SpaceX stock soars on blowout earnings that see revenue surge 161% — as Musk talks Tesla merger
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2 left · 1 center · 1 right
What happened
On October 20, 2026, SpaceX released its second quarterly earnings report since a June initial public offering, reporting about $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 161 percent from a year earlier, and a net profit of roughly $4.4 billion. Super Intelligence (AI) generated about $7.6 billion in revenue and $431 million in operating income; Starlink-led connectivity generated $5.2 billion in revenue, about $2.4 billion in operating income, and 13.6 million consumer subscribers; the space division reported $1.8 billion in revenue and a $7 million operating loss. Capital expenditures were $19.6 billion, including $16.4 billion for AI infrastructure, with $35 billion to $40 billion of capex forecast for the current quarter; shares rose about 4 percent after hours. On a livestreamed earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said independent-director committees at Tesla and SpaceX were discussing a possible merger at shareholders’ request, that SpaceX would attempt to catch Starship and its booster on the next flight, and that power, cooling, and infrastructure — not chips — now constrain AI deployment.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 4 articles
4 of 4 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
- On the record · names a source 4 of 4
- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: SpaceX, Bret Johnsen and Elon Musk
- Primary evidence · cites a document or data 4 of 4
- Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: earnings report, earnings call, regulatory filing, market data
- Credits another outlet 0 of 4
- The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Each article presents its own reporting.
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- The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Oct 20, 20:26 UTC by The Verge, naming its source. First document in the first report, from The Verge (earnings report).
- Not counted 0
- Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Right-leaning coverage presents the AI unit as the new profit engine when it has only passed Starlink on sales. The New York Post calls that business the company's "biggest moneymaker" after it overtook the satellite division. It never reports the AI segment's operating income, which left-leaning coverage in The Verge puts at $431 million. The Post instead dwells on Starlink's own operating income and last year's margins, so the new unit's thinner current profits never enter the picture.
Right-leaning coverage co-leads with Tesla merger talks, down to independent-director committees formed at shareholder request and a CEO who says he is too conflicted to sit in. Left-leaning coverage either skips the merger or folds it into one clause beside a Starship catch attempt.
How much of Super Intelligence's revenue is Cursor versus Grok versus rented chips?
Bottom line
AI now supplies 52 percent of sales in the New York Post's telling, but that outlet never publishes the operating-income number that shows Starlink is still the profit engine.
The receipts — 3 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Super Intelligence posted $431 million in income from operations
- CFO Bret Johnsen forecast $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth-quarter capital expenditures
- SI revenue was up 830 percent year-over-year
The Left View
The Verge and Business Insider frame the report as SpaceX leaving its identity as a space company for AI, with Super Intelligence now the largest segment after the Cursor deal, new cloud agreements, and Grok adoption. They emphasize a spending acceleration — AI already dominates capex and is guided to roughly double this quarter — while noting CFO Bret Johnsen’s claim that new compute is “generating a payback of less than a year” and Musk’s remark that SpaceX is “hounded relentlessly” by hyperscalers for leases, with a target of splitting capacity about 50/50. Business Insider flags the unit’s rebrand to SpaceXSI after Musk’s alignment with President Donald Trump’s preferred term “super intelligence.” The Verge additionally highlights Musk’s projection that Starlink could generate “several hundred billion dollars a year.”
The Right View
The New York Post casts the results as a “blowout” that sent the stock soaring, arguing AI has overtaken Starlink as the biggest moneymaker and that SpaceX now commands an estimated $2.01 trillion market capitalization — “roughly 13 times as much as Boeing and 16 times as much as Lockheed Martin.” It foregrounds Musk’s support for combining with Tesla (“Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes”) despite recusing himself from the talks, and treats the post-xAI mix of Grok, X, and cloud leasing as a successful evolution beyond rockets. The coverage also stresses Starlink’s still-high margins and Musk’s operational claims: infrastructure buildout likened to “the New York Yankees playing in Little League,” “often four days a week, night and day” in Memphis bringing a second cluster online, and a dual Starship catch as “a massive technology milestone.”
Our Take (balanced)
Left-leaning coverage’s strongest argument is that the beat is an AI-infrastructure story whose costs are still exploding: the new segment now supplies most of the revenue, capex is guided to roughly double immediately, and Musk’s own constraint (power and cooling, not chips) implies the spending race is not over. Right-leaning coverage’s strongest argument is the scoreboard and the market’s reaction — a swing to large quarterly profit, AI already bigger than Starlink, a 4 percent after-hours rise, and a valuation multiples above legacy aerospace — plus Musk putting a Tesla merger and a dual Starship catch on the record. The central unresolved tension is whether those results show a durable high-return compute business or a founder-concentrated conglomerate whose next leap (a still-larger capex wave and a possible Tesla combination) remains untested.
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