SpaceX posts $4.4 billion third-quarter profit, ending more than a year of deficits

SpaceX posted a net profit of $4.4 billion for the third quarter of 2026 on October 20, 2026, ending more than a year of operational deficits.

Consolidated revenue reached $14.6 billion in the third quarter of 2026, up 161 percent year over year from $5.6 billion, driven by Starlink broadband expansion and enterprise demand for high-performance computer leasing. The Super Intelligence segment generated $7.56 billion in third-quarter 2026 revenue, making it SpaceX’s largest revenue contributor at 51.9 percent of the total.

The result compares with a net loss of $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2025. Diluted earnings per share (profit allocated to each share after accounting for all potential shares) were $0.35 in the third quarter of 2026, exceeding Wall Street expectations of about $0.13 to $0.16. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) reached $8.8 billion in the third quarter of 2026, up 306 percent year over year.

Starlink added 1.6 million consumer subscribers in Q3 2026, reaching 13.6 million at September 30, up from 7.2 million a year earlier. Consumer average revenue per user was $69, up from $66 in the second quarter but down from $83 a year ago. Connectivity gross margins were 55 percent, including a 3-percentage-point benefit from tariff refunds, on $5.2 billion revenue, up 69 percent year over year. Bret Johnsen pointed to “continued momentum in the connectivity business.”

Starlink was active in 174 markets at the end of Q3 2026, including Vietnam and Uganda. Starlink is contracted for roughly 12,000 aircraft, covering three of the four major U.S. carriers plus Lufthansa, Swiss, Copa Airlines, Korean Air, Austrian Airlines and Asiana Airlines.

Starlink Mobile passed 22 million monthly users in Q3 2026, up 37 percent quarter over quarter. SpaceX expects a few hundred Starlink V3 satellites before users see sustained performance improvements in high-demand areas by the middle of next year. The Federal Communications Commission approved 15,000 Starlink Mobile V2 satellites.

SpaceX completed 35 launches in Q3 2026, including 21 Starlink Falcon 9 missions, two Starship flights, one Falcon Heavy, 12 customer missions, and six national-security missions. 12 were customer missions and 23 were internal; the first revenue-generating Starship flight delivered 26 Starlink V3 satellites.

Capital expenditures totaled $19.6 billion in the third quarter of 2026, nearly tripling year over year. Management forecast fourth-quarter spending of $35 billion to $40 billion to finance Starship manufacturing lines and Starlink Gen3 satellites with onboard artificial intelligence processing. Super Intelligence capital expenditure was $16.444 billion in Q3 2026, 2.2 times its own revenue and 84 percent of the company total; nameplate compute reached 1.7 gigawatts at September 30, up from 1.4 gigawatts at June 30 and 0.6 gigawatts a year earlier.

Compute capacity will grow to as much as 3 gigawatts by the end of 2026, with Musk expecting to add 10 gigawatts in 2027 for at least 13 gigawatts total. SpaceX acquired Cursor during Q3 2026, and $608 million of Super Intelligence solutions and infrastructure revenue came from that acquisition. Musk said SpaceX intends to favor short-term compute agreements over long-term contracts because it expects compute value per watt to rise as AI models improve.

The Super Intelligence segment was called Artificial Intelligence. Super Intelligence posted its first Q3 2026 operating profit of $431 million, against a $1.257 billion Q2 loss and a $1.722 billion year-ago loss; its margin was 5.7 percent versus 45.1 percent for Connectivity. Super Intelligence revenue rose $5 billion sequentially and $6.7 billion from a year earlier, with adjusted EBITDA of $5 billion.

Super Intelligence revenue rose 830 percent in Q3 2026 while Connectivity grew 69 percent. The Space segment rose 6 percent to $1.77 billion in Q3 2026. Super Intelligence is SpaceX’s renamed AI segment covering cloud services, models and applications such as Grok.

For the nine months to September 30, 2026, SpaceX remained $413 million in the red because first-half losses had not been fully earned back. Q3 2026 revenue was up 87 percent from Q2 2026 revenue of $7.814 billion. Income from operations swung to $2.791 billion in Q3 2026 from a $143 million loss in Q2 and a $273 million loss a year earlier.

The operating business supplied about 63 percent of the $4.404 billion Q3 2026 net income; roughly $1.613 billion, or 37 percent, came from below the operating line. About $873 million of Q3 2026 interest income came from the cash pile from SpaceX’s June initial public offering.

The $561 million related-party item was an unrealized fair-value gain on SpaceX’s investment in The Boring Company, not Super Intelligence revenue or operating cash flow. SpaceX held $51.294 billion of cash and equivalents at September 30, 2026, and bought $46.8 billion of marketable securities during the nine months. The October 22 Form 10-Q identifies 18,712 bitcoin valued at $1.573 billion.

SpaceX ended the third quarter of 2026 with $63 billion of backlog, including $17.5 billion of deferred revenue, and expects about $42 billion to be recognized within the next year. SpaceX shares closed at $147.79 on October 20, 2026, after the June market debut, then rose 2.2 percent in after-hours trading.

SpaceX plans its next Starship integrated test flight for November, attempting to capture both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage with launch tower mechanical arms at Starbase, Texas. Starship Flight 14 reached orbit for the first time and deployed Starlink V3 satellites; Flight 15 is expected next month with an attempt to recover both booster and ship using the tower. Musk set an internal target for the first Starship launch from the Louisiana Spaceport in 2028, called a 2029 first launch highly likely, and expects scale launches from the site in 2029.

Elon Musk said a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle is the only way to extend consciousness beyond Earth on a sustained basis and called vehicle recovery the foundation of orbital economics. Musk said SpaceX and Tesla formed independent special committees to discuss a potential merger at shareholder request, with no terms agreed and no guarantee of a deal. Musk described the potential combination as having “a lot of merit.” SpaceX reaffirmed a goal of $100 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026 and plans to raise Starship launch frequency in 2027.