Just as Wall Street is readying for earnings season, something comes and upends the AI trade.

SpaceX stock fell sharply Wednesday as analysts wrestled with Starlink numbers. SpaceX's space-based broadband product wasn't the reason for the decline, though. CoreWeave deserves the blame.

Corweave stock fell 17.1% to $64.50. The issue? Its bond yields hit 15%.

The AI-computing-as-a-service company had more than $30 billion in short- and long-term debt at the end of the second quarter. That's a lot. The company is expected to generate about $7.5 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, in 2026, but that is expected to grow to almost $17 billion in 2027.

Ebitda alone doesn't justify the bond scare, but free cash flow is also a problem. CoreWeave is spending tens of billions a year on AI data centers. Free cash flow is expected to be negative $27 billion in 2026 and negative $32 billion in 2027.

The company needs external capital to fund its growth. Now that capital is way more expensive. That might limit growth and crimp earnings expansion -- which can make capital even more expensive. That's a kind of death spiral investors fear.

CoreWeave is hitting all the AI stocks. Nvidia shares are lower. GE Vernova stock is falling. Growth of the entire value chain is dependent on lots of fresh captial, and now that capital is getting pricier.

SpaceX has its own cloud services business. It ended the second quarter with about $37 billion in debt and finance lease commitments. It's expected to generate $63 billion in 2027 Ebitda, though.

Investors may have hoped for a more relaxed Wednesday with no major SpaceX news. Wall Street was writing about Starlink subscriptions.

Starlink is SpaceX's space-based broadband product, which ended the second quarter with about 12 million subscribers -- roughly double the number it had a year ago.

More growth is expected. KeyBanc analyst Brandon Nispel tracks Starlink app downloads and Google search traffic and believes SpaceX added about 1.8 million new subscribers. Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu uses data from Idem Est Research & Advisory, and expects to see the quarter-end subscriber number up about 1.5 million, or about 13%, from the second quarter.

That should be enough to hit Wall Street quarterly revenue estimates -- assuming stable pricing. Analysts project $4.8 billion in quarterly Starlink revenue -- up 12% from about $4.3 billion in the second quarter.

SpaceX will likely report third-quarter numbers in early November. Its first-ever quarterly report in August beat expectations, helping arrest stock declines that followed its record-setting June IPO.

Now, investors will be looking for more detail on debt and capital, in addition to Starlink sales and other financial metrics.