SpaceX Posts $4.4B Profit as AI Revenue Surges

SpaceX beat on both lines in its second quarter as a public company, posting $14.58 billion in third-quarter revenue against $12.87 billion expected and $4.4 billion in net income against a $1.8 billion estimate, Bloomberg Podcasts reported.

The reporter Ed Ludlow said the print surprised even with capital expenditures of $19.59 billion essentially in line at $19.6 billion, because most of that capex depreciates over time, and he noted earnings on a per-share basis came in at 35 cents versus 15 cents estimated. Consensus for the AI business was $6.30 billion in revenue, up 146% quarter over quarter from $2.56 billion, per CNBC.

The accounting answers how you spend like that and still double profit.

Bloomberg Intelligence global head George Ferguson said profitability flowed through better than expected in both connectivity and AI, with Starlink showing economies of scale as revenue grew without a matching cost increase, which helps explain the push to buy spectrum for indoor coverage. That dynamic sits at the center of spacex ai and the broader debate around recent SpaceX earnings, and Ferguson flagged direct-to-cell as the next leg, not just dish-based internet.

The call also surfaced what was not said. Ludlow said retail investors had upvoted a Tesla merger question to No. 2 ahead of the call and investor relations did not put it to management last quarter either, while elon musk has said the companies work closely together but declined to discuss a deal on that forum. Separately, Ludlow reported Musk met for about 18 months with administration officials on distributing a SpaceX share to every American child via the Trump accounts program, which auto-created about 70 million accounts, covering nearly all 72 to 73 million eligible children by census.

Starship is the hinge and I would not underwrite the $26.5 trillion of future addressable markets SpaceX pitched at IPO without it, since orbital data centers and a scaled direct-to-cell constellation both require rapid, fully reusable launch at volume, and the constellation is still building, now above 11,000 satellites from about 10,000 last quarter, with Falcon 9 largely a solved problem.