--- title: SpaceX earnings call: AI is now the biggest business,... description: SpaceX's AI compute business, Super Intelligence, is now its biggest revenue source, bringing in $7.6B in the third quarter, nearly triple the prior quarter... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: SpaceX earnings call: AI is now the biggest business, with compute spending far ahead of revenue | daily.dev og:description: SpaceX's AI compute business, Super Intelligence, is now its biggest revenue source, bringing in $7.6B in the third quarter, nearly triple the prior quarter... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3vyPb1D6D.png og:image:alt: SpaceX earnings call: AI is now the biggest business, with compute spending far ahead of revenue og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # SpaceX earnings call: AI is now the biggest business, with compute spending far ahead of revenue **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 5 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary SpaceX's AI compute business, Super Intelligence, is now its biggest revenue source, bringing in $7.6B in the third quarter, nearly triple the prior quarter and ahead of the $5.2B Starlink business. Cursor, newly acquired, added $608M. SpaceX swung to a $4.4B net income on $14.6B revenue, up 161%, though it still posted a $413M net loss for the first nine months of 2026. Capital spending hit $19.6B in the quarter, with $16.4B going to AI, and is expected to rise to $35B to $40B next quarter. Musk projects $500B to $1T in annual recurring revenue by end of 2027, is adding 200K Nvidia GB300 chips a month, and said compute capacity should reach 2.5 to 3GW by year-end from 1.7GW in September. ## Content SpaceX's third-quarter results put AI at the center of the business. Revenue rose 161% to $14.6B, and the company swung to a $4.4B net profit from a $1.1B loss a year earlier. SpaceX still shows a $413M net loss for the first nine months of 2026. SpaceX shares jumped about 8% after the report. ## AI is now the biggest segment The Super Intelligence segment brought in $7.56B, up from $813M a year earlier and nearly triple the $2.56B of the second quarter. That puts it ahead of Starlink at $5.25B. The segment mostly rents data center computing power to customers including Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI. It also includes Grok, X and Cursor, which SpaceX acquired during the quarter and which contributed $608M. Starlink grew 69% and reached 13.6 million subscribers, but average revenue per user fell to $69 from $99. SpaceX has also launched a Super Intelligence Partner Network to help companies deploy Grok. More than 130 firms joined early, among them Apollo Global Management, Nvidia, Snowflake, Databricks, Bain & Company and Booz Allen Hamilton. Some will roll Grok out inside customer businesses, others will build plugins that connect it to existing tools. Grok Bot passed 800,000 paying weekly users in October, double the prior month. ## Spending is far ahead of revenue Capital spending hit $19.6B in the quarter, with $16.4B going to AI. SpaceX expects $35B to $40B in the fourth quarter. Musk said the company prefers short-term compute contracts because he expects each watt of computing to earn more as models improve. Compute capacity was 1.7GW at the end of September. SpaceX expects 2.5GW to 3GW by year-end and says it is adding roughly 200,000 Nvidia GB300 chips a month. Musk said he often spends four days a week in Memphis getting the Colossus II supercomputer online. He said SpaceX will build 20GW of new power and cooling next year, roughly a 7x jump, and that he is confident of adding 10GW during 2027. ### Financing Musk said SpaceX has raised $40B in debt to buy GPUs, most of it callable, covering chips arriving in the first and second quarters of next year. A new SEC filing describes a binding commitment of about $40B with an Apollo-managed entity, which SpaceX calls the largest committed GPU financing ever. The Apollo vehicle will buy the Nvidia pods and equipment with private bonds and lease each delivered tranche to SpaceX. Quarterly rent covers 5% of each tranche's cost plus fixed-rate interest that is still to be priced, repaying principal over 5 to 5.25 years. Closing is expected by year-end, with leases starting as GPUs arrive in the first half of 2027. Apollo said the financing will help deliver Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips. The previous record was a $36B notes deal used to buy and lease GPUs to Anthropic. Musk also said debt markets have largely shut out AI data center companies that lack other revenue. He predicted "guppy-level death and consolidation" among the 200-plus neocloud firms, and said SpaceX won't acquire any. ## Tesla merger Both companies have special committees of independent directors studying a combination, at shareholders' request. Musk said he is excluded from those talks as a conflicted party. He called a merger a good idea, citing Super Intelligence software, chips, Terrafab, robotics and Starlink, but said it isn't certain and called it an "exaggeration" to say one will definitely happen. A deal would need approval from a majority of all outstanding Tesla shares. The numbers are lopsided. SpaceX is valued around $2T and Tesla near $1.5T, which would make this the largest deal ever. The WSJ framed the AI logic as Tesla's robotaxis and Optimus robots acting as the front end, with SpaceX's data centers and satellite links as the infrastructure behind them. Reuters reports Musk's public endorsement worried insiders working on the deal, and a source said it could delay talks by several weeks by drawing shareholder scrutiny. Bloomberg reported a push to announce before mid-2027 and said a deal could add over $110B to Musk's fortune. Bloomberg also reported Tesla has pushed engineers to switch from Anthropic's Claude to SpaceX's Grok models for coding. Wall Street is already leaning in. Only five of 60 analysts tracked by Bloomberg rate Tesla a sell, the lowest share since early 2015. Barclays upgraded Tesla to overweight and raised its target to $450 from $370, calling a SpaceX merger "a key part of the Tesla bull case." BNP Paribas and CLSA dropped their sell ratings, and BNP raised its target to $420 from $266. Tesla shares rose 6% on Monday but are still down 12% this year. ## Targets and next steps Musk projected annual recurring revenue of $500B to $1T by the end of 2027. SpaceX's own guidance is much lower near term: $100B in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, based on December sales, and $33B to $37B of revenue in the first quarter of 2027. SpaceX recently announced a $100B spaceport in Louisiana. Musk said the internal goal is a first launch there within two years, with 2029 highly likely and launches at scale that year. On the calendar, a lockup covering 1.3B SpaceX shares expires Thursday. ## Questions this post answers ### How much revenue did SpaceX's AI compute business generate in Q3 2026? SpaceX's Super Intelligence segment, which rents computing capacity to customers including Anthropic and Google, brought in $7.6B in the third quarter. That's nearly triple the $2.56B from the second quarter and puts it ahead of the $5.2B Starlink connectivity business. The newly acquired Cursor contributed another $608M in revenue during the same quarter. _Anyone weighing compute providers for AI workloads can track capacity and pricing shifts like these on daily.dev._ ### How many Nvidia GB300 chips is SpaceX adding per month for its AI compute buildout? SpaceX is adding roughly 200,000 Nvidia GB300 chips a month, and Elon Musk said the company is on track to keep that pace for the rest of 2026. Compute capacity stood at 1.7GW at the end of September, with SpaceX expecting to reach 2.5GW to 3GW by year-end. _Engineers planning around GPU supply and compute capacity can follow buildout numbers like these on daily.dev._ ### Why does SpaceX prefer short-term compute contracts instead of long-term deals? Elon Musk said SpaceX prefers short-term compute contracts because he expects each watt of computing to earn more as AI models improve. This reasoning came up on an earnings call where SpaceX's AI segment, Super Intelligence, reported capital spending of $19.6B in the third quarter, with $16.4B going toward the AI segment alone. _Teams deciding between short and long-term compute commitments can weigh reasoning like this via daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 10 comments across x (as of 2026-10-27). **TL;DR:** Replies mostly try to parse the mechanics of SpaceX's $40B Nvidia GPU financing deal with Apollo, with some skepticism about repayment math and hardware depreciation risk. **Sentiment:** 20% positive · 60% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - Leasing GPUs via a bond-funded vehicle is seen as a smart structure while chips remain scarce, similar to how airlines finance aircraft. - Some frame it as arbitrage: leasing older Colossus GPUs to Anthropic/Google for cash flow while funding next-gen chips separately. **The pushback** - Paying rent on hardware that could be two generations outdated within two years raises concerns about refresh and early-exit terms. - The repayment math implies GPUs need to generate over $40B in year one to meet the claimed sub-one-year payback, which some find hard to believe. **By community** - x (mixed): Replies focus on explaining and debating the mechanics of the GPU leasing deal rather than reacting emotionally to the earnings news. **Hottest debate:** Whether the $40B GPU financing is a savvy structure to manage scarcity and cash flow or a risky bet given rapid hardware depreciation and aggressive payback assumptions. **Open questions** - Will the H1 2027 GPU deliveries actually generate enough revenue to meet the claimed under-one-year payback? - What are the refresh and early-exit terms if the leased GPUs become outdated faster than the lease term? **Highlights** > @rohanpaul_ai $40B repaid over ~5 years is ~$8B a year in principal before interest. SpaceX's CFO claims under one year payback on SI infrastructure, so the GPUs would have to bring in more than $40B in year one. Watch the H1 2027 deliveries, when the lease clock starts. > — [MaximeRai on x](https://x.com/MaximeRai/status/2114804749673378098) > @rohanpaul_ai Leasing GPUs through a bond-funded vehicle is the airline playbook: someone else owns the asset, you pay rent per delivered tranche. Smart while chips stay scarce. The catch is paying rent on hardware that's two generations old in two years, so the refresh and early-exit terms > — [mohammadvazin on x](https://x.com/mohammadvazin/status/2114794589768835261) > @femisapien_z @rohanpaul_ai They leased out existing Colossus clusters (current GPUs) to Anthropic and Google for cash flow. The Apollo deal funds a separate mountain of next-gen Vera Rubin chips arriving H1 2027 for Grok/SI expansion plus more cloud capacity. Different hardware, total stack grows. Paybacks > — [grok on x](https://x.com/grok/status/2114795571135344872) > @grok @rohanpaul_ai ok, but if SpaceX needs a mountain of GPUS, why they leased to $ANT and google? Or the deal is an arbitrage: they lease from Apollo paying less than their charge their own lessees? > — [femisapien\_z on x · 1 comments](https://x.com/femisapien_z/status/2114795398913261594) **Source threads** - [x](https://x.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/2114791389783601622) · 0 points · 10 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The three hard-tech moonshots fueling SpaceX’s unbelievable IPO](https://daily.dev/posts/the-three-hard-tech-moonshots-fueling-spacex-s-unbelievable-ipo-na3juryxy) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [SpaceX draws $89 billion in demand for its debut bond sale, one of the largest US offerings this year](https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-draws-89-billion-in-demand-for-its-debut-bond-sale-one-of-the-largest-us-offerings-this-yea-vwpuiv68h) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#nvidia](https://daily.dev/tags/nvidia), [#ai-infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-infrastructure), [#spacex](https://daily.dev/tags/spacex) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"SpaceX earnings call: AI is now the biggest business, with compute spending far ahead of revenue","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d"},"datePublished":"2026-10-21T04:53:06.901Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T09:12:33.227Z","description":"SpaceX's AI compute business, Super Intelligence, is now its biggest revenue source, bringing in $7.6B in the third quarter, nearly triple the prior quarter...","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"nvidia,ai-infrastructure,spacex","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"SpaceX earnings call: AI is now the biggest business, with compute spending far ahead of revenue"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-earnings-call-ai-is-now-the-biggest-business-with-compute-spending-far-ahead-of-revenue-3vypb1d6d#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How much revenue did SpaceX's AI compute business generate in Q3 2026?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"SpaceX's Super Intelligence segment, which rents computing capacity to customers including Anthropic and Google, brought in $7.6B in the third quarter. 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