SpaceXAI spent $18b of capex last quarter, $16b of it on AI.1 2

It’s a huge number. Amazon spent $53.1b last quarter, Alphabet $44.9b, Microsoft $41.0b, Meta $31.1b.3 SpaceXAI’s AI capex alone is nearly 40% of Microsoft’s total.

Q2 2026 capital expenditure : Amazon $53.1b, Alphabet $44.9b, Microsoft $41.0b, Meta $31.1b, SpaceX $18.4b

The slope of spending increase is comparable, too.4

Quarterly capital expenditure from Q1 2025 to Q2 2026 for Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta & SpaceX

The difference is who pays for it. Microsoft funds its buildout from operations with room to spare at 155% of capex, & Meta clears the bar by six points. Everyone else borrows or issues equity : Oracle 89%, Alphabet 87%, Amazon 84%, CoreWeave 39%, SpaceXAI 12%.5

Operating cash flow divided by capital expenditure : Microsoft 155%, Meta 106%, Oracle 89%, Alphabet 87%, Amazon 84%, CoreWeave 39%, SpaceX 12%

Both sets of investors have marked the plan down. SPCX closed at $108 on 5 August, a fifth below the $135 IPO price & half the 16 June peak.6

SPCX daily close from 12 June to 5 August 2026, falling from $161 to $108 against a $135 IPO offer price

Credit agrees, & the further out it lent the more it agrees. Every tranche of June’s $25b debut bond trades below par : the 2031s at 98 cents on the dollar, the 2056s at 90.7

Discount to par on SpaceX senior notes : 2031 down 2.33, 2033 down 3.51, 2036 down 5.09, 2046 down 8.84, 2056 down 10.28

SpaceXAI is pushing to compete : it has the data centers, it has trained a model in Grok 4.5 that ranks fourth on the Intelligence Index within six points of the leader,8 & it has millions of developers using Cursor.9

The IPO proved the company has a great cost of capital advantage.10

The question now is whether that advantage can sustain long enough for the AI business to reach parity with the others.

  1. SpaceX Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results. Capex by segment : Space $1.17b, Connectivity $1.37b & AI $15.83b, for a total of $18.37b. SpaceX listed on 12 June 2026 & filed its first 10-Q on 4 August 2026, the same day as the results release. ↩︎

  2. CNBC : SpaceX stock today, earnings. Revenue of $7.81b beat consensus by about $1b & the net loss narrowed to $541m against the $1.9b expected, but capex of $18.37b landed against a $13.2b estimate with guidance to hold that level two more quarters. More than $1t of market value has gone since the June peak, per NPR. ↩︎

  3. Company results releases for the quarter ended June 2026. The conventions differ & are not restated here : Amazon is net of proceeds from sales and incentives, its own headline basis, against gross purchases of $54.2b; Meta includes $962m of principal payments on finance leases, which are cash; Microsoft is its own headline basis including finance leases & runs above the $35.8b of additions to property and equipment on its cash flow statement, the difference being non-cash right-of-use asset additions; Alphabet is purchases of property and equipment from the cash flow statement. Microsoft’s calendar Q2 is its fiscal Q4 2026. ↩︎

  4. Sequential increase in quarterly capex from Q1 2026 to Q2 2026 : Meta $11.3b, Amazon $9.9b, Alphabet $9.2b, Microsoft $9.1b & SpaceX $8.3b. Measured across the full six quarters the additions diverge, with Amazon adding $28.8b against SpaceX’s $15.6b, so the comparability holds for the latest quarter rather than for the period. Two SpaceX quarters are derived rather than reported & are drawn as hollow points, Q2 2025 back-solved from the reported 549% year-over-year increase & Q1 2026 from the first-half total less Q2. The remaining 2025 quarters are not derivable & are left blank. ↩︎

  5. Net cash provided by operating activities divided by gross purchases of property and equipment, both from the cash flow statement, which keeps the basis cash for every company. Quarter ended 30 June 2026 : Microsoft $55.4b over $35.8b, Meta $31.9b over $30.1b, Alphabet $39.1b over $44.9b & Amazon $45.4b over $54.2b. Three periods differ : Oracle is the quarter ended 31 May 2026, derived as the full year less nine months, with fiscal Q1 2027 not yet reported; CoreWeave the quarter ended 31 March 2026, its June quarter not yet reported; & SpaceXAI the six months ended 30 June 2026, since its first 10-Q carries no quarterly cash flow statement. Cash capex understates two : CoreWeave excludes $4.6b of OEM-financed & accrued additions, which would cut it to 24%, & SpaceXAI excludes $5.5b in accruals & $3.9b financed by other financings. ↩︎

  6. SPCX daily closing prices from Nasdaq via Yahoo Finance. The IPO priced at $135 on 11 June 2026 & closed its first session at $160.95. The highest close was $211.39 on 16 June. Q2 results came after the close on 4 August & the shares fell 13.6% the next session, from $125.33 to $108.27, against the 10% reported intraday. ↩︎

  7. Prices are the 5 August 2026 close, cents per $100 of principal : 5.350% due 2031 at 97.67, 5.650% due 2033 at 96.49, 5.875% due 2036 at 94.91, 6.600% due 2046 at 91.16 & 6.650% due 2056 at 89.72. The last four are FINRA TRACE prints; the 2031 tranche has no TRACE quote & is a Frankfurt price, a different venue & session. Yields to maturity run from 5.86% on the 2031s to 7.51% on the 2056s. SpaceX disclosed coupons & sizes but no issue prices, so the discounts are measured against par; the one reported issue price, 99.45 on the 2056s, means the loss against issue is a fraction of a point smaller. The $25b priced 23 June 2026 on nearly $89b of orders & settled 26 June. ↩︎

  8. Artificial Analysis. Grok 4.5 shipped 8 July 2026 & scores 54 on the Intelligence Index against Fable 5 at 60, Opus 4.8 at 56 & GPT-5.5 at 55. The parity is closest on general reasoning & widest on coding, where Grok 4.5 records 64.7% on SWE-bench Pro against Claude Mythos 5 at 80.3%. Grok 4.5 is not ranked on LMArena’s main text board. ↩︎

  9. Cursor : Series D, 13 November 2025, for “millions of developers.” SpaceX agreed to acquire Anysphere for $60b in stock on 16 June 2026, pending regulatory approval. Neither the 20 May 2026 S-1, which describes the Cursor collaboration & discloses Cursor’s balance sheet, nor the 16 June 8-K reports any user, seat or customer metric. The all-stock consideration was issued under a private-placement exemption, so no S-4 or proxy will follow. ↩︎

  10. Your Personal Cost of Capital. The IPO raised approximately $85.7b in net proceeds & was followed by the $25b bond, leaving $100b of cash & marketable securities at quarter end, per CFO Bret Johnsen on the earnings call. ↩︎