NEW YORK — Shares of SpaceX jumped more than 3% in overnight trading early Monday as founder and chief executive Elon Musk pushed back hard on Wall Street's cost estimates for his artificial-intelligence build-out, telling the market that the company's spending is far more efficient than analysts give it credit for. The move clawed back much of the prior session's decline and underscored how tightly SpaceX's valuation is now tethered to its twin bets on reusable rockets and orbital computing.
A Fast Rebound Off Friday's Dip
SpaceX — NASDAQ: SPCX — changed hands near $139 in overnight action, recovering a large slice of Friday's roughly 6% slide that had left the stock at $134.72. The shares dropped about 11% in October and sit down roughly 16% year to date, yet the overnight bid suggested buyers were quick to step in once Musk addressed the spending debate directly. That resilience echoes the optimism laid out in our look at the orbital-compute bull case now driving $SPCX.
The Capex Question Wall Street Keeps Asking
The catalyst was a fresh analyst projection pegging SpaceX's AI spending at roughly $470 billion over five quarters to reach 13 gigawatts of computing capacity by the end of 2027 — with chip supplier Nvidia potentially capturing 83% to 89% of that outlay, or about $414 billion. Musk's reply was characteristically blunt: the company's "capex efficiency is greatly underestimated." SpaceX has guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in capital spending in the fourth quarter alone.
Investors have reasons to extend Musk some credit. SpaceX reported third-quarter revenue up 161% to $14.58 billion, with $7.56 billion of that tied to its fast-scaling AI operations — the Colossus clusters whose expansion we detailed in our report on the new buildings joining Colossus 2.
Market Snapshot
As of the latest overnight prints, $SPCX traded near $139, up more than 3% from Friday's $134.72 close and off its 52-week highs reached during this autumn's string of Starship and compute milestones. $TSLA held firm in sympathy as traders weighed the deepening operational ties between the two Musk companies, while chipmaker $NVDA remained a key swing factor for the broader $QQQ complex. Readers can track live quotes for $SPCX on Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, WSJ and Nasdaq, and for $TSLA on Yahoo Finance.
Silicon, Financing and the Road Ahead
Underpinning the bull case is SpaceX's aggressive drive to lock up silicon. The company has arranged roughly $40 billion in chip-and-server financing through an affiliate of Apollo, and Musk confirmed that talks with TSMC are back on over "Terafab," a proposed advanced fabrication plant linked to SpaceX, Tesla and Intel, with a first test chip targeted for mid-2027 and volume output in 2028. Those details were first surfaced in market reporting on the overnight move.
With a targeted 1.2 million Blackwell chips online by year-end and a Terafab roadmap that could bring key manufacturing in-house, the setup gives $SPCX bulls a clear multi-quarter story. If Musk's efficiency claims hold up against the Street's half-trillion-dollar estimates, this week's overnight bounce may prove an early read on how the market scores SpaceX's compute ambitions into 2027.
This article does not constitute financial advice. Readers are advised to do their own research before investing in the stock market. Prices cited are point-in-time snapshots and may be stale — always confirm on a live financial source.