Space Exploration Technologies Corp. reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $14.575 billion on 20 October, up 161 percent from $5.576 billion a year earlier, as a company listed on Nasdaq under the symbol SPCX. Net income was $4.4 billion, compared with a net loss of $1.1 billion, income from operations was $2.791 billion against a loss of $273 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $8.809 billion, up 306 percent from $2.169 billion. The growth came mainly from the Super Intelligence segment, whose revenue rose to $7.560 billion from $813 million, and from the Connectivity segment, whose revenue rose 69 percent to $5.248 billion.
The case that the quarter was a breakthrough rests on the scale of the new businesses. Connectivity income from operations rose 99 percent to $2.367 billion, and Starlink consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million, up from 7.2 million a year ago and 12.0 million in the previous quarter. The Super Intelligence segment moved to an operating profit of $431 million from a loss of $1.722 billion, and the company said its nameplate compute reached 1.7 gigawatts at the end of September. It added $6.7 billion of year-over-year revenue in that segment through cloud services agreements, the acquisition of Cursor, and its models and software. SpaceX also launched its first revenue-generating Starship mission, Flight 14, which delivered 26 Starlink V3 satellites, about ten times the downlink capacity of a Falcon 9 Starlink launch.
The counter-argument is that the space business itself shrank in some measures and that spending is enormous. The Space segment lost $7 million from operations, compared with a profit of $259 million a year earlier, and total launches fell to 35 from 44 while mass to orbit dropped to 476 metric tons from 525. Starlink consumer revenue per user fell to $69 a month from $83, a decline of about 17 percent, as the subscriber base grew. Capital expenditures were $19.593 billion in the quarter, almost three times the $6.880 billion of a year earlier, with $16.444 billion in the Super Intelligence segment alone, and nine-month capital spending reached $48.069 billion against $13.846 billion a year ago. Space revenue rose only 6 percent from a year earlier to $1.767 billion, though it was up 84 percent from the second quarter. Customer launches were 12, against 15 a year ago, and internal launches, mostly for Starlink, were 23, against 29.
The report matters because it shows that a company best known for launching rockets is now earning most of its revenue from satellite internet and computing. Super Intelligence provided more than half of total revenue in the quarter, 7.560 of 14.575 billion, a calculation from the company’s segment table. The company also announced Starbase, Louisiana, a planned spaceport designed for thousands of Starship flights a year, with the first launch targeted for 2029. Investors will focus on whether the capital spending can be matched by profits in the new segment.
SpaceX more than doubled its revenue and turned a profit, but the numbers show a company whose growth now comes from computing and connectivity, not launches. The test is whether $19.6 billion a quarter in capital spending earns its return.