Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) just had the quarter that changed what kind of company it is. "SpaceX's Q3 was the quarter the rocket company became an AI company," Sandeep Anand wrote in his latest InvestAi Capital newsletter, titled "SpaceX Is the New Neocloud."

The shift is striking, but investors face a valuation question: how much should they pay for a business increasingly built around renting out AI computing power?

AI Is Now SpaceX's Biggest Business

A neocloud is a company that rents computing power to other businesses, often using clusters of powerful AI chips. CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWV) is one example.

The numbers back up the label. SpaceX's AI business "exploded to $7.56B — +830% YoY" and "now accounts for 52% of consolidated revenue, up from just 15% a year ago," Anand wrote.

Building that business isn't cheap. The segment "burnt $16.4B of capex in a single quarter," he added. Capital expenditure covers long-term investments such as computing equipment and data centers.

The $63 Sales Multiple

Here's the catch: "And the stock costs 63 times its sales," according to independent equity research from The Wall Street Republic. That means investors are paying about $63 for every $1 of SpaceX's trailing annual revenue. MarketDash Pro data pegs that number at 62.5.

CoreWeave, by comparison, trades at about 3.7 times sales, per MarketDash Pro data, putting SpaceX's multiple roughly 17 times higher.

The research also found that SpaceX is valued at about 71% of Amazon.com Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AMZN) market value while generating roughly 4% of Amazon's revenue.

The valuation looks less extreme using forward estimates. The newsletter puts SpaceX at about 34 times sales based on its third-quarter revenue pace, falling to roughly 20 times sales if the company reaches its $100 billion sales target. Those figures depend on future revenue materializing.

The Neocloud Valuation Problem

The label matters because AI compute leasing does not necessarily deserve the same valuation as software. The my.stock.research newsletter noted that AI now represents more than half of SpaceX's revenue, but called durable customer lock-in for compute leasing unproven.

Customer concentration adds another risk. The Wall Street Republic found that one AI customer accounted for 19.5% of revenue in the second quarter. Separately, Leaf Ye, CFA, estimated in an Oct. 20 analysis that about 75% of third-quarter AI revenue came from GPU rentals to a few AI labs on short-term, spot-priced contracts. Ye argued that the rental business deserves a neocloud-like four-to-seven-times-sales multiple rather than a software valuation.

The wider industry faces similar questions. Gartner projects that more than 80% of neocloud providers will cease operating independently by 2030, citing cost pressures and a lack of differentiated business models, according to reports.

For investors, AI growth is no longer the only question. As Anand put it, growth is proven; the debate is whether that spending earns its cost of capital.