Where the revenue came from
Revenue of $7,814m was up 92% year-on-year and 67% sequentially, and the composition changed more than the headline suggests. A year ago Connectivity was 64% of the business and AI was 18%. This quarter AI was 32.8% and Connectivity 54.9%. Almost the entire acceleration came from one line: AI solutions and infrastructure revenue, which went from $311m to $2,194m.
That line is contracted compute. The company signed Cloud Services Agreements worth $14.1bn in contracted sales and recognised $1.6bn of incremental infrastructure revenue in the quarter. It is real revenue with real counterparties, but it is a different business from the one the AI segment was in a year ago — and the segment’s original business went backwards. Advertising revenue fell 13.8%, from $426m to $367m, and now represents just 14% of AI segment revenue against 58% a year ago.
| Segment | Q2 2026 | Q1 2026 | Q2 2025 | YoY | QoQ | Mix now | Mix a yr ago |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Space | 962 | 619 | 746 | +29.0% | +55.4% | 12.3% | 18.3% |
| Connectivity | 4,291 | 3,257 | 2,588 | +65.8% | +31.7% | 54.9% | 63.6% |
| AI | 2,561 | 818 | 737 | +247.5% | +213.1% | 32.8% | 18.1% |
| Total | 7,814 | 4,694 | 4,071 | +91.9% | +66.5% | 100% | 100% |
The line the headline hides
Space revenue rose 29% in the quarter — but over six months it is down 1.9%, at $1,581m against $1,611m. Q1 was the problem: implied Space revenue fell roughly 28% year-on-year in the March quarter before Q2 recovered it. The release attributes Q2’s improvement to “a higher number of large customer launches and a favourable customer shift,” and the operating data supports that: customer launches rose from 9 to 10 while revenue per customer launch rose 19%, from $54m to $65m.
What did not rise was throughput. Over six months, total launches fell from 84 to 78 and mass to orbit from 1,102 to 1,041 metric tons. Space is earning more per launch on fewer launches, while R&D on Starship runs at $1,076m a quarter — up 55% year-on-year — and the segment loses $542m at the operating line.
Starlink: volume up, price down
Connectivity is the only segment that makes money, at $1,656m of operating income, and it funds the other two. Subscribers doubled to 12.0 million. But ARPU fell from $85 to $66, −22.4%, which is why consumer revenue grew 44% against 100% subscriber growth. Every new cohort is arriving at a materially lower price than the last.
The offset is enterprise. Enterprise & Government revenue grew 108% to $1,806m and is now 42% of Connectivity, up from a third. American Airlines, Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, SoftBank and NTT Docomo were added in the quarter, and Starshield won over $6bn in multi-year US government contracts. The mix is shifting from a consumer subscription business toward a contracted enterprise one — which is the same shift happening inside the AI segment.
What the revenue costs
Capital expenditure was $18,369m against $7,814m of revenue — 235%. AI capex alone was $15,828m, which is 6.2 times the AI segment’s entire revenue and 21 times the $749m spent in the same quarter last year. Over six months, capex of $28,476m ran at 8.2 times operating cash flow of $3,466m.
This is where the Adjusted EBITDA figure needs care. Adjusted EBITDA was $3,538m, and the operating line was −$143m. The bridge between them is depreciation and amortisation of $2,848m plus share-based compensation of $831m. Those two addbacks total $3,679m — more than the entire Adjusted EBITDA figure. D&A is already growing 87% year-on-year and SBC 80%, and $28.5bn of six-month capex has not finished landing on the depreciation schedule. Today’s capex is tomorrow’s D&A, which means the gap between Adjusted EBITDA and the operating line widens before it closes.
| Measure | $bn |
|---|---|
| Revenue | 7.81 |
| Capex | 18.37 |
| AI revenue | 2.56 |
| AI capex | 15.83 |
| Adj. EBITDA | 3.54 |
| D&A + SBC (the addbacks) | 3.68 |
| 6M operating cash flow | 3.47 |
Funding it
The balance sheet is the reason none of this is yet a problem. Cash and marketable securities stand at $100.0bn after $85.7bn of net IPO proceeds in June and a $25bn inaugural bond. Total debt is $39.4bn. At the second quarter’s capex pace, that cash covers roughly 5.4 quarters — before the announced $60bn acquisition of Cursor, which is about 2.4 times annualised group revenue and 5.9 times the AI segment’s.
Two balance-sheet details worth noting. $13.3bn of the $39.4bn of debt is related-party, 34% of the total and up from $4.5bn at December. And six-month other expense of −$1,962m swung from +$202m a year earlier, alongside digital assets falling from $1,637m to $1,098m.
What the options are pricing
The stock last traded at $116.16, down 7.32% against the prior close, on a quote captured in the overnight session early on 5 August. That is 48.5% below the post-listing high of $225.64 and 22.6% below the $150 first-session reference, on a stock that has only traded since 12 June.
Front-expiry implied volatility (21 August) sits near 130% against 30-day realised volatility of 74.1% — a ratio of 1.76. On the blended underlying measure IV is 99.2%, still 1.34 times realised. Implied volatility is in the 70.6th percentile of its short history. At 130%, the options are pricing a one-standard-deviation move of roughly ±30% by 21 August.
Positioning is unusual in two respects. First, the surface is flat to call-skewed: the 105 put marks 129.3% while the 130 call marks 131.7%. Equity surfaces normally price downside above upside; here upside is bid slightly higher. Second, open interest is concentrated in the wings rather than at the money — 15,553 contracts at the 105 put and 10,531 at the 130 call, against a few hundred at the 116 strike either side.
Volume tells a different story from the skew. Total option volume ran 1.81 times average, but the split was not even: put volume was 2.04 times its average while calls were 1.65 times. The put/call ratio moved to 0.875 against a 0.709 average. Demand for downside is rising faster than for upside even as the surface still prices calls slightly richer — a tension that usually resolves one way or the other within a few sessions.
The desk take
The growth is not in question. Revenue nearly doubled, the AI segment turned Adjusted EBITDA positive for the first time, and $14.1bn of contracted cloud sales gives visibility that most companies at this growth rate do not have.
The question is the depreciation schedule. A business spending 235% of revenue on capital expenditure is making a bet that the assets earn back faster than they depreciate. Right now Connectivity is underwriting that bet — and Connectivity’s own pricing is falling 22% a year while it does. The market’s answer, for one session at least, was a 7.3% decline and a bid for downside protection.
Sources. SpaceX Q2 2026 results release (quarter ended 30 June 2026), including consolidated statements of operations, balance sheet, selected cash flow information and segment disclosures. Market and options data via Interactive Brokers, captured 05:00 UTC on 5 August 2026: last price, implied and historical volatility, implied-volatility percentile, option volume and open interest by strike for the 21 August 2026 expiration.
For informational and educational purposes only. Not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security or options contract. Adjusted EBITDA and Segment Adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP measures as defined by the company and are not substitutes for GAAP results. Options data was captured outside regular trading hours and individual contract last-trade prices may predate the most recent move in the underlying. Volatility measures for a recently listed security are computed over a short history. Past performance is not indicative of future results.