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The rocket company is moonlighting as an AI landlord
SpaceX is having one of those rare days when the headline is about rockets, the stock move is about analysts, and the real money story might be about AI compute. TD Cowen kicked off coverage with a Buy and a $200 price target, arguing that SpaceX’s ground-based computing business could become the company’s biggest financial engine in the next few quarters.
That’s a wild sentence if you still think of SpaceX as just a launch-and-satellites story. According to the note, customers like Google and Anthropic have already lined up for capacity, and leasing capacity could rise from about 2.1 gigawatts now to 6 gigawatts by the end of 2027. In analyst-speak, that’s less “nice side hustle” and more “please make room for a new giant line item.”
Starship finally stuck the landing-ish
The catalyst cocktail got a second shot of espresso from Monday’s Starship orbital flight, which reached orbit for the first time even after one engine failed partway through ascent. The mission still got the job done, including releasing all 26 Starlink V3 satellites it was carrying. Investors love a good narrative, and this one checks the boxes: technical progress, fewer question marks, and a giant addressable market.
The AI contract drip keeps getting bigger
Then there’s the Reuters-reported detail that Anthropic may pay SpaceX up to $84.5 billion for access to Nvidia-powered computing infrastructure through 2029, far above the roughly $45 billion arrangement previously disclosed. That’s the kind of number that makes even seasoned Wall Street folks do a double take.
A few takeaways:
- SpaceX is trying to monetize infrastructure, not just launches.
- Big-name customers are helping validate the model.
- The market may be starting to price SpaceX like a multi-business platform, not a single-product rocket shop.
Big picture: if the rockets keep launching and the AI compute checks keep clearing, SpaceX could be turning into the kind of company that investors describe with a lot of excited hand gestures and very few analogies that fit on a slide.