SpaceX Stock Is Down 33% From Its High. Elon Musk Expects Revenue to Rise 53-Fold to $1 Trillion by 2030.
I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.SpaceX, having completed a historic IPO with a $1.8T market cap, projects revenue to surge 53-fold to $1 trillion by 2030, driven primarily by AI data center infrastructure. CEO Elon Musk anticipates $100 billion in annual recurring revenue by year-end, supported by deals with Alphabet and Anthropic. However, the article advises against buying the stock, citing skepticism toward Musk's aggressive projections and the high capital expenditure risks involved in building massive AI capacity.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -0.91%) generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk just predicted that the company will hit $100 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the end of this year, and $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. That would be a more than a 50-fold increase in five years, mainly on the back of artificial intelligence (AI) data center sales.
No company has ever generated $1 trillion in revenue in a single year. How likely is it that SpaceX can achieve this number by 2030? Here's my honest take on whether SpaceX stock is a buy today.
NASDAQ: SPCX
Key Data Points
Less space, more AI
SpaceX just went completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. The company is known today for space services, but it's transitioning quickly into an AI infrastructure business. Capital expenditures were $19 billion across the business last quarter, mainly attributable to building data centers for AI.
Musk, unsurprisingly, is being aggressive in building out data centers to serve the AI market. The company has signed deals with the likes of Alphabet and Anthropic that could get ARR up to $100 billion by December, Musk said on the company's first earnings call since the IPO earlier this month.
By the end of next year, Musk expects to bring on between 15 and 20 gigawatts (GW) of electric power capacity for SpaceX's current and future AI data centers. With the cost of bringing on a gigawatt of capacity approaching $50 billion, it will take enormous capital spending for SpaceX to deliver on its plans.
Since AI compute is a hot commodity at the moment, SpaceX can sign lucrative deals with third parties to lease out this computing power, even if those third parties are competitors to the company's own AI software services, such as Anthropic.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Image source: The White House.
Long-term, SpaceX is developing a data center concept that will operate in Earth orbit to save on power costs by using solar arrays outside Earth's atmosphere. Along with the terrestrial data centers, Musk and SpaceX believe there will be enough demand for AI software to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. That's an audacious plan, to say the least.
Risks and profit margins
Some revenue will come from other services provided by SpaceX, such as its Starlink internet and rocket launch contracts for third parties. However, if revenue hits $1 trillion in 2030, the vast majority of SpaceX's business will be AI data center contracts.
Right now, SpaceX is getting a nice level of revenue from such infrastructure deals, and likely with good margins. However, there is a risk that the AI spending boom could turn into a bust if demand for AI services does not meet these projections. This could lead SpaceX to build a gargantuan number of AI data centers as demand dries up.
SPCX Capital Expenditures (Quarterly) data by YCharts.
Is SpaceX stock a buy?
Today, SpaceX trades at a market cap of $1.9 trillion. In an ultra-bullish scenario, this $1 trillion in cloud computing revenue by 2030 could translate into hundreds of billions in earnings, at least compared to the competition, whose profit margins hover at about 30%. That might make the stock cheap for anyone buying right now.
However, investors should be skeptical of Musk's promises, especially when it means revenue increasing 50-fold in five years. Musk is notorious for making financial projections or product launches that only materialize years after his deadlines, and I think this $1 trillion revenue projection by 2030 is one of them.
Avoid buying SpaceX stock for this reason.