SpaceX reported its first quarterly results as a public company after the New York close last night.
This is a one-off event: the first time the company has had to lay its numbers out in public, just seven weeks after the IPO closed on 15 June.
What was reported
| Quarter | Year ago | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 7,814 | 4,071 | +92% |
| Loss from operations | (143) | (970) | improved |
| Net loss | (541) | (1,008) | improved |
| Loss per share | $(0.09) | $(0.34) | improved |
| Adjusted EBITDA | 3,538 | 1,214 | +191% |
In millions of dollars
Revenue nearly doubled, and adjusted EBITDA nearly tripled. The net loss narrowed by almost half.
The three segments
This is one company with three completely different businesses, and separating them is the key to reading the report.
| Segment | Revenue | Y/Y | Operating income | Adjusted EBITDA | Capex |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connectivity | 4,291 | +66% | 1,656 | 2,597 | 1,367 |
| AI | 2,561 | +247% | (1,257) | 1,146 | 15,828 |
| Space | 962 | +29% | (542) | (205) | 1,174 |
| Total | 7,814 | +92% | (143) | 3,538 | 18,369 |
In millions of dollars
The structure shows up immediately: one segment earns, two lose, and one of them absorbs nearly all the investment.
The number that dominates the report
$18.4 billion of capex in one quarter
Capital expenditure for the quarter came to $18.369 billion.
That is 6.5x the year-ago quarter, when it was $2.825 billion.
And it is 2.35x total revenue for the quarter. The company is investing more than twice what it sells.
And of that, $15.828 billion - 86% - is the AI segment alone, against just $749 million in the year-ago quarter. 21x within a year.
For the half year: $28.476 billion of capex, of which $23.551 billion in AI.
That also explains the investing cash flow: minus $34.487 billion over six months, against operating cash flow of just $3.466 billion. The gap is covered by the IPO money.
Connectivity is the engine that pays
Starlink is the business actually generating the profit.
Revenue of $4.291 billion, up 66%, and operating income of $1.656 billion - up 79%. The segment's adjusted EBITDA: $2.597 billion.
And the operating figure: 12.0 million Starlink subscribers at quarter end - double the 6.0 million a year ago, and up 1.7 million in the quarter alone.
Within the segment, the split is interesting:
- Consumer: $2.485 billion, up 44%
- Enterprise and government: $1.806 billion, up 108% - a doubling
And the company was awarded over $6 billion in multi-year U.S. government contracts for Starshield, its secure satellite network, primarily from two major Space Force contracts.
But there is a line here that weakened, and it deserves attention
Starlink average revenue per user fell to $66 a month, from $85 a year ago.
That is a 22% decline.
So the subscriber count doubled, but each subscriber brings in less. That is logical when expanding into developing markets and cheaper price tiers - but it means revenue growth depends on continuing to add subscribers, rather than on deepening revenue from existing ones.
ARPU was flat against the prior quarter, also $66 - so the decline has stabilised, at least for now.
AI: the first time it earns, under one definition
The AI segment grew 3.5x: revenue of $2.561 billion against $737 million a year ago - up 247%.
And for the first time, the segment's adjusted EBITDA is positive: $1.146 billion, against minus $276 million a year ago and minus $609 million in the prior quarter.
What drove it is explicit in the report: Cloud Services Agreements totalling $14.1 billion in contracted sales, which contributed $1.6 billion of AI infrastructure revenue in this quarter alone.
And the compute: 1.4 GW of nameplate capacity at quarter end, against 1.0 GW in the prior quarter and 0.4 GW a year ago - with the continued build-out of Colossus II.
But the second half has to be said: the segment's operating loss is still $1.257 billion. Adjusted EBITDA is positive only after stripping out $1.885 billion of depreciation and amortisation - and on an investment base growing at this rate, that depreciation will only get larger.
And the second line that weakened
Advertising revenue within the AI segment fell to $367 million, from $426 million a year ago.
A decline of 14%.
So inside a segment that grew 247%, there is a component contracting. All of the growth comes from "AI solutions and infrastructure" - which leapt from $311 million to $2,194 million - while the advertising business retreated.
Space: the heavy investment, and the widening loss
The Space segment brought in $962 million, up 29% year over year and 55% from the prior quarter - and lost $542 million at the operating line, against a $369 million loss a year ago.
The reason is explicit in the report: R&D rose to $1.076 billion from $693 million, on accelerated Starship investment.
The operating data: 38 launches in the quarter, of which 10 for external customers and 28 internal. Over six months: 78 launches and 1,041 metric tons to orbit - most of it allocated to deploying the Starlink constellation.
And two Starship V3 flights: Flight 12 in May, the first suborbital mission, which achieved a precision landing of the upper stage; and Flight 13 in July, after quarter end, which deployed 20 production V3 satellites, demonstrated an in-space Raptor relight and executed the softest splashdown yet.
The company states it believes Starship will reduce the cost to orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average. That is a company statement about a goal, not a reported figure.
The balance sheet after the IPO
The IPO closed on 15 June: 638,888,888 Class A shares, for net proceeds of approximately $85.7 billion. Trading began on 12 June on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX.
And on 26 June a $25 billion inaugural investment-grade bond issuance closed, across five tranches maturing between 2031 and 2056, at a weighted average interest rate of 5.855%.
| 30 Jun 2026 | 31 Dec 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cash and cash equivalents | 93,522 | 24,747 |
| Marketable securities | 6,487 | - |
| Total assets | 192,770 | 92,079 |
| Property, plant and equipment, net | 65,736 | 42,602 |
| Debt and finance leases | 39,364 | 22,896 |
| Total shareholders' equity | 127,224 | 2,573 |
In millions of dollars
Roughly $100 billion in cash and marketable securities, and equity jumped from $2.6 billion to $127.2 billion - mainly from the conversion of preferred stock and the IPO proceeds.
And the backlog, per company management: $47.5 billion.
What to keep in proportion
Four points
First, this is still a loss-making company. A $541 million loss in the quarter, and a $4.817 billion loss over six months - of which $5.488 billion is attributable to shareholders.
Second, the pace of investment. $18.4 billion in a quarter on $7.8 billion of revenue is an enormous bet on future demand. If demand for compute does not materialise at the expected rate, the assets have already been built.
Third, related-party debt of $13.3 billion - $2.0 billion current and $11.3 billion long-term. This is a line worth following in coming reports.
And fourth, the $60 billion acquisition of Cursor has not closed. The company expects to complete it in the third quarter. Until then it is an announcement, not a transaction.
And the connection to this week's chain
This report completes a picture that started forming yesterday.
Caterpillar reported that its power generation sales are rising because of data centers. Cipher builds the structures and leases them. Tower makes the optical component running inside.
And SpaceX is the customer. $15.8 billion of investment in a single quarter, 1.4 GW of compute, and Caterpillar's orders, Cipher's buildings and Tower's components are precisely what money like that buys.
It is the same chain, and this week almost all of it reported within 48 hours.
My Angle
A personal opinion of Ilan Abramov - not advice, not a recommendation
This report is hard to read with the usual tools, and I want to explain why.
An ordinary company is measured by the ratio between profit and investment. Here the investment is 2.35x total revenue. There is no ratio you can derive immediate meaning from - this is a company in a building phase, not a producing one.
What you can check is whether there is one business already working. And there is. Starlink brought in $4.3 billion in the quarter and earned $1.7 billion at the operating line. That is a mature, profitable business, and it is the one effectively funding the rest.
And two points I mark for myself precisely because they are not in the headlines.
The first is Starlink ARPU - $66 against $85. The subscriber count doubled and that is impressive, but growth arriving through lower pricing is growth that needs ever more subscribers to continue. Worth watching whether that number stabilises or keeps falling.
The second is advertising falling to $367 million from $426 million. Inside a segment that grew 247%, there is a component contracting - a reminder that the growth here belongs to one specific business, compute infrastructure, and not to everything under the heading.
And what I cannot assess, and I say so explicitly: whether $18.4 billion in a quarter is the right investment. The answer depends on demand for compute three years from now, and that is not something I know.
