Why we're watching this: SpaceX's S-1 is the first public window into xAI's financials. The combination of a $6.4 billion AI operating loss, a $1.25 billion-per-month Anthropic compute deal, and an active environmental lawsuit over unregulated gas turbines maps the real cost structure of frontier AI infrastructure heading into 2027.
Key Takeaways
- xAI lost $6.4 billion from operations on $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, with AI segment capex hitting $12.7 billion for the year
- Anthropic is paying $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for compute access across SpaceX’s COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II data centers
- xAI plans to buy $2.8 billion more in gas turbines over three years, including $2 billion in mobile turbines, despite an active NAACP lawsuit over unregulated generators in Memphis
- SpaceX targets a $1.75 trillion valuation on Nasdaq under ticker “SPCX”; Grok has 117 million monthly active AI users out of 550 million total MAUs
SpaceX filed its S-1 on May 20, giving the public its first audited look at xAI’s finances, and the numbers confirm that building frontier AI at scale is extraordinarily expensive, even for a company that builds its own power plants.
The AI segment lost $6.4 billion from operations in 2025 on just $3.2 billion in revenue, more than doubling its 2024 operating loss of $1.56 billion. Capital expenditures for the AI segment reached $12.7 billion in 2025 and accelerated to $7.7 billion in Q1 2026 alone, an annualized rate of roughly $30.8 billion, according to the filing.
The filing also discloses that Anthropic signed Cloud Services Agreements with SpaceX in May 2026, committing to pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for access to compute capacity across COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II. Either party may terminate with 90 days’ notice. The deal monetizes idle capacity while SpaceX trains its own next-generation Grok 5 model on the same infrastructure.
“The future of AI will be determined by control of the physical stack.” — SpaceX S-1, Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
That physical stack is also the source of SpaceX’s most immediate legal risk. The NAACP filed a lawsuit last month against xAI for operating 46 unregulated mobile gas turbines at its Memphis data centers, despite holding permits for only 15.
The turbines can each emit more than 2,000 tons of NOx pollution annually, contributing to smog in one of the most polluted regions of the country, according to TechCrunch reporting.
SpaceX’s response: buy more. The S-1 discloses plans to purchase $2.8 billion in additional turbines over three years, with $2 billion earmarked specifically for mobile gas turbines. The company claims mobile turbines can operate for up to a year without permits because they remain on the trailers they were shipped on, a position the EPA has ruled violates federal air-pollution law.
SpaceX acknowledges in its risk factors that injunctions or rescinded permits for its gas turbines “would adversely affect our AI business.” The NAACP lawsuit remains active and unresolved.
On the user side, Grok has reached 117 million monthly active AI users as of March 2026, out of 550 million total MAUs across Grok and X combined. That means roughly one in five users of the combined platform is actively engaging with AI features. Grok also generated approximately 10 billion images and over 2 billion videos per month on average in Q1 2026 through its Imagine system.
Critics and short-sellers are likely to focus on the gap between capital deployment and monetization. Competitor Anthropic, now paying SpaceX for compute, reportedly expects a 130% revenue jump to $10.9 billion in Q2 2026 and its first operating profit, per the filing, which cites this as a benchmark for comparison.
SpaceX’s AI segment has no near-term path to profitability on its current trajectory, and the company has warned investors to expect a “multi-year investment horizon” before the AI segment generates sustained positive EBITDA.
With SpaceX targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the symbol “SPCX,” the offering will test whether public markets will fund the gap between today’s losses and the orbital AI compute vision the company is selling.
The Anthropic contract provides a real revenue floor; the gas turbine lawsuit provides a real ceiling on how fast the company can scale power without regulatory blowback, for teams monitoring frontier AI infrastructure costs via Relve, an AI trends intelligence platform.
