xAI burned through $6.4 billion last year — SpaceX’s IPO filing shows why the spending isn’t over yet

Elon Musk’s xAI company lost $6.4 billion from operations on just $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, according to SpaceX’s IPO filings. And the losses are about to increase. SpaceX’s filing reveals plans to scale Grok to “several trillion parameters,” a significant boost that would likely require significant additional computational spending.

Elon Musk merged his artificial intelligence company xAI – which previously acquired his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) – with his rocket and satellite company SpaceX in February before announcing that he would take the combined company public this year. While AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are also eyeing a 2026 debut, SpaceX is expected to be one of the largest companies in history with a potential valuation of $1.75 trillion.

The filing represents the first overviews of xAI’s, and therefore X’s, financials. In 2024, xAI reported a loss of $1.56 billion on revenue of $2.62 billion. By 2025, losses have ballooned to $6.4 billion on $3.2 billion, meaning the gap between what xAI earns and what it spends is widening. Meanwhile, competitor (and customer) Anthropic is said to expect revenue to jump 130% to $10.9 billion in the second quarter, posting its first operating profit.

The jump in revenue from 2024 to 2025 came in large part from “AI and infrastructure solutions revenue” totaling $465 million, which includes $365 million in X and Grok subscription revenue and $88 million from data licenses. An additional $116 million came from advertising.

Capital expenditures for the AI ​​sector rose from $12.7 billion in 2025 to $7.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. That’s an annual capital run rate of about $30.8 billion, more than doubling year over year.

So far, this investment has increased user numbers, but they are still limited. According to the filing, SpaceX recorded 117 million monthly active users (MAUs) for Grok AI features as of March 2026, out of a total of 550 million MAUs across Grok and X combined. This means that only a fifth of the built ecosystem is actively using Grok AI features.

However, SpaceX intends to continue working with Grok; The next generation of AI is expected to scale to “several trillions of parameters,” which the filing describes as “a step change in deep thinking and comprehensive intelligence.” It’s an ambitious goal, and one that’s now recorded in the audited records of SEC history.

It’s also a goal that will undoubtedly require more investment. The “Use of Proceeds” section of SpaceX’s filing refers to “expanding our AI compute infrastructure.” According to the filing, xAI’s Colossus and Colossus II data centers — both of which were brought online in 122 days and 91 days, respectively — combined provide about 1 gigawatt of computing power. Both are used for Grok training and inference. SpaceX claims that having the compute infrastructure and vertical integration across the AI ​​stack allows it to “train and replicate leading models at a lower cost and at a higher speed.”

Another way SpaceX can allay investors’ concerns about spending is to conduct training and inference on orbiting data centers, which Musk has promised will be a much cheaper alternative to ground-based data centers. But this sci-fi vision is unlikely to happen for several years. SpaceX intends to begin deploying its orbiting artificial intelligence satellites as early as 2028, the first specific timeline for such a launch, the filing says.

“The future of AI will be defined by control of the physical stack,” the filing said.