xAI burned $6.4B last year. SpaceX’s IPO filing shows why the spending is far from over
Key takeaways
- Elon Musk’s x AI lost $6.4 billion from operations on just $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, according to Space X’s IPO filings.
- While AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are also eyeing public debuts in 2026, SpaceX’s is expected to be one of the largest in history with a potential $1.75 trillion valuation.
- The filing marks the first public glimpses into xAI, and therefore X’s, financials.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Elon Musk’s x AI lost $6.4 billion from operations on just $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, according to Space X’s IPO filings. And the losses are poised to grow. Space X’s filing reveals plans to scale Grok to “multiple trillions of parameters,” a dramatic boost that will likely require significant additional compute spend.
Elon Musk merged his AI company x AI — which had previously acquired his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) — with his rocket and satellite company Space X in February before announcing that he’d take the combined company public this year. While AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are also eyeing public debuts in 2026, SpaceX’s is expected to be one of the largest in history with a potential $1.75 trillion valuation.
The filing marks the first public glimpses 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, meaning the gap between what xAI earns and spends is widening. Meanwhile, competitor (and customer) Anthropic reportedly expects a 130% revenue jump to $10.9 billion in the second quarter, leading to its first operating profit.