xAI burned $6.4B last year — SpaceX’s IPO filing shows why the spending is far from over

Source: TechCrunch

Financial Overview

Elon Musk’s xAI lost $6.4 billion from operations on $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, according to SpaceX’s IPO filings. The losses are expected to grow as SpaceX plans to scale Grok to “multiple trillions of parameters,” a move that will likely require significant additional compute spend.

The filing marks the first public glimpse into xAI (and therefore X’s) financials. In 2024, xAI recorded a loss of $1.56 billion on $2.62 billion in revenue. By 2025, losses had ballooned to $6.4 billion on $3.2 billion, widening the gap between earnings and spending.

Revenue Breakdown

• AI solutions and infrastructure revenue: $465 million
  • $365 million from X and Grok subscription revenue
  • $88 million from data licensing
• Advertising revenue: $116 million

Capital Expenditures

AI‑segment capital expenditures climbed from $12.7 billion in 2025 to $7.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, representing an annualized capex run rate of about $30.8 billion, more than double the prior year.

User Metrics

• Grok AI features: 117 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of March 2026
• Total ecosystem (Grok + X): 550 million MAUs

This indicates roughly one‑fifth of the combined ecosystem is actively using Grok AI features.

AI Compute Infrastructure

The filing’s “use of proceeds” section highlights an expansion of AI compute infrastructure:

• Data centers:
  • Colossus (online in 122 days)
  • Colossus II (online in 91 days)
  • Combined compute power: ~1 gigawatt, used for Grok training and inference

SpaceX argues that owning the compute infrastructure and vertically integrating across the AI stack enables “training and iterating frontier models at lower cost and higher velocity.”

Orbital AI Compute Satellites

SpaceX plans to begin deploying orbital AI compute satellites as early as 2028, offering a potentially cheaper alternative to terrestrial data centers. The filing notes that “the future of AI will be determined by control of the physical stack.”

Market Context

Musk merged xAI—previously having acquired his social media platform X (formerly Twitter)—with SpaceX in February 2026 before announcing a public offering later that year. While competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are also eyeing public debuts in 2026, SpaceX’s IPO is expected to be one of the largest in history, with a potential $1.75 trillion valuation.

Anthropic, a competitor and customer, reportedly expects a 130 % revenue jump to $10.9 billion in Q2 2026, leading to its first operating profit.