SpaceX’s AI Boom Delivers Profit, but Its Spending Is About to Explode
SpaceX’s AI Boom Delivers Profit, but Its Spending Is About to Explode
SpaceX entered 2026 carrying substantial losses and, after its June public debut, reported a $541 million loss in the second quarter. By Tuesday’s third-quarter release, it had reversed course: net income reached $4.4 billion for July through September.
The turnaround was led by the newly branded “Super Intelligence” division. It brought in $7.56 billion in quarterly revenue—almost triple the prior quarter and above forecasts—overtaking Starlink connectivity revenue of $5.25 billion. Musk celebrated the release with a simple “Congrats SpaceX team!” while amplifying company highlights that put quarterly revenue at $14.6 billion, up 161% year on year.
Management’s case is that demand, rather than chips, is now the constraint. Musk told investors the bottleneck for deploying “super intelligence” was “more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips.” He said SpaceX was being “hounded relentlessly” by prospective compute renters and could lease its capacity several times over.
That confidence has a costly sequel. SpaceX spent $19.6 billion on capital expenditures in the third quarter, including $16.4 billion tied to AI, and CFO Bret Johnsen forecast $35 billion to $40 billion in the current quarter as new compute comes online. He argued that deployments at current prices can repay their cost in less than a year.
Investors welcomed the earnings beat, but the numbers sharpen the tension: AI accounted for 52% of revenue while the company still posted a $413 million net loss across the first nine months of the year. Musk nevertheless projected annual recurring revenue of $500 billion to $1 trillion by the end of 2027—and later wrote that $1 trillion in 2028 revenue was “no longer impossible.” For SpaceX, the race is now to turn soaring demand into infrastructure fast enough to justify the bill.
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