SpaceX’s $200 Target Hinges on AI Rents That Can Walk

TD Cowen started SpaceX at Buy with a $200 target, tying most 2027 sales to AI compute leasing, not rockets. On September 29, SPCX closed at $149.24, up $3.77, or 2.59%, from $145.47. That target sits about 34% above the close.

The same note that gets there needs $160 billion of AI spending in 2027 and $225 billion of new debt before free cash flow in 2030. The largest public tenant can leave in 90 days.

TD Cowen Starts Coverage at $200 on AI Leasing

John Blackledge, the TD Cowen analyst on the file, initiated coverage dated September 28. He is not selling a Mars timeline. He is selling ground capacity rented to model labs, with Google and Anthropic named on the first page of the thesis.

Blackledge has leasing revenue at $14.4 billion in 2026, about 35% of a $40.9 billion company total, then at $66 billion in 2027, about 58% of $113.2 billion in sales. He says leasing is the majority of SpaceX revenue by the first quarter of 2027. For 2028 he has leasing at $133 billion, about 65% of sales, and more than 70% of incremental growth in 2027 and 2028.

THE 2026 TO 2028 LEASING MIX

The 2025 base in that model is $18.7 billion of revenue. From 2026 through 2031, Blackledge has sales compounding at 62% a year and EBITDA reaching $297 billion in 2031. Those figures only work if the ground business keeps filling, at prices the note itself treats as rich.

Four Tenants and a December Start Date

SpaceX, in this coverage, has four compute tenants: Anthropic, Google, Reflection AI, and a fourth buyer TD Cowen did not name. That unnamed seat is booked at $1.1 billion a month from December. At a full year that run-rate is $13.2 billion, which is almost as large as the entire 2026 leasing line Blackledge is using.

THE FOUR COMPUTE TENANTS

The desk then needs another 4 gigawatts leased in 2027 and 2028 at $46 billion to $50 billion per gigawatt. Blackledge wrote that winning those seats at those rates is the hinge, not a footnote.

The key will be securing new customers at these elevated rates.

John Blackledge, analyst, TD Cowen initiation note

Channel checks in the note describe SpaceX hunting about 10 gigawatts of extra data-center capacity, including 2 to 3 gigawatts in Southeast Asia, where builds run 6 to 9 months against about 2 years in the United States. Ground power, not payload to orbit, is the scarce input in that hunt.

Anthropic’s $84.5 Billion Deal Can Be Walked in 90 Days

Anthropic’s confidential IPO prospectus put a ceiling of $84.5 billion through 2029 on Nvidia-based capacity from SpaceX, nearly double the run-rate SpaceX had disclosed in May. That earlier figure was $1.25 billion a month through May 2029, a stack SpaceX put near $45 billion, with a cheaper ramp in May and June 2026. Those are not the same number: one is SpaceX’s May disclosure, the other is Anthropic’s later cap.

Either party can end the Anthropic arrangement with 90 days of written notice. Anthropic’s broader build is much stickier. Its prospectus has it spending at least $518 billion over a decade with six partners, with about 80% of that sum non-cancelable or payable whether the capacity is used or not. The SpaceX slice is the one that can be cut in a quarter.

THE ANTHROPIC CONTRACT TERMS

• Monthly fee: $1.25 billion through May 2029 in SpaceX’s IPO papers, with a reduced fee while capacity ramped in May and June 2026.
• Later ceiling: Up to $84.5 billion through 2029 in Anthropic’s confidential prospectus for Nvidia-based capacity.
• Exit: Either side can terminate on 90 days’ written notice, unlike most of Anthropic’s cloud spend.
• Hardware: Anthropic said in May it would take all of Colossus 1, more than 300 megawatts and more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs.
• Use: SpaceX said the structure lets it rent spare capacity and still pull that capacity back for its own models.

That last point is in SpaceX’s own registration language, and it cuts both ways. A tenant that can walk is also a landlord that can reclaim the racks.

This structure allows us to monetize unused compute capacity in our infrastructure, while still permitting reallocation of the capacity for our own internal initiatives if needed in the future.

SpaceX, Form S-1 registration statement

A headline of $84.5 billion still moves a stock. It should not be read as $84.5 billion of locked cash. It is a cap on a rental that both sides can unwind, written on capacity SpaceX also wants for Grok and for any later in-house training load.

$160 Billion of AI Capex Before Free Cash Flow

Blackledge has SpaceX’s ground capacity at 2.1 gigawatts by the end of 2026, 6 gigawatts in 2027, and 22 gigawatts by 2031. The 2027 step is the low end of management’s 5- to 10-gigawatt range. Filling that curve is a construction job, a chip job, and a power job before it is a space job.

The June listing is already being asked to fund part of it. SpaceX said it closed the sale of 638,888,888 Class A shares on June 15, including the full 83,333,333-share underwriters’ option, for about $85.7 billion of gross proceeds. Trading had started on June 12 under SPCX on the Nasdaq Global Select and Nasdaq Texas markets. The offering price of $135.00 a share is still the reference print, and SPCX now trades above it. A later quarterly filing says the company means to put proceeds toward growth, including expansion of AI compute infrastructure, launch gear, and satellite fleets.

THE CASH THE MODEL STILL NEEDS

• AI capex: TD Cowen has $160 billion of AI capital spending in 2027 alone.
• New debt: The same note has SpaceX raising $225 billion of new debt from 2027 through 2029.
• Cash flow: Blackledge does not have the company free-cash-flow positive until 2030.
• New leases: Another 4 gigawatts in 2027 and 2028 are modeled at $46 billion to $50 billion per gigawatt.

A Buy rating on a $200 card can live with that if the rents arrive on time. If a 90-day notice lands, or if the unnamed December tenant never shows, the capex line does not shrink with it. The debt still has to be sold.

Starlink Is Modeled at 107 Million Subscribers by 2031

The space side is still in the workbook. Blackledge has Starlink at 107 million consumer broadband subscribers by 2031, 10 million of them in the United States, and $84 billion of revenue. He has SpaceX approaching 1,000 launches a year by 2031, a cadence he argues rivals cannot match on low-Earth-orbit cargo for as long as a decade.

Those are large numbers. They are not the numbers that get leasing to 58% of 2027 sales. Consumer broadband at that scale is a 2031 story. The $200 target is a 2026 and 2027 story about racks in Tennessee and whatever Southeast Asian halls the channel checks are describing.

Longer-dated AI and space work, Blackledge wrote, is “an unprecedented set of AI and space-related opportunities that nonetheless may take longer to materialize in the P&L.” Orbital data centers, Starship satellite drops, and any Tesla combination sit in that slower bucket. He even flagged a conglomerate discount if a Tesla deal ever did close. The initiation does not need those options to print $200. It needs the ground leases to hold.

What the $200 SpaceX Target Is Pricing

TD Cowen is not a lone voice on the dollar figure. On September 29, Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas kept a $300 Buy target, Bank of America’s Ronald Epstein kept $235, Clear Street’s Brian Dobson kept $217, UBS’s John Hodulik kept $210, and Mizuho’s Brett Linzey kept $200. Clear Street had already hung its $217 card on AI contracts as well as Starlink. The cluster around $200 to $235 is crowded. The mix Blackledge is willing to put on paper is the part that is not.

SELECTED BUY TARGETS ON SPCX

A $200 price on $149.24 is a 34% gap, not an outlier gap. What TD Cowen added is a P&L in which the rocket company is, by early 2027, mostly a compute landlord. That is a credit view on Anthropic, Google, Reflection AI, and a buyer with no name, plus a construction view on 6 gigawatts next year. It is only second a view on Starship Flight 14 or a 107 million-subscriber Starlink book.

Shay Boloor Still Frames SpaceX as a Platform

Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, has been arguing the other stack: launch feeds Starlink, Starlink cash feeds Starship, and AI leasing sits on top of that loop. In a September 26 post he compared the stock to Amazon before AWS and Tesla before energy and autonomy, and said the market is still paying for the business SpaceX has now rather than the platform it is building.

AMZN looked like retail before AWS, Prime and advertising while TSLA looked like an automaker before energy, autonomy and robotics because the infrastructure came before the monetization.

Shay Boloor, chief market strategist, Futurum Equities, on X

That platform read and Blackledge’s mix can both be true in 2031. They are not the same bet in 2027. One needs V3 satellites, direct-to-cell, and a launch cadence near 1,000. The other needs 6 gigawatts on the ground, tenants who keep paying $46 billion to $50 billion per gigawatt, and an Anthropic ceiling that does not get walked in a quarter.

SPCX at $149.24 is a few points above the $135 listing print and a long way under the $225.64 spike from mid-June. The $200 card says the next leg is rented silicon. The contracts that silicon sits on still read like options, and the cash to build the next halls is still in the future-tense pages of the same note.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of an analyst initiation, company filings, and related public statements. It is for information only and is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell SPCX or any other security, or a prediction of future returns. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or other qualified investment professional who can review their own holdings, time horizon, and risk limits before acting. Price, rating, contract, and forecast figures reflect the cited notes and filings as of the article’s date and may change as SpaceX, Anthropic, and the covering desks update their numbers.