Oppenheimer raised its SpaceX price target to $280 from $250, keeping an Outperform rating on the strength of the company's AI platform. Analyst Timothy Horan lifted long-term revenue estimates about 10 percent, citing the $60 billion Cursor acquisition and Nvidia-linked compute. The new target implies roughly 85 percent upside from the stock's recent level near $150.
Oppenheimer now values SpaceX at $280 a share, up from $250, betting the rocket maker's AI business can outgrow Wall Street's forecasts.
"SpaceX really is a competitor to Anthropic," Timothy Horan, an analyst at Oppenheimer, said on CNBC's Power Lunch. "It really wasn't one three, four, five months ago, and I think the world is waking up to that."
Horan lifted his long-term revenue estimates about 10 percent, which he said could compound to roughly 20 percent growth over time on higher capital spending. The firm pointed to SpaceX's vertically integrated AI platform — proprietary data, capital, Nvidia GPUs and rapid infrastructure deployment — as the differentiator. Oppenheimer estimates Nvidia's next-generation Rubin chips could pay for themselves within a year, and that SpaceX can capture all of the revenue from software such as Cursor and Grok, versus about half when it acts as a wholesale infrastructure provider.
The new target implies roughly 85 percent upside from the stock's recent level near $150, above the consensus average of $221.20 but far below Raymond James's $800 forecast. SpaceX trades at a market value of about $1.93 trillion.
Cursor, acquired for $60 billion and folded into SpaceX on Aug. 14, supplies agentic coding data that Horan said improves Grok and other applications. He targets a $100 billion revenue run rate by year-end, about 70 percent tied to AI, rising to $120 billion to $130 billion next year.
The biggest risk is spending. Infrastructure remains a bottleneck, Oppenheimer said, meaning SpaceX would likely need significantly larger capital expenditures to meet demand. The question is whether AI revenue can grow fast enough to justify the outlay and support the $280 target.
SpaceX already leases substantial compute to Anthropic and Alphabet's Google. The Anthropic deal includes $1.25 billion in monthly payments through May 2029, subject to a 90-day termination provision.
The upgrade shows Oppenheimer expects SpaceX's AI revenue to accelerate as Cursor and Grok scale. Investors will watch whether the company can fund the compute buildout and whether Grok 5, which Horan expects to be a step change in capability, lifts usage when it ships.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
