SpaceX's Biggest Bear Just Became a Bull: PhillipCapital Flips SPCX to Buy With a $250 Target. Here's What Its AI Bet Rests On.

Honest fence (read first): Yesterday we covered the wave of target raises after Q3 and the 9% drop when up to 1.3 billion shares unlocked. We won't repeat that. This post is about one new thing: on Friday, Oct 23, the firm that had been one of SpaceX's loudest bears changed its mind, and the reason it gave.

Editorial Thesis

Upgrades are opinions. A double upgrade, from Sell straight to Buy, is a bigger change of opinion, and it's worth looking at why. PhillipCapital's reason is SpaceX's AI compute business (SI). So the useful question for a learner isn't "is $250 right?" It's "what does the SI segment actually show, and what did the analyst say could go wrong?"

Honest Verdict

Believe that PhillipCapital's Glenn Thum moved SPCX from Sell to Buy and raised his target from $75 to $250 (CNBC, Seeking Alpha, TipRanks data). Believe the SI numbers in SpaceX's own Q3 release: big revenue, a small operating profit, and capex more than twice its revenue in the quarter. Don't read the upgrade as proof the stock will hit $250. Thum himself expects 2027 revenue to come in below what SpaceX's guidance implies, because power and cooling are hard to scale.

What PhillipCapital said

Per CNBC, Thum's Friday note credits three things for SpaceX's first profitable quarter as a public company:

1. SI: "new cloud services agreements came online at higher rental prices and Cursor added US$608mn from mid-August."
2. Connectivity: "aviation installs and Starshield contracts lifted enterprise and government revenue 91% YoY."
3. Operating leverage: "higher-margin cloud services turned SI profitable."

His summary: "We like SPCX for compute demand running ahead of supply." He also wrote that contracts are renewing at higher prices per watt and new capacity "pays back in under a year." Seeking Alpha reports he raised his 2026 revenue estimate by 56% to $45.1 billion.

The caveat, also in CNBC's write-up: Thum still sees full-year 2027 revenue lower than SpaceX's guidance would suggest, because he expects delays in scaling compute, with cooling and power as the key limits.

What the SI segment table shows (SpaceX Q3 release)

Read it two ways at once. Revenue nearly tripled in a quarter, and the segment turned an operating profit. But SpaceX spent more than twice the segment's quarterly revenue on SI capex in the same quarter. "Pays back in under a year" is the company's and the analyst's claim about new capacity. It's not something one quarter can prove.

On the call, SpaceX said compute pricing is "tracking slightly above the high end of the $30 to $50 per watt range." That's management's number, and it's the core of the bull case.

What the stock did

SPCX price (markets closed Saturday): $147.49 at the Friday, Oct 23, 2026 close (4:00 PM ET, Nasdaq), up $2.74 or 1.89% on the day, per StockAnalysis / S&P Global Market Intelligence daily data, checked Saturday Oct 24 evening. After-hours it last traded at $147.58.

From StockAnalysis daily data:

Friday's move came on the upgrade and Bloomberg's cell-site report (our Starlink Saturday flagship covers that story). One day's move doesn't tell you which one mattered, or whether either will last. Phillip's $250 is about 70% above Friday's close.

The other side of the table

• DZ Bank still rates SPCX Sell (TipRanks data via StockAnalysis, Oct 22).
• The S&P Global consensus of 38 analysts averages $222.71, with a low of $118 and a high of $450.
• A target is a 12-month opinion. Firms change them often, in both directions. Phillip's own target went from $75 to $250 in one note.

Claim vs proof

What to watch next

• Mon Oct 26: the next batch of shares becomes eligible to trade (covered in our earlier unlock posts).
• Q4 results: whether SI revenue keeps climbing against SpaceX's guidance of $35 to 40 billion in total Q4 capex.
• New compute capacity: SpaceX said it expects 2.5 to 3 GW by the end of this quarter.
• Other downgrades or upgrades after the unlock.

Video note

Schwab Network's segment (3UQBlA5qlLw, uploaded Fri Oct 23 at 9:39 AM ET) covers the Phillip double upgrade before the open. Bloomberg's Closing Bell (av5igRU3210) covers how the day ended. Facts here cite the filings and written reports, not the video.