Daily newsletter · Wed 21 Oct 2026
SpaceX's revenue rose 161%, and most of it came from AI rather than rockets
SpaceX's revenue rose 161% in the September quarter to US$14.58 billion, against the roughly US$12.7 billion expected. The shares closed at US$147.79, down 0.11%, before the results.
So where did the growth come from? The AI division, which SpaceX calls Super Intelligence, brought in US$7.56 billion. That is nine times the US$813 million of a year earlier. It sells computing power to other businesses and runs Grok, the chatbot.
Connectivity, which is mostly Starlink, grew 69% to US$5.25 billion. The business made money doing all this, with operating income of US$2.8 billion.
The spending is enormous, though. SpaceX put US$19.6 billion into new equipment and buildings in the quarter, US$16.4 billion of it on AI computing. It had 1.7 gigawatts of computing capacity at 30 September and is aiming for more than 2 gigawatts by the end of the year.
SpaceX spent more on equipment in three months than it brought in as revenue. That is the same bet that unsettled technology shares last week, and the results show it is working for now. The question for the long run is whether the computing stays in demand once everyone else has built theirs.
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