SpaceX (SPCX) stock rebounded sharply on Thursday, rising more than 5% to around $148 after ending the previous two sessions lower, as bullish analyst forecasts for its artificial intelligence business helped lift the shares.
The rally comes as analysts increasingly frame SpaceX as more than a rocket and satellite company, with AI infrastructure, computing and eventually orbital data centers becoming increasingly important to the investment case.
Analysts see AI driving SpaceX growth
Bernstein SocGen Group reiterated its Outperform rating on SpaceX on Wednesday and maintained its $248 price target.
Analyst Douglas Harned expects SpaceX’s AI revenue to nearly quintuple to $115.1 billion in 2027 from $24.6 billion in 2026.
That would make AI the company’s largest source of revenue.
Bernstein expects total revenue to rise from $46.4 billion in 2026 to $150.4 billion in 2027, with AI accounting for most of the increase.
The forecast highlights how quickly SpaceX’s growth story is expanding beyond rockets, satellites, and launch services toward AI infrastructure and computing.
Bernstein’s valuation also incorporates the potential for orbital data centers, giving the company another potential growth avenue beyond its existing businesses.
Oppenheimer is similarly bullish. The firm raised its SpaceX price target to $280 from $250 on Tuesday while maintaining an Outperform rating.
The revised target implies roughly 100% upside from the stock’s recent level around $139.
Oppenheimer identified SpaceX’s vertically integrated AI platform as a key differentiator, pointing to its combination of data, capital, access to GPUs through its relationship with Nvidia, and ability to rapidly build infrastructure.
The firm also highlighted SpaceX’s acquisition of Cursor as a catalyst for its AI strategy.
The deal has strengthened the company’s agentic coding data and logic, with expected benefits across its AI platform, including Grok Bot and Grok 4.6, while further improvements are expected with Grok 5.0.
Oppenheimer said AI productivity and usage are running ahead of expectations for both SpaceX and the broader AI industry, although infrastructure remains a bottleneck.
The brokerage raised its long-term revenue estimates by about 10% on stronger AI compute pricing. Higher capital spending could increase that longer-term uplift to roughly 20%, according to Oppenheimer.
Lockup expiries remain a major overhang
Despite the bullish AI outlook, the supply of newly unlocked shares remains a key risk for SpaceX stock.
Unlike the typical single lockup period following an IPO, SpaceX has adopted a staggered structure under which shares become available for trading at multiple intervals.
About 912 million shares became available on August 6, followed by another 319 million scheduled to unlock on August 20.
Around 600 million shares are expected to become available in September, with another 630 million-plus scheduled for October.
By the end of 2026, roughly 4.9 billion SpaceX shares will have become available to trade.
That represents about 70% of SpaceX shares not held by Elon Musk.
The steady increase in the tradable share supply has been a significant factor in the stock’s early performance.
Investors have been cautious about buying ahead of potential profit-taking by early shareholders, helping push SpaceX below $105 in July, well beneath its $135 IPO price.
The stock’s ability to sustain the rebound may depend on whether growing confidence in SpaceX’s AI opportunity can outweigh the continued supply from upcoming lockup expirations.
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