This one word on SpaceX's earnings call cost it 14%, sent Nvidia higher

SpaceX (SPCX) shares closed down 13.6% on Wednesday, to $108.27, after Elon Musk used one word on the company's first quarterly earnings call: "exclusively." Musk said SpaceX's data centers "will be exclusively built on Nvidia chips, because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture." Nvidia shares rose 3.7% the same day, while AMD, cut out of SpaceX's supply chain, lost 7%.

On paper, the report beat expectations: second-quarter revenue hit $7.81 billion, up 92% year over year, and net loss narrowed to $541 million from $1 billion a year earlier. What rattled investors instead was the sharp jump in AI capital spending — $15.8 billion for the quarter, more than double the first quarter's $7.7 billion, against total company capex of $18.37 billion and a $1.26 billion operating loss in the AI segment. Musk also told Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas that SpaceX would receive "a very significant percent" of Nvidia's GPUs next year — meaning the AI bet is only getting bigger.

“And going forward, we've decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture.”

— Elon Musk, on SpaceX's Q2 2026 earnings call

• SpaceX shares fell 13.6% to $108.27 — more than 50% below June's record high of $225
• AI capex for the quarter hit $15.8 billion — more than double Q1's figure
• Nvidia rose 3.7%, AMD lost 7% on the exclusivity news

Musk's AI infrastructure bet fits a bigger picture we've been tracking: why entrepreneur Peter Diamandis thinks SpaceX could become a $10 trillion company, and how copper is nearing a record high specifically on the back of the AI infrastructure boom. But the market's reaction to SpaceX's earnings shows the flip side of that bet: investors are only willing to back ambitious AI plans as long as they see a clear path to profit, and a sharp jump in capex without a clear payoff horizon spooks them more than the upside excites them.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.