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TD Cowen initiates SpaceX at Buy, sees $200 price target driven by AI compute leasing
The investment bank projects SpaceX's AI compute leasing revenue will explode from $14 billion to $133 billion in just two years
TD Cowen kicked off coverage of SpaceX with a Buy rating and a $200 price target, implying roughly 35% upside from the company’s closing price of $148.68 on September 25. The bull case rests on AI compute leasing revenues projected to jump from $14 billion in 2026 to $133 billion by 2028.
Analyst John Blackledge pinpointed SpaceX’s emerging AI compute leasing business as the primary near-term growth catalyst, stacking it alongside the continued expansion of Starlink’s subscriber base and the company’s dominant position in commercial launch services.
The numbers behind the bullishness
Total company revenue is expected to climb from approximately $18.7 billion in 2025 to $40.9 billion in 2026, then vault to $113.2 billion in 2027. EBITDA follows a similarly aggressive trajectory, rising from $6.6 billion in 2025 to $60.8 billion in 2027.
The engine behind these projections is AI compute leasing, which TD Cowen expects to represent about 35% of total revenue in 2026 before growing to roughly 60% in 2027. In dollar terms, AI compute revenues alone are forecast at $14 billion in 2026, $66 billion in 2027, and $133 billion in 2028.
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Starlink’s subscriber trajectory
TD Cowen’s analysis projects the satellite internet service will reach 107 million consumer subscribers by 2031, with approximately 10 million of those located in the United States.
More than 85% of SpaceX’s future launch capacity is expected to support internal operations for Starlink and orbital data centers, rather than chasing third-party launch contracts.
The AI compute leasing bet
The counterargument is execution risk. Building and operating data centers in orbit is orders of magnitude more complex than doing so on the ground. Hardware failures can’t be fixed with a technician and a replacement part. Latency between orbital compute nodes and terrestrial users remains a real engineering challenge. And the capital expenditure required to launch and maintain this infrastructure is enormous, even for a company with SpaceX’s launch cost advantages.