How SpaceX Makes Money: Starlink, Launch and Super Intelligence, Read From the 10-Q

SpaceX makes money in three reported segments: Space (rocket launches), Connectivity (Starlink internet and kits) and Super Intelligence (AI compute, Grok, X).

SpaceX has filed quarterly reports with the SEC since its June 2026 listing, and its 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, filed on 22 October, breaks the business into those three segments with revenue, costs and operating income for each. This page reads that filing, mainly its segment note and the management discussion, with the second-quarter 10-Q and the full-year 2025 figures from the IPO prospectus for scale: what each segment sells, what each earns, why revenue grew 161 percent, where the cash goes and what else the filing discloses. Earlier periods include xAI and X, because SpaceX presents those mergers as combinations of companies under common control and recasts its past results to include them. It is descriptive throughout.

The three segments in one table

From Note 18 (Segments) of the third-quarter 10-Q, in millions of US dollars:

Two readings come straight out of the table. By revenue, Super Intelligence is now the largest segment, at about 52 percent of the quarter. By operating income, Connectivity is: the Starlink segment earned $2,367 million of the $2,791 million total, about 85 percent, on about 36 percent of revenue.

The quarter's growth figure decomposes the same way. Revenue rose by $8,999 million, or 161.4 percent, and the 10-Q attributes $6,747 million of the increase to Super Intelligence, $2,151 million to Connectivity and $101 million to Space.

Revenue by type

Note 3 (Revenue) splits each segment further:

Products revenue, all of it in the Connectivity segment, came to $771 million; everything else, $13,804 million, is services. The single largest line is SI Solutions and Infrastructure, which went from $359 million to $7,022 million in a year.

Starlink: the Connectivity segment

Connectivity sells Starlink internet service to households, businesses, airlines, ships and governments, and the terminals (kits) that connect to it; it also recognizes revenue over time on multi-year contracts in its Starshield business. The 10-Q reports over 11,100 Starlink broadband and mobile satellites in low Earth orbit and service in 174 countries, territories and other markets.

A consumer subscriber is a service line, not a person: one household can hold two lines, and several people can share one. The count leaves out managed enterprise and government contracts such as aviation and maritime. The 10-Q puts subscriber growth at 88.9 percent and the fall in consumer ARPU, average revenue per user, at 16.9 percent, which it attributes to expanding internationally and adding lower-priced service plans.

Of the segment's $2,151 million revenue increase, $1,135 million came from consumer subscribers and $1,016 million from enterprise and government, mainly additional aircraft activations. Operating income doubled, up 98.9 percent to $2,367 million, an operating margin of about 45 percent.

One accounting choice shapes this segment. SpaceX records no revenue for launching its own Starlink satellites; it capitalizes those launch costs into the satellites and depreciates them, and that depreciation sits in Connectivity's cost of revenue. Connectivity therefore carries the cost of building the constellation, and Space's revenue counts only launches and work for outside customers.

Launch: the Space segment

Space earns money two ways. Launch Services, launches on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy for commercial and government customers, is recognized on the launch or deployment of the customer's payload to its intended orbit and was 64 percent of the segment's revenue in the quarter. Launch and Development, longer contracts for government space programs using Falcon, Starship and Dragon, is recognized over time as the work is done.

The 10-Q notes that every Starship launch to date has been classified as internal. Segment revenue rose 6.1 percent on fewer customer launches, which the filing attributes to customer mix. The segment's research and development cost, mainly Starship, rose 44.3 percent to $1,225 million, and the segment swung from a $259 million operating profit a year earlier to a $7 million loss. Over the first nine months of 2026, Space lost $1,211 million at the operating line.

Super Intelligence: AI compute, Grok, Cursor and X

The Super Intelligence segment, called the AI segment until this quarter, holds the businesses that came with xAI and X and, since 14 August 2026, Cursor. It earns money from:

• Advertising on X, $538 million in the quarter.
• SI Solutions and Infrastructure, $7,022 million: subscriptions to Grok, Cursor and X, data licensing, access to Grok models through an API, and cloud services. The cloud contracts sell reserved computing capacity for fixed monthly fees, typically over three years, and either party can end them on 90 days' notice.

The 10-Q attributes the jump mainly to cloud services, which SpaceX began offering in the second quarter of 2026 and sold for the full third quarter, with additional contracts signed; to $608 million of revenue from Cursor after the acquisition; and to higher Grok and X subscription revenue.

Two figures in the filing sit beside that growth. One customer, which the 10-Q calls Customer B and does not name, supplied 34.5 percent of SpaceX's total revenue in the quarter, all of it in this segment; a second, Customer A, supplied 16.6 percent across all three segments. And nameplate compute, the GPUs installed in SpaceX's data centers multiplied by their all-in power, excluding cooling and other facility load, reached 1.7 gigawatts, from 0.6 gigawatts a year earlier; the 10-Q notes this measures installed capacity, not use.

The segment earned $431 million at the operating line, against a $1,722 million loss a year earlier. Its research and development costs included a $1,022 million rise in share-based compensation on replacement equity awards granted in its acquisitions, including Cursor; across all cost lines, acquisition-related share-based compensation was $1,217 million. Over the first nine months it lost $3,295 million.

The 2026 quarters in sequence

Revenue by segment, in millions of US dollars, from the IPO prospectus (first quarter) and the second- and third-quarter 10-Qs:

The first-quarter column is reported in the IPO prospectus for the three months ended 31 March 2026, and it matches the six-month total in the second-quarter 10-Q minus the second quarter. For scale, the IPO prospectus reports full-year 2025 revenue of $18,674 million: Space $4,086 million with a $657 million operating loss, Connectivity $11,387 million with $4,423 million of operating income, and AI $3,201 million with a $6,355 million operating loss. Revenue in the first nine months of 2026, $27,083 million, was already above that full-year figure.

From operating income to net income, and the cash

The income statement for the quarter runs from $2,791 million of operating income to $4,404 million of net income. The gap comes from $873 million of interest income, which the 10-Q links to investing the proceeds of the IPO and of the bonds SpaceX issued at the end of June 2026; $1,025 million of other income, whose rise the 10-Q attributes mainly to unrealized gains on investments in unconsolidated affiliates and gains on digital assets; and a $390 million income tax benefit; less $675 million of interest expense. For the first nine months SpaceX reports a net loss of $413 million.

SpaceX also reports Adjusted EBITDA, a measure outside US accounting standards that adds back depreciation, share-based compensation and other items (what is EBITDA explains the family). It was $8,809 million for the quarter: $357 million from Space, $3,499 million from Connectivity and $4,953 million from Super Intelligence.

The cash flow statement shows the spending. In the first nine months of 2026, operating activities brought in $13,097 million and purchases of property, plant and equipment took $48,069 million, of which $39,995 million was for Super Intelligence. Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash stood at $53,386 million on 30 September, with a further $38,561 million in marketable securities, after IPO net proceeds of $85,675 million. Backlog, contracted work not yet recognized as revenue, was $62,959 million, about 67 percent of which SpaceX places within the next 12 months.

What else the filing discloses

Beside the growth figures, the 10-Q discloses:

• Customer concentration. One unnamed customer supplied 34.5 percent of quarterly revenue, all of it in Super Intelligence.
• Contract terms. The segment's cloud contracts typically run three years, and either party can end them on 90 days' notice.
• Acquisition effects. Cursor's $608 million of revenue covers only mid-August onward, and acquisition-related share-based compensation was $1,217 million in the quarter; neither appears in the year-earlier quarter.
• A possible combination with Tesla. The 10-Q says SpaceX's board formed a special committee to evaluate a potential combination with Tesla, that Tesla's board has done the same, and that no determination has been made.

Kresmion's SpaceX research page shows the stock's last daily close, the company's recent 10-Q and 8-K filings and the 13F positions of the managers Kresmion tracks. For the 2026 IPO itself see the SpaceX IPO explainer, and for the release schedule of pre-IPO shares, what is an IPO lockup expiration. How Amazon makes money reads another company's segments the same way.

Honest limitations

The quarterly figures are unaudited. Prior-year periods are recast to include xAI and X as common-control mergers, so the year-over-year comparisons do not describe the old stand-alone SpaceX, and the Super Intelligence segment was renamed from AI this quarter. The first-quarter 2026 figures come from the IPO prospectus, which reported them under the segment's earlier name, AI. Adjusted EBITDA and segment adjusted EBITDA are company-defined measures. The 10-Q does not name Customer B. This page reports what SpaceX filed; it does not value the company or say what its results or share price do next.

Key takeaways

Frequently asked questions

How does SpaceX make most of its money?

It depends on the measure. By revenue, the Super Intelligence segment, which includes the AI cloud business, Grok, Cursor and X, was the largest in the third quarter of 2026, at $7,560 million of $14,575 million. By operating income, Starlink was: the Connectivity segment earned $2,367 million of the $2,791 million total. In full-year 2025, before the cloud business, Connectivity was $11,387 million of $18,674 million in revenue.

How much did SpaceX revenue grow in the third quarter of 2026?

Revenue rose 161.4 percent, from $5,576 million to $14,575 million, an increase of $8,999 million. Super Intelligence supplied $6,747 million of the increase, Connectivity $2,151 million and Space $101 million. The prior-year quarter includes xAI and X, recast as common-control mergers.

Is Starlink profitable?

The Connectivity segment, which runs Starlink, reported $2,367 million of operating income on $5,248 million of revenue in the third quarter of 2026, and $4,423 million on $11,387 million in full-year 2025. Those figures include the depreciation of the launches that put its satellites in orbit.

What is SpaceX's Super Intelligence segment?

It is the segment formerly called AI. It holds xAI's Grok models, the X platform, Cursor since its acquisition in August 2026, and an AI cloud business that rents reserved computing capacity to customers. In the third quarter of 2026 it reported $7,560 million of revenue and $431 million of operating income.

Who is SpaceX's largest customer?

The 10-Q does not name it. It reports that a customer it calls Customer B supplied 34.5 percent of revenue in the third quarter of 2026, all in the Super Intelligence segment, and that Customer A supplied 16.6 percent across all three segments.

This page is information, not investment advice.

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Source: Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, filed 22 October 2026: Note 1 (Nature of Business), Note 3 (Revenue), Note 18 (Segments), Management's Discussion and Analysis (key business metrics, segment results, non-GAAP reconciliation) and the statement of cash flows, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026066880/spcx-20260930.htm ; Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, Note 3 (Revenue), https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026052535/spcx-20260630.htm ; final prospectus (Form 424B4) dated 11 June 2026, Prospectus Summary (three months ended 31 March 2026), Basis of Presentation and Note 19 (Segments) of the 2025 financial statements, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026042639/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm ; segment shares and margins computed by Kresmion from those filings.

Kresmion Research.