Shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Elon Musk’s rocket developer and artificial intelligence company, gained more than 8% in late trading today after posting earnings results that revealed the strong momentum of its AI business.
The company reported third-quarter earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 45 cents per share, crushing Wall Street’s forecast of 13 cents, while revenue soared 161% from a year earlier to $14.6 billion, surpassing the $12.72 billion target with ease. That helped SpaceX to deliver a first-ever profit, with net income coming to $4.4 billion, up from a loss of $1.1 billion in the same period one year earlier.
SpaceX also reported income from operations of $2.8 billion, compared to a loss of $273 million a year ago. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization came to $8.8 billion, up 306%, while the company’s diluted income per share was 35 cents, up from a loss of 36 cents last year.
SpaceX livestreamed its earnings call on its social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and it was a must-see for fans of Musk, who appeared alongside Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnson. The livestream began in dramatic fashion, with a video recap of the most recent Starship flight and orchestral music playing in the background. It followed by a simulation of the company’s next upcoming flight, during which it will use a huge mechanical arm to try and grab both the rocket’s booster and the actual ship in what is promised to be a “profound technology milestone in the history of civilization and consciousness.”
The livestream then switched to a cinematic view of SpaceX’s products, before honing in on the three executives seated at a table in a room at the company’s Starlink factory in Bastrop, Texas.
“In order to understand the nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope of consciousness,” Musk said in a recording played against a video background of space and the moon. The event looked more like the opening of a science-fiction movie than a corporate earnings report.
Q3 2026 Financial and Operational Results https://t.co/Qrb0qeVG15
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 20, 2026
With the dramatic visuals out of the way, Musk got down to business, and quickly generated excitement when he stressed that he thinks a merger between SpaceX and Tesla Inc., his electric vehicle company, would be a “good idea.” He revealed the boards of both companies have created a special committee to examine the feasibility of a merger.
While SpaceX is best known for its rocket-powered spacelift capability, its most profitable business by far is Starlink, the satellite-based internet connectivity division, and so these were some of the more interesting numbers that investors wanted to hear about. And what Musk said surely pleased them, as he revealed that Starlink’s subscriber base had grown to 13.6 million at the end of the quarter, up from 12 million in the prior period.
Meanwhile, Starlink’s total connectivity revenue soared to $5.25 billion in the quarter, up 69% from the $3.1 billion in recorded a year earlier and ahead of the Street’s forecast of $4.84 billion. Starlink’s consumer revenue came to $3.12 billion, while enterprise and government customers contributed $2.13 billion to the total.
SpaceX is also an AI company following its acquisition of xAI earlier this year. xAI is Musk’s AI startup, the developer of the chatbot Grok, and it also owns the X social media platform. xAI is now the company’s largest business, with revenue soaring to $7.56 billion in the quarter, up from just $813 million one year ago. Wall Street analysts had been looking for sales of just $6.47 billion there. The business is likely to get bigger in future too, for SpaceX wrapped up its $60 billion acquisition of the AI coding startup Cursor during the quarter.
The health of SpaceX’s AI business sparked a jump in the shares of companies such as Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp., up 2% and 3% respectively, as well as neocloud providers like CoreWeave Inc. and Nebius Group N.V., which gained 5% and 6% respectively.
In the video, Musk laid out some ambitious goals for increasing the company’s data center capacity, saying he wants to grow this to 20 gigawatts by the end of 2027, up from just 1.7 gigawatts today. While many investors have raised concerns about the sustainability of compute demand, SpaceX’s numbers and plans suggest that Musk does not feel the same way.
On the contrary, Musk said SpaceX has been “hounded relentlessly by every hyperscaler and dozens of smaller companies to rent more of our compute.”
Musk also said that compute prices have increased to a point where the company can generate a return on its data center investments within just 12 months, and he believes that this window could shorten to just six months by this time next year. But such a payback will be necessary, for the company revealed bold ambitions to grow its capital expenditure over the next year. SpaceX is planning to spend between $35 billion and $40 billion on data center infrastructure in the current quarter, up from $19.6 billion spent in the previous quarter.
Moving on to the forecast, Johnson took over, saying that the company is on track to hit a $100 billion annual recurring revenue run rate by the end of the year. That number could grow to as much as $500 billion to $1 trillion by the end of 2027, he said, thanks in part to the growing adoption of the company’s chatbot Grok.
For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2027, SpaceX is targeting revenue of between $33 billion and $37 billion, well ahead of the Street’s estimate of $22 billion.