SpaceX Q2 2026 Earnings: Starlink Profit, AI Capex and the SPCX Drop

Most investors still think of SpaceX as a rocket firm. Its first report as a listed company says otherwise.

Rockets now bring in the least money of the three units. Space made $962 million last quarter. Satellite internet made $4.29 billion. AI made $2.56 billion. That order is the key to the whole report.

SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq on 12 June 2026 under the ticker SPCX. The deal closed on 15 June and raised about $85.7 billion, the largest IPO on record. This quarter was the first real test of the business behind that price tag. SAHI has covered how Indians can invest in SpaceX shares in a separate piece.

Sales nearly doubled. Every unit beat forecasts. The stock still fell.

The Headline Numbers

Sales came in at $7.81 billion, up 92% from $4.07 billion. Analysts had looked for $6.72 billion.

The net loss shrank to $541 million from $1.01 billion a year back. Loss per share was $0.09. The street had feared a loss of $0.26.

Adjusted EBITDA was $3.54 billion, up 191%. The order book stood at $47.5 billion.

Source: SpaceX Q2 2026 results, quarter ended 30 June 2026. SpaceX calls the Starlink unit Connectivity.

Starlink Carries the Company

Starlink is the one business that clearly works.

Sales grew 66% in a year to $4.29 billion. Users doubled to 12 million. Profit rose 79% to $1.66 billion. It was the only unit of the three to make a profit at all.

The real strength sits in deals with firms and states. That line more than doubled, up 108% to $1.81 billion. SpaceX won over $6 billion in multi-year US state contracts for Starshield, its secure satellite network. Most of it came from two Space Force awards.

Locked-in state money is far more stable than home users, who can quit each month. It is quietly turning into the best part of Starlink.

Growth in home users came at a price. Sales per user fell to $66 from $85 a year back, a drop of 22%. But it held flat against the March quarter, so the slide seems to have stopped.

AI Sales Are Real, and Costly

The AI plans looked like theory until this quarter.

AI sales jumped 213% from the March quarter to $2.56 billion. That is up 247% in a year. New cloud deals worth $14.1 billion drove it, and they added $1.6 billion of sales in the quarter alone. Anthropic is one of the firms renting compute at the Colossus data centre.

The cost of that win is the part worth pausing on. AI capex was $15.83 billion in three months, against $749 million a year back. Set that next to $2.56 billion of AI sales. It works out to roughly $6 of capex for each $1 the unit earned. The same race is on in India, as the Meta and Reliance data centre plan shows.

There was some good news. The AI loss shrank 49% from the March quarter to $1.26 billion. Its adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $1.15 billion. Compute power reached 1.4 gigawatts, up from 0.4 a year back.

SpaceX also said it will buy Cursor for $60 billion, with the deal set to close this quarter. It put out Grok 4.5 in July. For a primer on the tech itself, see this piece on AI in trading.

Rockets Grew Sales but Flew Less

Space sales rose 29% in a year to $962 million. More large customer launches drove the gain.

The work itself went backwards. SpaceX flew 38 launches. That is down from 46 a year back and 40 in the March quarter. Analysts had looked for 43. Mass to orbit was 485 tonnes, against 652 a year back and a hoped-for 581.

The tech news was good. Starship Flight 13 flew in July. It put out 20 V3 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and made the softest splash landing yet. But the firm gave no date for when this turns into paid work.

Why the Stock Fell on a Beat

SpaceX beat on sales and on loss per share. SPCX still fell. Two things explain it.

The first is which profit number to trust. That $3.54 billion of adjusted EBITDA leaves out $2.85 billion of depreciation and $831 million of share-based pay. Add those back and the reported loss on the core business was $143 million. SpaceX must keep replacing satellites, rockets and chips. For a firm like that, depreciation is not a small item.

The second is capex. Total capex was $18.37 billion, up from $2.83 billion a year back. Analysts had penciled in about $13.22 billion. Beating sales by about $1 billion while over-spending by about $5 billion is a poor trade in the market's eyes.

SPCX closed 4 August at $125.33, up 9.43% before the results came out. It then fell about 8% after hours. It was quoted near $110.60 before the open on 5 August. A firm can beat forecasts and still see its stock drop, as Samsung showed after its record profit.

The Cash Pile Is Investor Money

SpaceX ended the quarter with $100 billion in cash and near-cash. Where it came from matters more than how big it is.

The business itself made $3.47 billion in the first half of 2026. Capex in the same six months was $28.48 billion. Total cash put into assets was $34.49 billion. The IPO's $85.7 billion and a $25 billion bond sale in June closed the gap.

SpaceX does not yet pay for its own growth. Its shareholders and bond buyers do.

The Price Tag and the 6 August Unlock

Even after the fall, SpaceX is worth close to $1.5 trillion. Analysts expect about $38.9 billion of sales in 2026. That puts the stock near 40 times sales. On four times its June-quarter EBITDA, the figure runs past 100.

A supply shock lands on 6 August 2026. About 911.5 million pre-IPO shares become free to sell, worth close to $116 billion at recent prices. More tranches free up every 15 to 30 days through December. None of that has to do with how well the firm trades, a pattern Indian investors know from IPO lock-in expiries.

The Takeaway

The first report proved SpaceX can grow fast and beat forecasts in every unit. It did not prove the spending behind that growth will pay off by any set date.

Starlink pays for the rest. Until AI or Space carry their own weight, that reliance will keep showing up in the share price. Anyone who watched the 2026 AI swings in Korean stocks will know the shape of it. Sales come first, and the fight over capex comes next.

Sources: SpaceX second quarter 2026 results filed with the US SEC; Nasdaq price data, 4-5 August 2026.