Markets SPCX AUG 08, 2026

SpaceX rebounds 13% Friday as Argus upgrade validates sub-one-year AI payback

SPCX closed higher after Argus lifted the stock to Buy with a $160 target, one day after 911.5M shares came off lockup without breaking the tape.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

SPCX closed roughly 13% higher on Friday after Argus Research analyst Steven Silver upgraded the stock to Buy with a $160 price target, capping a week in which SpaceX’s newly public shares absorbed both an $18.4 billion capex print and the release of 911.5 million previously locked shares without breaking.

The Argus note zeroed in on the specific fact the sell side had been chewing on since Tuesday’s earnings call: CFO Bret Johnsen’s claim that SpaceX is “getting less than a one-year payback” on AI compute spending. Silver called the payback profile “encouraging.” That word, plain as it reads, is doing structural work. It reframes $15.8 billion of the quarter’s $18.4 billion capex from a hyperscaler-style capital sink into something closer to working capital.

The underlying numbers give the frame something to lean on. Q2 revenue grew 92% year-over-year. The AI unit posted $2.56 billion in revenue against a $1.26 billion operating loss, versus $818 million and a $2.47 billion loss in Q1. An additional $6.7 billion in cloud services revenue was contracted in the opening weeks of Q3. Elon Musk told analysts the company’s $100 billion ARR target for December 2026 is “not a question mark,” and management pulled its $1 trillion annual revenue forecast forward from 2031 to 2030.

The technical setup made Friday’s move louder. Wednesday’s session saw SPCX sell off as investors focused on the capex line. Thursday’s lockup expiration, which JPMorgan’s Doug Anmuth flagged as a 143% expansion of float, was supposed to be the drag Bank of America’s Ron Epstein described as a “near-term technical drag” and Morningstar’s Nicolas Owens summarized bluntly: “most of the available shares will come to market.” Instead the stock closed up 6.1% on more than 255 million shares traded.

Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas has been calling SpaceX “a potential generational compounder” since the June debut. What’s notable is the crowd Friday’s tape puts him in. Polymarket still gives xAI a 3% chance of holding the best model at year-end versus 68% for Anthropic, who’s itself a paying SpaceX compute customer. The equity is being underwritten less as an AI-lab bet than as the toll road underneath one.

Sources

About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.