SpaceX's AI business grew 830% in a year and made a $431 million operating profit
Most of it came from renting out compute, and SpaceX spent $16.4 billion building more in the same quarter.
On October 20, 2026, SpaceX reported its third-quarter results, and its AI business is now its biggest. The segment SpaceX calls Super Intelligence (it was called Artificial Intelligence until this release) brought in $7.6 billion in the three months to September 30, up 830% from a year earlier.
It also made money. The segment's income from operations was $431 million, after a loss of $1.7 billion in the same quarter of 2025 and a loss of $1.3 billion in the quarter just before.
- SI revenue
- $7,560 million, up 830% year-over-year
- SI income from operations
- $431 million
- Nameplate compute
- 1.7 GW as of September 30, 2026
- SI capex, Q3
- $16,444 million
- Company revenue
- $14.6 billion, up 161%
Where the money came from
Most of it is renting out computers. SpaceX's filing credits the growth mainly to new cloud services agreements, then to buying Cursor and to more businesses and consumers using Grok. Its line for SI solutions and infrastructure, which holds all of that, went from $359 million a year ago to $7.0 billion. Advertising on X barely moved, at $538 million.
Cursor, the AI coding tool, closed on August 14, 2026 at an implied equity value of $60 billion. It added $608 million of revenue between then and the end of September. It also cost SpaceX $1.2 billion in share-based pay in the quarter, and the $431 million profit is after that charge.
So the cloud deals did the heavy lifting. SpaceX doesn't name the customers in this release, and it says only that it signed more agreements during the quarter and grew its pipeline of capacity for third parties.
How much compute that is
SpaceX measures its AI build in power. Its nameplate compute reached 1.7 GW on September 30, up from 1.4 GW in June and 0.6 GW a year earlier, as it kept building COLOSSUS II.
Total costs and expenses for the SI segment were up $4.6 billion year-over-year, driven primarily by the continued buildout of our compute infrastructure
The spending is far bigger than the revenue. SI capex was $16.4 billion in the quarter and $40.0 billion over nine months, against $10.9 billion of SI revenue in those nine months. Across the whole company, SpaceX spent $48.1 billion on property and equipment so far this year. The IPO brought in $85.7 billion net.
The release also has a model line, thin as it is. SpaceX says it sped up Grok model releases and introduced Grok Bot, which it calls its always-on agentic SI system. It gives no model names, benchmark results or dates for what comes next.
What 1.7 gigawatts means off the balance sheet
A gigawatt is easier to picture in homes. The US Energy Information Administration says the average American household on a utility bill bought 10,791 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2022. Run 1.7 gigawatts all year and it comes to about 1.4 million of those households (my arithmetic, and a rough one: nameplate capacity is a ceiling, and the release doesn't say how much power the chips actually draw).
That matters for whoever lives near the sites. The release names COLOSSUS II but not where it is or which utility serves it, and its ability to obtain sufficient power is on the list of things its forward-looking statements cover. It also doesn't say what the build costs local grids or ratepayers. Those numbers would come from utility regulators, and nothing in this filing reports them.
For people who use the products, the change is quieter. Grok and Cursor now sit inside a company whose AI arm earns most of its money renting compute to others, and SpaceX describes the Cursor deal as part of a strategy "to vertically integrate compute infrastructure, SI models, and applications."
The rest of SpaceX
Starlink still had a big quarter, for what it's worth. Its consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million, and the Connectivity segment earned $2.4 billion from operations, more than five times the SI figure. SpaceX also flew its first orbital Starship, Flight 14, carrying 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
SpaceX says a replay and transcript of the October 20 webcast will be posted at ir.spacex.com.