SpaceX's First Earnings Call: $329M Tesla Megapack Buys
08 Aug 2026
SpaceX held its first earnings call as a public company on Tuesday, and the numbers disclosed alongside it offer a rare look at how deeply intertwined Elon Musk's business empire has become — and how aggressively the company is projecting its growth.
The Megapack numbers
According to SpaceX's earnings report, the company has spent $329 million on Tesla Megapacks so far this year, including $295 million in Q2 alone. That spending is layered on top of a separate $430 million in Megapack purchases made by xAI — Musk's AI company, which SpaceX acquired earlier this year — before the two companies merged. xAI's Q1 Megapack purchases alone totaled $34 million.
The report does not clarify whether the $329 million SpaceX figure includes or excludes the $430 million xAI spent pre-merger, leaving the full scale of Megapack spending across the combined entity somewhat ambiguous.
Separately, SpaceX's regulatory filing disclosed that as of December 2025, the company had acquired $131 million worth of Tesla Cybertrucks at MSRP.
Because Musk serves as CEO and largest shareholder of SpaceX while also running Tesla, these transactions qualify as related-party dealings — a structure that could raise governance or conflict-of-interest questions, particularly since no details were provided on the pricing or terms of the Megapack purchases.
Big revenue targets, bigger timeline shifts
CFO Bret Johnsen told investors that SpaceX contracted an additional $6.7 billion in cloud services revenue over a six-month period beginning in October, and that the company is on pace to hit a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of this year. Johnsen also projected a payback period of less than one year on SpaceX's new capital deployments into compute infrastructure.
Musk went further, stating that reaching $100 billion in annualized revenue by December is "certain if SpaceX does nothing" — and could end up higher. He also said internal projections for reaching $1 trillion in revenue have moved up from 2031 to 2030, with a "non-zero chance" of hitting that mark as early as 2029.
On the space side, Gwynne Shotwell reiterated a goal of putting "boots on the moon" in 2028, and Musk said he now considers the heat-shield problem "solved" following the most recent Starship test flight, which splashed down intact in the Indian Ocean last month.
Musk also claimed Starlink will deliver a majority of the world's internet in less than 10 years, with V3 satellites — offering higher bandwidth than prior versions — in preparation.
A history of shifting deadlines
Musk's track record with timelines complicates how these projections should be read. In 2016, he said he would put humans on Mars within six years — a target that has not been met. That history suggests the 2028 moon goal and the 2029–2030 trillion-dollar revenue targets may not land exactly as stated, even if directionally accurate.
Why founders should care
For early-stage founders, this earnings call is a case study in scale, structure, and skepticism:
- Related-party infrastructure deals may become more common among founders running multiple companies. SpaceX's Megapack and Cybertruck purchases from Tesla illustrate how intercompany deals can be structured to move capital and hardware between related entities — a model some founders may study, though it likely invites more governance scrutiny as companies scale.
- Demand for compute and cloud infrastructure appears strong. The $6.7 billion in newly contracted cloud services revenue suggests real, growing demand for compute-adjacent services — a signal that could point to opportunity for startups building infrastructure or tooling in this space, though the durability of that demand isn't detailed in the report.
- Bold public revenue targets deserve a discount. Given Musk's history of missed deadlines, founders should probably treat headline projections — like a $100 billion ARR by year-end or a trillion-dollar revenue milestone by 2029 — as aspirational rather than assured, and weigh public statements about growth trajectories against actual delivery over time.
What's still unclear
Several important details remain unaddressed in SpaceX's disclosures: whether the $329 million SpaceX figure overlaps with xAI's pre-merger $430 million in Megapack spending, what share of SpaceX's total capital expenditures these Tesla-related purchases represent, and what pricing terms governed the Megapack transactions given Musk's dual leadership role. The basis for the company's aggressive revenue projections was also not detailed beyond general statements of confidence from Musk and Johnsen.