👉 Breaking Down SpaceX ($SPCX)

Hi everyone,

SpaceX has been public for 117 days and the stock has already done a full lap. It priced at $135, ripped above $225 shortly after listing, fell as low as $104.83 after its first earnings report, and has since rallied all the way back to around $172 — nearly 30% above its IPO price. Along the way, Starship completed its first successful orbital flight, and SpaceX is now reportedly looking to raise another $40 billion to fund its growing AI ambitions. It’s a great time to take a real look under the hood.

As a reminder, this specific deep-dive is written by the GRIT team and is not the exclusive work of Head Analyst Austin Hankwitz.

Everyone buying SpaceX thinks they are buying a rocket company. Open the Q2 segment table and the rockets lose money. The Space segment posted a $542M operating loss on $962M of revenue. The profit engine is Starlink, and the fastest-growing profit line in the entire company is renting Nvidia GPUs to Anthropic.

That last part is the story retail is not pricing. The AI segment swung from -$276M to +$1.15B of adjusted EBITDA in twelve months. The swing came from leasing Colossus 1 to Anthropic at $1.25B per month. Starting in October, Google pays another $920M per month. Annualized, those two contracts are worth $26B, which is more than SpaceX's entire 2025 revenue. Both can be cancelled on 90 days' notice.

So the $2T question splits in two. Near term, SpaceX is a Starlink annuity bolted to the most expensive neocloud on the planet. Long term, it is a wager that Starship collapses the cost of mass to orbit and turns low Earth orbit into the next data center. The first half is easier to underwrite than the bears admit. The second half starts getting tested this week.

• Why Now👉an orbital attempt, a new tenant and a share unlock

• The Overview👉one balance sheet, three businesses

• How Do They Win👉owning the cost of mass to orbit

• Business Units👉space, connectivity and AI

• How Do They Make Money👉starlink pays, compute rents, rockets burn

• By The Numbers👉the first half in one table

• Bonus Deep Dive👉the landlord trade inside spacexai

• Risks👉what breaks the story

• Wrapping Up👉a $2T option on starship

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Why Now👉an orbital attempt, a new tenant and a share unlock

Starship Flight 14, September 28. This is the first orbital flight after 13 suborbital tests. The plan calls for about six orbits at roughly 171 miles, 26 Starlink V3 satellites deployed, and a Pacific splashdown about ten hours after liftoff. There is no chopstick catch of either stage this time. Flight 13 in July deployed 20 production V3 satellites, but on a suborbital trajectory. Flight 14 is the first time V3 hardware is meant to stay up and carry traffic. SpaceX slipped the date six days without explanation.

Google goes to full rate, October. Google's lease steps up to $920M per month for about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs after a discounted ramp through September. The contract has teeth: if SpaceX misses committed GPU access by September 30, Google can terminate after a one-month grace period or take reduced capacity at reduced fees. Delivery is a live test this week.

The unlock calendar. More than 700M shares (5.3% of the count) unlocked in September and another ~650M (4.9%) unlock in October. With an IPO float of only about 5%, the September tranche alone roughly doubled tradable supply. The 180-day lock-up for other pre-IPO holders lands around December 9, and Musk plus insiders are locked for 366 days, into June 2027. The stock absorbed September and still ran from $141.50 on August 28 to $152.71 on September 18. The market is choosing to lean into the catalysts.

The Q3 print. This is the first full quarter of Anthropic at full contract rate. The AI line should jump again, and the capex number will again decide the reaction.

The Overview👉one balance sheet, three businesses

SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002, is headquartered at Starbase, Texas, and employs about 22,000 people. The listed entity is a very different animal from the rocket company most investors grew up with. On February 2, 2026, SpaceX absorbed xAI in a deal that valued SpaceX at $1T and xAI at $250B. xAI, which already owned X, was rebranded SpaceXAI in July. On June 12 the combined company listed on Nasdaq at $135 per share, raising about $86B including the overallotment, with only about 5% of shares floated.

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