SpaceX Posts First Profit as AI Cloud Revenue Surges
SpaceX posted its first quarterly profit as a public company: $4.4 billion in net income as AI cloud revenue passed Starlink to become its biggest business.
SpaceX has posted its first quarterly profit as a public company. The company, run by Elon Musk, reported net income of $4.4 billion for the July-September period, more than double what Wall Street expected, reversing a loss from the same period a year earlier. Revenue soared 161 percent to $14.6 billion, driven by its fast-growing artificial intelligence business. The stock rose 2.2 percent in after-hours trading after the results were announced.
AI cloud becomes the biggest business
SpaceX now calls its AI division "Super Intelligence." Its revenue rose more than nine times from a year earlier to $7.6 billion, passing the Starlink satellite internet business as the company's largest source of sales. The unit turned an operating profit of $431 million, compared with a loss of $1.7 billion a year earlier. SpaceX credited new cloud services agreements, wider adoption of its Grok chatbot, and its acquisition of Cursor, an AI coding startup. Its cloud customers include Anthropic, which agreed in May to pay nearly $45 billion over three years for computing power at SpaceX's Colossus data centers. Google signed on in June, agreeing to pay $920 million a month from October through June 2029.
Spending stays heavy
As with other AI companies, spending remains high. SpaceX invested $19.6 billion in the quarter, with $16.4 billion of it going to AI, bringing capital spending for the first nine months of the year to $48 billion. Its computing capacity reached 1.7 gigawatts, up from 0.6 gigawatts a year earlier. Musk said he was "fairly confident" SpaceX could bring another 10 gigawatts of computing capacity online in 2027, though he warned that power, cooling and electrical equipment were "somewhat of a limiting factor."
Starlink and Starship milestones
Revenue at the Starlink satellite internet unit grew 69 percent to $5.2 billion, and consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million. Average monthly revenue per consumer, however, fell to $69 from $83 a year earlier. SpaceX also completed the first revenue-generating flight of Starship, the giant rocket central to Musk's Mars plans and to deploying satellites at scale. The flight carried 26 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit.
Merger talks with Tesla
Musk also said on Tuesday that he would back a merger of SpaceX and Tesla. Both companies have formed special committees of independent directors to study a possible deal, and Musk said he believes it would be "a good idea," while recusing himself from the committee talks. The results come just ahead of another wave of potential SpaceX share sales. Under the IPO lockup terms, up to 1.3 billion shares owned by company insiders and early investors become eligible for sale two trading days after the third-quarter results.
Sources
Associated Press (via 28/22 News) - https://www.2822news.com/news/ap-spacex-turns-a-profit-after-a-string-of-losses-as-its-satellite-and-computer-leasing-businesses-soar/ The Manila Times (AFP) - https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/10/21/world/americas-emea/musks-spacex-turns-profit-thanks-to-computing-cloud-deals/2450286 New Straits Times (AFP) - https://www.nst.com.my/business/corporate/2026/10/1560132/musk-says-he-backs-spacex-tesla-merger-rocket-firm-turns-profit