SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) held its first earnings call as a newly public company last week, and the stock fell roughly 14% following the report as investors zeroed in on higher-than-expected AI capex.
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Cathie Wood‘s ARK Invest sees the selloff differently. Daniel Maguire, ARK’s research analyst covering autonomous technology and robotics, argued the market reaction was short-term and overlooked the $28.5 trillion total addressable market SpaceX outlined in its S-1 filing.
AI Buildout
Maguire’s research centers on the company’s compute buildout. SpaceX plans to scale terrestrial compute from about 2 gigawatts by year-end to a range of 5 to 10 gigawatts by the end of next year, with management pointing toward the higher end of that range.
Payback periods under a year and monetization estimates of $30 billion to $50 billion per gigawatt support the case, according to ARK, for the accelerated investment behind SpaceX’s target of $1 trillion in revenue by 2030.
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Starlink
Starlink remains central to the growth story beyond AI. Starship’s Flight 14, targeted for late August, will deploy Starlink V3 satellites capable of roughly 20 times the bandwidth of the Falcon 9 V2 generation.
SpaceX also revealed plans for a distributed network of femtocell-like stations built into Starlink dishes, positioning the company to compete directly with AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and T-Mobile US, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS).
Rocket Reusability
Full reusability represents the other major catalyst ARK is tracking. SpaceX intends to attempt catching its upper-stage rocket during Flight 14, pending regulatory approval.
A successful catch would mark a step toward full reusability, which ARK’s research suggests could push launch costs from around $1,000 per kilogram today to below $100 per kilogram at scale.
Costs at that level, per ARK’s modeling based on Wright’s Law, could make orbital data centers economically viable. Timelines for reaching that scale remain uncertain given the number of variables involved.
ARK’s Takeaways
Investors reacted to near-term spending figures. ARK is watching the longer arc: compute scale, Starlink expansion and reusability progress that management laid out on the call. Starship’s Flight 14 later this month stands as the next milestone in that trajectory.
SPCX Stock Price Activity: SpaceX shares were down 0.14% at $132.92 on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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