SpaceX posts $4.4B quarterly profit as AI revenue overtakes rockets
Elon Musk's rocket-to-AI conglomerate beat Wall Street forecasts on both profit and revenue, powered by an 830% jump in its Super Intelligence segment
SpaceX earned a net profit of $4.4 billion in the third quarter of 2026. A year earlier, the same quarter produced a $1.1 billion loss.
The numbers behind the beat
Analysts had expected a profit in the range of approximately $1.57 to $2 billion. SpaceX more than doubled the top end of that range.
Revenue for the quarter reached $14.58 billion, up 161% year over year. Consensus estimates had pegged the figure at $12.7 to $12.9 billion, so the top line also cleared expectations by a comfortable margin.
The star of the show was the company’s Super Intelligence (SI) segment. It generated $7.56 billion, roughly 52% of total revenue, after growing 830% from the prior year.
That growth came from data-center and cloud compute contracts with major customers, including Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI.
The connectivity segment, driven mainly by Starlink, brought in $5.25 billion. That figure rose 69% year over year.
AI, tech, and the markets they move—in one daily briefing.
Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy.
Starlink’s subscriber base hit 13.6 million, an 89% increase from a year earlier.
Profitability, cash, and a very large spending bill
Adjusted EBITDA came in at $8.8 billion, up 306% year over year.
The company also reported a nameplate compute capacity of 1.7 gigawatts.
SpaceX also flagged its first revenue-generating Starship mission.
The balance sheet is well stocked. SpaceX holds approximately $90 billion in cash and marketable securities.
Capital expenditure for the quarter totaled $19.6 billion, with the majority directed toward AI infrastructure. That capex figure is more than twice the quarter’s adjusted EBITDA.