Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day’s news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here.
Greetings!
Elon Musk fans have never had so many opportunities to hear from the man. On Tuesday, his newly public SpaceX will deliver its first earnings report, and we all expect Musk will be on the earnings call, in what would be his second call this earnings season following Tesla’s a couple of weeks earlier. (For a more expansive rundown of what will be a crowded earnings week, see below).
Two days after SpaceX’s earnings report comes out, on Thursday, SpaceX’s first lockup restrictions on early shareholder selling expire. That will bring hundreds of millions of extra shares onto the market, dramatically expanding the float. Lockup expirations typically put downward pressure on a stock in the weeks before they occur, and SpaceX has been no different: Its stock has fallen steadily in recent weeks. SpaceX closed Friday at $108.37, 49% lower than its post-IPO peak and 20% below its IPO price.
Fair’s fair, of course. SpaceX was ridiculously overvalued at the IPO price of $135, and with a market capitalization now of $1.4 trillion, it’s still vastly overvalued. Then again, value investing isn’t a concept Musk acolytes would understand.
All that said, we’d bet SpaceX stock bounces a bit this week, if only because of what’s likely to be an upbeat financial report. Wall Street analysts are projecting revenue for the June quarter of $6.819 billion. We don’t know what growth that represents—SpaceX’s IPO filing didn’t contain 2025 quarterly numbers—but given that the company’s revenue for all of 2025 was $18.6 billion, the estimate likely represents a decent increase on last year. In the first quarter, moreover, SpaceX had reported $4.69 billion, an increase of 15% on the year-earlier period.
Alongside revenue growth, however, we’ll see how badly SpaceX is bleeding cash. Analysts are estimating the company will report a cash burn of $10.9 billion, thanks to $14 billion in capital expenditures, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. (In the first quarter, SpaceX reported capex of $10 billion.) While SpaceX is spending a fraction of the $40 billion to $50 billion each of the big cloud firms is currently laying out on capex every quarter, its revenue is a fraction of what the cloud giants bring in, which means it doesn’t have the same deep pockets.
Analysts project SpaceX’s capex will double next year, to $25 billion in the June quarter of 2027. One reason that’s important to track is that there’s a very good chance SpaceX and Tesla will merge. And Tesla, as it revealed when it reported earnings, is now burning cash itself, thanks to capex increases. What a combination that would be.
What Else Is Coming
SpaceX’s earnings report is coming during what will be a busy earnings week. Also reporting are Snap, Pinterest, Palantir, Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Shopify, Spotify, AMD and Instacart, among others. Yes, that’s a lot.
Here’s a rundown of what to expect, with the estimates courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Snap (Monday)
Revenue: $1.53 billion +13.9%
Earnings per share: (12 cents)
Snap stock has been bumping along the ground lately, thanks to a stalled ad business. In the first quarter, for instance, ad revenue rose just 2.7%, while growth in revenue from subscriptions helped lift overall growth to 12%. We’ll be watching to see whether the ad business improves.
Palantir (Monday)
Revenue: $1.8 billion +81%
EPS: 31 cents +138%
Palantir has been on a tear lately, thanks to the popularity of its AI software services with both governments and businesses. Its revenue growth rate doubled to 56% last year and is expected to increase to 73% for all of this year. Palantir, after all, invented the concept of the forward deployed engineer, a fancy term for a consultant who helps clients with software. Lots of tech companies trying to sell AI to businesses have embraced both the title and the concept.
Spotify (Tuesday)
Revenue: 4.79 billion euros +14%
EPS: 2.75 euros compared with a loss of 0.42 euros a year earlier
Spotify’s growth lately has been driven by price increases, supported by the introduction of new tiers to reflect its expanding array of services, such as audiobooks and podcasts. Its ad business has been lagging, however.
AMD (Tuesday)
Revenue: $11.3 billion +47%
EPS: $1.05 +94%
AMD is a longtime laggard in chips, but AI is the wave that lifts all boats. AMD’s growth accelerated sharply last year, and the compant is expected to grow even quicker this year, thanks to a shortage of central processing units and of AMD’s AI chips.
Uber (Wednesday)
Revenue: $14.265 billion +12.7%
EPS: 83 cents +31.7%
The ride-hailing and food-delivery firm’s revenue growth has slowed a bit this year, although mostly for a technical accounting reason related to how Uber reports its bookings in Britain. The change shrank reported revenue. The trajectory of the business remains solid, with gross bookings expanding 25% in the first quarter, for instance. Like DoorDash, Uber is growing in food delivery through overseas acquisitions: It recently struck a $14.8 billion deal to buy Delivery Hero, which is based in Germany but has a global presence.
DoorDash (Wednesday)
Revenue: $4.337 billion +32%
EPS: 47 cents –28%
The restaurant-delivery service has gotten an uptick in growth from acquisitions such as that of European firm Deliveroo last fall. In the first quarter, for instance, DoorDash reported 33% revenue growth but—excluding the contribution of Deliveroo, which DoorDash didn’t own in the year-earlier period—growth was 21%.
Shopify (Wednesday)
Revenue: $3.44 billion +28%
EPS: 30 cents –57%
The e-commerce software company continues to post robust growth even as it responds to the emergence of AI with new products aimed at taking advantage of AI search and shopping tools.
Airbnb (Thursday)
Revenue: $3.575 billion +16%
EPS: $1.25 +21%
Airbnb’s growth has picked up this year after slowing to 10% last year. This quarter likely benefited from the World Cup in particular.
Instacart (Thursday)
Revenue: $1.025 billion +12%
EPS: 54 cents +32%
Instacart is the steady Eddie of the tech sector. It grows revenue very consistently at an 11% to 12% rate, with expansion coming in both its core grocery-delivery business and advertising. This quarter promises more of the same.
In Other News
• OpenAI is preparing to release a new model family, tentatively using the name “Astra,” with improved abilities to complete long-running tasks, according to three people briefed on the plans.
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk denied a Wall Street Journal report that the company was considering selling off its business in China to prepare for a merger with SpaceX. Musk said the report was “fake news” in a post on X Friday morning.
• Amazon has completed its $50 billion investment in OpenAI, putting in the remaining $35 billion in two stages in recent months, the commerce and cloud firm revealed in a securities filing on Friday.
• Chinese AI firm MiniMax on Friday announced a new open-source video-generation model, H3, heating up its competition with AI video rivals like ByteDance and Google.
• SemiAnalysis Capital Fund I, a new venture capital fund managed by Dylan Patel, founder of chip and infrastructure research firm SemiAnalysis, is targeting raising $400 million, according to a securities filing.
• Chinese AI developer DeepSeek’s release on Friday of a smaller version of its flagship V4 open-source model is causing a stir.
Friday on The Information’s TITV
Check out Friday’s episode of TITV in which we discuss the Anthropic hack, OpenAI’s new pricing structure and Thinking Machines Lab’s latest model with a benchmarking expert.
Recommended Newsletter
Start your day with Applied AI, the newsletter from The Information that uncovers how leading businesses are leveraging AI to automate tasks across the board. Subscribe now for free to get it delivered straight to your inbox twice a week.
Join us to explore the real-world shifts, new architectures, and enterprise strategies defining the next era of AI. Secure your spot today to hear directly from top minds at Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Atlassian, and more.
Tickets on sale now: The Information returns to Napa Valley October 27–28 to convene senior women across tech, media, and finance. Join us for two days of intimate, candid conversations with the leaders navigating today’s global shifts.
