SpaceX Soars 13% After Analyst Upgrade Says AI Spending Could Pay Back in Under a Year

SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) shares jumped roughly 13% Friday after Argus Research turned bullish on the economics of the company’s massive artificial intelligence buildout.

Argus analyst Steven Silver upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold with a $160 price target, saying the firm is “encouraged” by the rapid payback on SpaceX’s AI investments.

The call echoes CFO Bret Johnsen, who said on Tuesday’s earnings call the company is “getting less than a one-year payback” on AI compute spending.

Why The Upgrade Matters

Just two days earlier, investors punished SpaceX after its first earnings report as a public company revealed roughly $18.4 billion of second-quarter capital expenditures, with about $15.8 billion tied to AI infrastructure.

The debate now appears to be shifting from how much SpaceX is spending to how quickly that spending may generate returns.

Wall Street Rethinks The Same Numbers

Argus’s rethink isn’t based on new company disclosures. The figures underpinning its upgrade were released Tuesday.

SpaceX reported signing $14.1 billion of new cloud contracts in the second quarter, and Johnsen said on the call it signed another $6.7 billion in the opening weeks of the third. The entire company’s second-quarter revenue was $7.8 billion.

AI segment revenue jumped 247% year over year to approximately $2.6 billion, driven primarily by the new cloud agreements rather than SpaceX’s Grok models. The segment still posted a roughly $1.3 billion operating loss, though adjusted EBITDA turned positive for the first time.

The rally also comes a day after roughly 911.5 million previously locked-up shares became eligible for sale. Despite fears that the additional supply could pressure the stock, SpaceX rose Thursday, with more than 255 million shares changing hands, according to Bloomberg.

Traders Don’t Expect Musk To Win The Model Race

Polymarket traders give Elon Musk’s xAI just a 3% chance of having the best AI model at year-end, in a market with more than $550,000 in trading volume. Anthropic leads at 68%, ahead of OpenAI at 13% and Google at 8%.

SpaceX’s disclosed compute customers include Google and Anthropic, meaning the labs ranked ahead of Grok are also paying SpaceX for computing power.

Prediction markets don’t expect Musk to win the AI model race, but SpaceX investors may increasingly be betting that he doesn’t have to.

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