SpaceX's $60 Billion Cursor Close and Pentagon Windfall Mask a Stock Still Trailing Its June Peak
Published on 08/15/2026 at 17:23 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The week's news flow out of Hawthorne read like a checklist of corporate ambition: a $60 billion acquisition closed, $8.1 billion in fresh Pentagon contracts, and a chip strategy anchored to Nvidia's next-generation architecture. Yet SpaceX shares ended Friday roughly 38 percent below their June high, a gap that underscores how much skepticism still surrounds the company's capital-intensive pivot into artificial intelligence.
A Defense Haul and a European Opening
The US Department of Defense awarded SpaceX contracts worth $8.1 billion on Wednesday, with $2.29 billion earmarked for the Space Data Network communications backbone and $4.16 billion for the Airborne Moving Target Indicator satellite constellation. The awards cement the company's role as a dual-use infrastructure partner to Washington.
Across the Atlantic, Italy is reportedly negotiating a five-year, $1.6 billion deal for Starlink Starshield, with the country's intelligence service and defense ministry having given preliminary approval. A signed agreement would extend SpaceX's secure-satellite footprint deeper into European government circles.
The Cursor Deal Closes — With a Paper Trail
Friday brought formal completion of the all-stock acquisition of Anysphere, the AI coding platform behind Cursor, at a $60 billion valuation. The transaction, first unveiled in June, involved issuing roughly 29.1 million restricted stock units and 44.4 million options on Class A shares. Cursor will now operate under a newly created division called SpaceXAI, which the company says brings with it the industry's largest GPU fleet.
The AI push extends to hardware. Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX's data centers will run exclusively on Nvidia's "Vera Rubin" chip architecture, with meaningful allocations expected in 2027. That follows the early-August announcement of a joint $16.8 billion investment with Tesla in the "Terafab" chip plant in Grimes County, Texas, designed to produce AI processors for robotics and space-based computing.
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The Cost of the Pivot
The spending spree showed up in second-quarter figures released earlier this month. Revenue climbed 92 percent year over year to $7.8 billion, comfortably beating the $6.81 billion consensus, while the net loss narrowed from $1.0 billion to $541 million. Capital expenditures, however, surged to $18.37 billion, with $15.8 billion flowing into AI infrastructure alone.
Musk has set an ambitious trajectory: an annualized revenue run rate of $100 billion by December, with the $1 trillion annual sales target pulled forward from 2031 to 2030. Internally, he told staff on Tuesday that AI infrastructure revenue should surpass all other business lines by September 2026, targeting 10 gigawatts of compute capacity by the end of 2027.
Analysts Split on the Math
Wall Street is wrestling with the implications. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas reiterated his overweight rating with a $300 price target on Friday, pointing to upcoming catalysts including the Grok 4.7 and Grok 5 AI models, rising compute prices, and the next Starship test flight. The bank estimates the AI segment could reach an $8 billion annualized run rate by year-end.
Argus upgraded the stock from hold to buy on Wednesday, setting a $160 target following the quarterly results. But Piper Sandler trimmed its price objective to $140 in early August, citing the heavy investment burden.
Starship and the Launch Cadence
The immediate test is operational. SpaceX has filed with the FCC for a first attempt on August 28 to catch the 52-meter Starship upper stage with the launch tower's arms at Starbase, Texas — a maneuver that would also mark the first payload delivery to orbit on Flight 14, pending final regulatory approval.
The launch schedule remains relentless. Saturday brings a Falcon-9 mission from Cape Canaveral carrying the Globalstar-2-R payload, with a first stage flying its 14th mission. A double launch on August 12 pushed the Starlink constellation to 10,971 active satellites, and Wednesday saw 53 more Starlink satellites deployed across two Falcon-9 flights from Florida and California.
Starlink remains the lone profitable unit, posting $1.66 billion in operating income for the quarter, with consumer subscribers reaching 12 million.
A Muted Close to a Busy Week
The stock slipped 1.2 percent on Friday to close at €120.96, though it still finished the week up 5.1 percent. The distance from the June peak of €194.46 reflects a market weighing the promise of AI-driven growth against the scale of capital outlay required to deliver it.
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