SpaceX Capex Outstrips Revenue

Filing for an IPO, SpaceX said it generated revenue of 18.7 billion US dollars in 2025, up 33% year-on-year. Connectivity revenue rose almost 50% to 11.4 billion dollars. Space revenues were up just 7.6% to 4.1 billion dollars.

Capital spending climbed 86% to 20.7 billion dollars, as SpaceX ramped up investments in AI infrastructure.

In May 2026, SpaceX entered into cloud services agreements with Anthropic, an AI research and development public benefit corporation, to access compute capacity across SpaceX's COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II data centres. It said Anthropic has agreed to pay 1.25 billion dollars per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee. Source: SpaceX IPO prospectus

Apollo Go More than Doubles Rides

In the first quarter of 2026, Apollo Go, Baidu's self-driving ride-hailing service, "delivered 3.2 million fully driverless operational rides, with weekly rides peaking at over 350,000 in March."  Total rides were up by more than 120% year-over-year.  By way of comparison, Waymo says it is delivering 500,000 "fully autonomous" rides per week.

In Europe, Apollo Go said it is on track to commence open-road testing in Switzerland, and expects to begin testing in London with Uber and Lyft soon. In the Middle East, Apollo Go's fully driverless operations are running across multiple zones in Dubai, following the launch of the Apollo Go app in March.

Apollo Go says its fleets have accumulated more than 220 million fully driverless autonomous kilometres. Source: Baidu statement

Capital Spending by the Magnificent Seven

 

An AI arms race is sparking a massive surge in capital spending by the major cloud service providers.

Deutsche Telekom Sees Steady Growth

Deutsche Telekom reported a 4.7% year-on-year rise in revenue in organic terms for the first quarter to 29.9 billion euros, propelled by a 6.1% rise in revenues in the US. In Germany, revenues rose 2.1%.

The telco said that more than 13 million homes in Germany can now directly connect to its fiber-optic network, while the number of homes taking out a FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) contract has now reached 2.2 million - the penetration rate has climbed from 15.5% to 17.1% over the past 12 months.

T-Mobile US reported a 6% year-on-year increase in the number of postpaid accounts to 34.4 million at the end of March 2026.  The operator defines a postpaid account as a billing account which is used to bundle multiple contracted services, such as mobile communications, 5G internet, and fiber-optic lines, as well as various connected devices including smartphones, tablets, hotspots, and wearables. For the 2026 full year, T-Mobile US expects postpaid net account additions of between 950,000 and 1,050,000, up from the 900,000 to 1,000,000 anticipated at the start of the year. Source: Deutsche Telekom statements

Bumper Quarter for the iPhone

Apple reported a 17% year-on-year increase in revenues for the quarter ending March 28th to 111.2 billion US dollars, driven by a 22% leap in iPhone revenues and a 16% rise in services revenues. However, Apple's R&D spending rose 32% year-on-year to 11.4 billion dollars.

Apple said it expects total revenue to rise between 14% and 17% in the current quarter, despite supply constraints. Source: Apple statements