, subject to final sign-offs from the FAA and FCC.
Beyond Rockets: AI and Semiconductors
SpaceX’s AI ambitions extend well beyond the capex line. Together with Tesla, the company has broken ground on a chip factory called “Terafab” in Grimes County, Texas, designed to produce semiconductors for orbital AI data centers. Meanwhile, the multibillion-dollar acquisition of Anysphere — the developer behind the AI coding assistant Cursor — is nearing final completion.
The stock closed Friday at €120.96, down 1.2 percent on the day but up 5.1 percent for the week and 2.7 percent over the past month. That leaves the shares 38 percent below their 52-week high of €194.46, reached in June, while sitting 33 percent above the 52-week low of €91.04 hit in early August. The 30-day annualized volatility of 93 percent underscores just how turbulent trading in the stock remains.
For investors, the picture is one of multiple parallel growth drivers — a surging Starlink subscriber base, a defense pipeline that continues to fill, and an AI expansion that reaches from semiconductor fabrication to software. The question the market is still wrestling with is whether the scale of that ambition, and its cost, will ultimately prove to be the company’s greatest strength or its most persistent overhang.
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