SpaceX ( SPAX.PVT ) outside focuses on rocket launches and the bleeding-edge Starlink satellite Internet service. But CEO Elon Musk and company are betting big on another gamble, which isn’t so foolproof – AI.
The S-1 prospectus SpaceX filed on Wednesday is the largest market capitalization ever sought by a public company: $28.5 trillion, which the filing describes as the “most powerful” market opportunity in human history.
Only 370 billion of that comes from startups and other services that operate in the area. Another $1.6 trillion comes from Starlink-based connectivity. The remaining $26.5 trillion, about 90% of the opportunities, is artificial intelligence.
Essentially, Musk and SpaceX are asking investors to value the company as an integrated AI platform that happens to launch rockets.
“SpaceX is no longer a space company in the traditional sense,” Chad Anderson, founder and CEO of Space Capital, told Yahoo Finance. “It’s a highly integrated AI company that competes with hyperscalers and aims to own the full stack.”
After SpaceX acquired Musk’s other company, xAI, in February 2026 and reported its results again, the combined revenue for 2025 reached $18.7 billion – an increase of more than 30% – but the year resulted in an operating loss of about 2.6 billion. The loss of operations, Anderson said, is the cost of building two new businesses at once.
“Revenue grew 30% + to almost $19 billion. Starlink lost more than $4 billion,” Anderson said. “Total loss due to investments in growth – AI and Starship. This is a company with a lot going for it.”
That investment led to huge capex spending. SpaceX spent $20.7 billion by 2025, with $12.7 billion going to AI – data centers, GPUs, and training clusters for COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, AI capex reached $7.7 billion.
But the prospectus reveals something against the AI vision: AI lab Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), a rival to Grok’s xAI model, has agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 for computing capacity.
In total, that’s about $15 billion in annual revenue from a single customer, the monetization infrastructure SpaceX has already built. SpaceX says it expects similar contracts in the future.
The overall idea of the investment, however, still depends on what SpaceX is known for – rockets.
The prospectus lists any failure or delay in leveling Starship as a major risk, because Starship powers next-generation Starlink satellites, direct-to-cell communications, and orbital AI computing.
