Follow-Up: SpaceX Third-Quarter Revenue Jumps 161% to $14.58 Billion; Net Income of $4.4 Billion Is Its First Solidly Profitable Quarter Since IPO as Starlink Reaches 13.6 Million Subscribers

Elon Musk's SpaceX on Tuesday reported a 161% rise in revenue for the third quarter, beating estimates, buoyed by a surge in its super intelligence business and steady growth at its Starlink satellite-internet unit, Reuters reported. Revenue in the third quarter stood at $14.58 billion, compared with analysts' estimate of $12.72 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. The company reported net income of $4.4 billion for the three months ended September 30, swinging from a net loss of $541 million on revenue of $7.81 billion in the second quarter and a net loss of $1.1 billion a year earlier. Teslarati reported it was SpaceX's first solidly profitable quarter since going public earlier in the year; adjusted earnings per share were approximately $0.35, against expectations of roughly $0.13 to $0.16; income from operations was $2.8 billion and adjusted EBITDA reached $8.8 billion, up 306% from a year earlier.

By segment, Super Intelligence (SI) revenue reached $7.56 billion, up 830% from $813 million a year ago, making it the company's largest segment for the first time; the segment posted income from operations of $431 million, against an operating loss of $1.72 billion a year earlier. Growth was driven primarily by the activation of major cloud services agreements, the integration of Cursor, acquired earlier in 2026, and rising usage of Grok models and the newly introduced Grok Bot personal agent. Reuters noted that SpaceX is making its SI money mainly by renting out data-center capacity to developers such as Anthropic, Alphabet's Google and Reflection AI. Nameplate compute capacity stood at 1.7 gigawatts at quarter-end, up from 1.4 GW at the end of June and 0.6 GW a year earlier. On the earnings call, Musk said Grok Bot was "the fastest-growing product I've ever seen."

Connectivity revenue was $5.25 billion, up 69% year over year and 22% sequentially, with operating income of $2.37 billion, up 99%. Starlink consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million as of September 30, up 89% year over year and a sequential gain of 1.6 million from 12.0 million in June; consumer average revenue per user improved to $69 per month; Starlink is now installed on more than 3,800 aircraft.

Space segment revenue was $1.77 billion, up 6% year over year and 84% sequentially, alongside a segment operating loss of $7 million. SpaceX completed 35 launches in the quarter, 12 for customers and 23 internal. The quarter's milestone was Starship Flight 14, the first revenue-generating Starship mission, which deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, adding roughly 10 times the downlink capacity of a typical Falcon 9 Starlink launch.

Total capital expenditures were $19.6 billion, of which $16.4 billion was in the SI segment, against $6.9 billion in the prior-year quarter; the company ended the quarter with roughly $90 billion in cash and marketable securities. SpaceX also disclosed that after the quarter it entered into an agreement to acquire FCC licenses related to 800 MHz spectrum to advance its Starlink Mobile strategy, with the transaction expected to close in the first half of 2027, and announced planned development of Starbase, Louisiana, a next-generation spaceport designed to support thousands of Starship flights a year, with the first launch targeted for 2029. Shares of SpaceX climbed nearly 5% in after-hours trading, The Motley Fool reported. GSM reported analyst expectations for the quarter on October 19; the actual figures beat those expectations across the board. (GSM, based on Reuters reporting and SpaceX's earnings release furnished with its 8-K)

Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 星舰点火升空（资料图），Steve Jurvetson 摄，CC BY 2.0（Wikimedia Commons）

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