The Cost of SpaceX's AI Transformation: From the Most Profitable Aerospace Company to a Capital Black Hole

SpaceX, which is accelerating the largest IPO in history, is facing a structural contradiction that investors cannot ignore. This aerospace company, once known for its capital efficiency, has transformed into a "high-intensity cash-burn mode" after merging with Elon Musk's AI enterprise, xAI.

According to Bloomberg columnist Chris Bryant, SpaceX's business boundaries have expanded from rocket launches to AI R&D, cloud computing, and potential space-based data centers following the merger with xAI. Prospectus data shows that capital expenditures for the full year 2025 exceeded $20 billion, higher than the revenue of $18.7 billion for the same period; capital expenditures in the first quarter of 2026 further climbed to over $10 billion, equivalent to twice the revenue for that quarter. The prospectus also explicitly warns that future capital expenditures will increase "significantly."

As previously reported by Wallstreetcn, SpaceX plans to submit an updated prospectus this Wednesday afternoon, disclosing the target offering price range for the first time and officially launching the IPO pricing process. SpaceX plans to offer less than 5% of its shares, with a total value between $60 billion and $80 billion, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion to $1.8 trillion, approximately more than 90 times last year's revenue.

Analysts point out that as OpenAI and Anthropic are also preparing for listings during the same period, the simultaneous entry of these three high-cash-burn tech companies into the public market will significantly test investors' capital absorption capacity.

Fundamental Shift in Capital Consumption Model After Merging with xAI

SpaceX's previous capital efficiency was its core competitive advantage. According to PitchBook data, before its AI transformation, SpaceX had completed over $9 billion in cumulative venture financing, maximizing the use of limited funds through reusable rocket technology, in-house component development, government contracts, and the profitable Starlink business.

However, the merger with xAI in February this year fundamentally changed this logic. Franco Granda, a senior research analyst at PitchBook, pointed out that SpaceX "was an exceptional company in many respects, but after merging with xAI, it has become unrecognizable, with a spending rate that is concerning." Founded in 2023, xAI has raised over $40 billion in cumulative financing to date and is engaging in direct competition with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Meanwhile, the continued development of the heavy-lift launch vehicle "Starship" is also exacerbating financial pressure. As of the end of March, SpaceX held approximately $24 billion in cash and short-term marketable securities, but at the current spending pace, even hundreds of billions in IPO proceeds would be difficult to sustain for long.

High Investment and Long Cycle: Profitability Prospects Remain Challenging

SpaceX's ambitions go far beyond this. In addition to AI R&D and cloud computing businesses, the company also plans to build its own chip manufacturing factory to reduce reliance on TSMC and Samsung Electronics. It is reported that Tesla, under Musk, will participate in funding this extremely complex project, whose final cost could exceed $100 billion. Meanwhile, SpaceX's debt scale has swollen to approximately $29 billion.

In terms of commercialization, xAI has made some progress. Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month for compute power rental fees, giving SpaceX the dual role of an AI laboratory and a CoreWeave-like cloud service provider. Additionally, the company is exploring the possibility of deploying data centers in space, but the maintenance and upgrade paths for orbital data centers remain unclear.

The prospectus admits that the company plans to "allocate substantial capital to building AI computing infrastructure, expecting to undergo a multi-year investment cycle before these deployments translate into sustained positive AI segment adjusted EBITDA." It is worth noting that this profitability metric itself excludes depreciation and amortization of tangible assets, while the lifespan of chips and satellites is quite limited.

High Valuation Logic Faces Market Test

A target valuation of $1.8 trillion means investors must accept the premise that traditional cash flow and profit metrics are "inapplicable" here. This logic mirrors Tesla's valuation narrative—"the golden dawn seems forever on the horizon," with beautiful visions always remaining out of reach.

From a market environment perspective, even established tech giants are facing pressure. Hyperscale cloud providers like Microsoft and Meta have generally underperformed semiconductor companies in stock price performance due to doubts about the return on investment for data centers—the latter being the most direct beneficiaries of the AI arms race.

Although SpaceX indeed possesses unique strategic assets: its rockets carry more than 80% of the total cargo sent into orbit globally. This dominant position became even more pronounced after the explosion at the launch pad of Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin last week. However, SpaceX's financial performance still lags far behind chip companies with strong pricing power and high profit margins. Before possessing the ability to independently design and manufacture processors, the company still needs to continuously purchase chips from third parties, and the return cycle for numerous investments may lie far in the future.

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are simultaneously vying for access to the public market, competing for the limited capital of the same batch of institutional investors. Theoretically, the one that raises the most funds first will gain the strongest compute power, thereby developing the best AI models and winning the race to "superintelligence." But for investors entering at a $1.8 trillion valuation, the cost and uncertainty of this bet are equally "beyond Earth's orbit."