'Compute lasts forever': SpaceX gets fresh Wall Street coverage

Investing.com -- Several Wall Street banks initiated coverage of Space Exploration Technologies on Tuesday, setting price targets ranging from $190 to $300, with the spread largely reflecting how differently analysts value SpaceX's AI and satellite businesses.

Morgan Stanley set the highest bar, starting the stock at Overweight with a $300 target, flanked by an "intentionally wide $75 bear case and $600 bull case."

Analysts led by Adam Jonas pitched SpaceX as holding "an 'X of 1' position in space infrastructure," and argued the market is underappreciating the company's terrestrial data-center economics, where it estimates costs run at half the industry average. They also flagged the funding gap behind that growth, projecting SpaceX will need roughly $84 billion a year in outside capital from 2027 through 2034 before the business turns free-cash-flow positive.

RBC initiated at Outperform with a $225 target, based on about 15 times its 2029 EBITDA estimate. The broker's thesis centers on compute as a durable moat, writing that "AI models and applications may come and go, but compute lasts forever."

RBC named Starship's flight-test cadence as the top near-term catalyst for the stock, alongside the pending Cursor acquisition and the rollout of Starlink's next-generation V3 satellites.

Stifel initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $190 target, the lowest of the four. The firm's thesis is built around launch economics, arguing that "lowest cost to orbit wins everything above it."

Stifel credits Falcon 9's reusability with pushing launch costs to roughly $3,000 per kilogram, a level it says no competitor has matched, but applies a lighter multiple to the AI segment specifically, citing execution risk around orbital data centers that remain unproven at commercial scale.

Finally, UBS set its target at $210 with a Buy rating, sizing the combined launch, connectivity and AI opportunity at nearly $30 trillion if Starship performs as expected. The bank forecast revenue and EBITDA growing at roughly 70% and 90% annual rates through 2031, with launch costs falling to about $200 per kilogram from roughly $1,000 currently.

UBS views the stock as offering investors "a call option" on Elon Musk's plans to make life multiplanetary, while keeping that scenario outside its base case.

The fresh coverage comes less than a month after SpaceX's Nasdaq debut. The company priced its IPO at $135 a share on June 12 and raised about $86 billion, the largest offering on record. Shares have traded above that level since, closing Monday at $160.42, though still well below the roughly $225 high the stock reached in its first weeks of trading.