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Alphabet made 100x on SpaceX, now Nvidia reveals $21 billion stake: Why Musk’s AI push matters | Stock Market News

www.livemint.com · August 15, 2026 · 21:32

Alphabet’s early SpaceX investment has delivered a more than 100-fold return, and Nvidia is now sitting on a $21 billion stake in Elon Musk’s rocket company. The disclosures come as SpaceX rapidly expands its AI business, boosts infrastructure spending and deepens its partnership with Nvidia. Here’s why Musk’s AI ambitions could turn SpaceX into a major player in the AI infrastructure race.

Alphabet's early bet on SpaceX has already started showing colour. The Google parent said its $900 million investment in Musk’s space company in 2015 had grown more than 100 times, with its SpaceX stake valued at around $94 billion as of the end of June.

Alphabet held 551.2 million SpaceX shares at the end of the second quarter, according to the firm's filing, worth about $94.2 billion at SpaceX's June 30 share price of $170.86.

Nvidia Corp. on Friday disclosed a nearly $21 billion stake in SpaceX. The AI chipmaking giant had about 122.8 million shares in SpaceX as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing made Friday.

Nvidia's SpaceX shares came from its earlier investment in Musk's artificial intelligence venture xAI. Nvidia had earlier invested up to $2 billion in Elon Musk’s AI company xAI in 2025. The investment included both equity and debt, as per a Bloomberg report. xAI was later merged into SpaceX ahead of its planned public debut.

Harvard Management Co. has revealed a $2.2 billion investment in SpaceX, showing its gains from its early bet on Musk’s company. In its latest 13F filing, Harvard said SpaceX was its largest individual stock holding among its $4.3 billion in US equities.

Elon Musk, himself, held a 48.4% stake in SpaceX as of June 30, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday, valuing his holding at more than $900 billion at current market prices.

First, the number speaks. In the second quarter, SpaceX reported 247% revenue growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) segment, driven largely by cloud services deals with Alphabet and Anthropic.

And now Musk has already started talking about the next phase of growth. Musk said during a recent earnings call that SpaceX will use Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL723 AI systems both in space and on Earth. SpaceX will also partner with Nvidia to develop the Starmind AI1 satellite computing system.

Explaining its significance, Sidharth Sogani, CEO of Blue Aster Capital (Bahrain) and CREBACO Global, told Livemint, “Putting such systems in orbit for real-time geospatial processing and flight analytics opens up an entirely new deployment environment.”

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle currently dominate data-centre spending. Goldman Sachs expects these five hyperscalers to spend around $800 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, with total AI capex crossing $1 trillion.

A Motley Fool report says SpaceX could soon join this group.

The company spent $13 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025 and has already exceeded that amount in the first half of 2026. Morgan Stanley expects SpaceX’s AI investment to reach $110 billion by 2028, doubling annually.

SpaceX is no longer focused only on launching rockets and operating satellites. Elon Musk is expanding the company’s AI operations, backed by rapidly growing revenue, heavy infrastructure spending and a close partnership with Nvidia. If this strategy succeeds, SpaceX could emerge as a serious rival to major AI infrastructure companies, opening up a new source of growth for investors.

Sanchari Ghosh is an Assistant Editor at Mint with over 12 years of experience in journalism, specialising in personal finance, DLT & DeFi, geopolitics and foreign policy, with a particular emphasis on how these areas intersect. <br> She writes extensively about how money works in everyday life—helping readers navigate personal finance decisions. <br> As AI reshapes investing behaviour, capital is increasingly flowing into decentralized ecosystems, redefining how assets are managed, traded, and valued. She focuses on explaining how money flows within frameworks like Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), DeFi protocols, and crypto markets—while also exploring what the future of money could look like in a trustless, programmable financial world. <br> She also focuses on immigration-related issues, simplifying complex topics around visas, passports, overseas financial planning, and the many practical challenges Indians face while moving or living abroad. <br> Alongside personal finance, Sanchari has a strong understanding of international politics, contemporary and historical conflicts, and global state decisions. She closely tracks how geopolitical developments influence economies, markets, and individual financial choices, bringing together finance and global affairs in her reporting. <br> She began her career as a desk editor, which gave her a strong foundation in news writing. Over time, her interest naturally shifted toward personal finance. Before joining Mint in 2020, she worked DNA, The Times of India, Outlook Money, BloombergQuint, and ETMoney. At Mint, she got an opportunity to expand her coverage to include immigration and geopolitical developments while continuing to closely follow personal finance trends and market movements.As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour, and fairness. <br> She is an English Major and her work took her across cities including Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune. Living independently from an early age gave her firsthand experience in managing life and money on her own. This practical exposure sparked her strong interest in personal finance. <br> Outside the newsroom, Sanchari is a sports enthusiast who regularly plays lawn tennis and squash. In her younger years, she was also a national-level badminton player.

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