xAI reports $6.4 billion loss as SpaceX prepares for 2026 IPO

SpaceX’s Initial Public Offering (IPO)—the process of listing a company’s shares on a public stock exchange—filings have revealed the first detailed financial performance of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI. According to the filings, xAI lost $6.4 billion from operations in 2025 on $3.2 billion in revenue, widening the gap between its earnings and spending. This compares to a loss of $1.56 billion on $2.62 billion in revenue in 2024. Meanwhile, competitor Anthropic reportedly expects a 130% revenue jump to $10.9 billion in the second quarter. Musk plans to take the combined company public in 2026. The IPO is expected to be one of the largest in history, with a potential $1.75 trillion valuation.

The filings show a widening gap between xAI’s earnings and spending over the last two financial years:

• 2024: $2.62 billion in revenue against a $1.56 billion loss
• 2025: $3.2 billion in revenue against a $6.4 billion loss

This growing deficit is driven by a rapid acceleration in capital expenditures (capex), which represents the money spent on acquiring and maintaining physical assets like servers and data centers. The AI segment’s capex climbed from $12.7 billion in 2025 to $7.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. This surge represents an annualized capex run rate of about $30.8 billion. The $3.2 billion in 2025 revenue included $465 million from AI solutions and infrastructure revenue, which consists of $365 million in X and Grok subscription revenue and $88 million in data licensing. An additional $116 million came from advertising.

So far, this infrastructure investment has yielded growing but still limited user adoption. As of March 2026, SpaceX recorded 117 million monthly active users (MAUs)—the metric for tracking active engagement—for Grok AI features. This is out of 550 million total MAUs across the combined Grok and X platforms, meaning only one-fifth of the user base actively uses the AI features. To power these features, xAI relies on its Colossus and Colossus II data centers, which collectively provide 1 gigawatt of compute power for training and inference, which is the process of running a trained AI model. The company’s strategy centers on owning this infrastructure. As the SpaceX IPO filing states, “The future of AI will be determined by control of the physical stack.”

To manage the long-term costs of training and inference, SpaceX is looking beyond terrestrial infrastructure. The company intends to begin deploying its orbital AI compute satellites as early as 2028. This represents the first concrete timeline for shifting AI workloads into space, which the company positions as a cheaper alternative to ground-based data centers.

Why it matters

The filing marks the first public glimpse into xAI’s financials, revealing a widening gap between earnings and spending as the company prepares for a potential $1.75 trillion IPO. It highlights the immense capital required to compete in the AI race, even for players with existing infrastructure.