SpaceX shares slide on the heels of first quarterly report

What the report says

SpaceX shares fell sharply after the company released its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly listed firm, with the stock closing more than 13 percent lower on Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera. The report said investors reacted to a steep rise in capital spending, which reached $18.37bn, far above analyst expectations and several times higher than the previous year.

Al Jazeera reported that most of the spending was tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure, including data-centre capacity, compute, storage and networking systems. The company has said it wants to expand its data-centre capacity further by year-end and that some of this computing power supports Grok models as well as cloud-services contracts. The article also noted that investors in the wider technology sector are increasingly asking whether heavy AI investment will produce clear returns.

The company’s connectivity business provided a positive offset, with revenue from Starlink subscriber growth rising and operating income increasing. Al Jazeera said Starlink’s customer base doubled to 12 million. The story also flagged another possible source of volatility: the first tranche of the post-IPO lock-up was set to expire on Thursday, potentially allowing a large block of previously restricted shares to be sold.

More broadly, the piece placed SpaceX’s slide in the context of recent enthusiasm around the company’s market debut, followed by a pullback from its post-IPO peak. It also reflected a wider market debate about whether major tech firms’ large AI investments will translate into measurable profits.