SpaceX just printed a $4.4 billion net profit for the July–September quarter. A massive turnaround from the $1.1 billion loss recorded in the same period last year. Total revenue more than doubled, climbing 161% to $14.6 billion. The driver? The company’s new Super Intelligence (SI) division, which generated $7.6 billion in revenue—an 830% jump from $813 million a year ago. This segment now accounts for over half the company’s total income, fueled by cloud service deals and the acquisition of Cursor.
Starlink remains the cash cow. The connectivity arm brought in $5.2 billion, up 69% year-on-year, with operating income nearly doubling to $2.4 billion. Subscriber count hit 13.6 million by September 30, adding 1.6 million users in just three months. Average revenue per user ticked up to $69, up from $66 in the prior quarter. Meanwhile, traditional space activities contributed $1.8 billion, a modest 6% increase, as the company completed 12 customer launches.
The growth isn’t cheap. Capital expenditure exploded to $19.6 billion in Q3, against $6.9 billion in the same period last year. Most of that went into computing infrastructure. SpaceX’s computing capacity reached 1.7 gigawatts by end-September, up from 0.6 gigawatts a year earlier. The CFO emphasized a focus on “capital efficiency” and maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet despite the heavy spend.
Look to the Starship program for the next leg of growth. The first orbital Starship flight delivered 26 Starlink V3 satellites, adding roughly 10 times the downlink capacity of a standard Falcon 9 launch. With AI infrastructure scaling and Starlink density increasing, SpaceX is betting on a dual-engine model: high-margin software/infrastructure and high-volume connectivity.