SpaceX reported second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion in its first earnings report as a public company Tuesday, nearly doubling the year-earlier figure and topping the $6.8 billion Wall Street had forecast. Shares fell nearly 9 percent in after-hours trading anyway, after Chief Executive Elon Musk disclosed capital spending of $18.3 billion, more than six times the year-earlier level and driven mostly by artificial-intelligence infrastructure.

The report echoes the reception Meta Platforms received last week, when Meta shares fell 9 percent after the company raised its 2026 capital-spending target for the second time in three months. It also delivers a difficult debut for a stock that priced its June initial public offering at $135 and has traded below that mark for weeks.

What Starlink brought in

Starlink, the satellite-internet business that is currently the only profitable unit at SpaceX, generated $1.6 billion in second-quarter profit and helped push the company's connectivity division to $4.3 billion in revenue, above the $3.8 billion analysts had expected. Starlink's subscriber count doubled to 12 million from 6 million a year earlier, CBS News reported.

Musk told investors on the earnings call: "It's not out of the question that at some point, Starlink will deliver the majority of the world's internet."

The Starship rocket business booked $962 million in revenue but a $542 million net loss for the quarter, according to BBC News. SpaceX overall lost $143 million in the three months to June and $2 billion during the first half of the year.

The AI turn

Musk also detailed SpaceX's newer business selling AI compute to outside customers, which currently include Google and Anthropic. That unit booked $2.5 billion in revenue against a $1.2 billion loss for the quarter. Musk said SpaceX's compute capacity would rise to at least 10 gigawatts sometime next year, from 1.4 gigawatts available today, through continued data-center construction.

Musk said: "Data centres are a trivial problem compared to making reusable rockets."

Bret Johnson, SpaceX's head of finance, told investors capital spending would continue at a "very similar" level through the rest of the year. Musk added that SpaceX would likely hit $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, a year earlier than he had predicted six weeks ago, and said investors were "underestimating" the company.

The skeptics

Matt Britzman, a senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the company "could soon resemble an AI infrastructure company with an extraordinary space business attached" and that "the financial engine over the next few years will increasingly be AI." Fabien Yip of the trading platform IG said that with the AI unit still losing money, calling the whole company underestimated was "a stretch." Brady Wang of Counterpoint Research said Starlink's subscription numbers were "strong" but noted it remained the only SpaceX unit turning an operating profit.

Wendy Souvannarath, the chief executive of Carré Partners, an investor in SpaceX, told BBC News that "every tech giant is spending like this right now."

What comes next

The stock's slide extends a steady erosion since June. SpaceX shares reached an intraday high of $225.64 that month, according to CBS News, before falling roughly 50 percent to $116.40 in after-hours trading Tuesday.