Markets
SpaceX Posted Its First Profit, $4.4 Billion, With AI Revenue of $7.6 Billion Overtaking Starlink. Super Micro Raised Its Revenue Outlook 27%. Both Jumped After Hours
SpaceX reported third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion on October 20, up 161% from a year earlier and well above the $12.7 billion analysts expected, with net income of $4.4 billion and the first operating profit since its June IPO. Its Super Intelligence segment, compute leased to Anthropic, Google, Grok and X, brought in $7.56 billion, more than Starlink. The shares rose 8% after hours. Super Micro Computer jumped 16% after saying it will report $18.5 to $19.5 billion of quarterly revenue, not the $14.5 to $15.5 billion it had guided.
Two reports after Tuesday's close did what a week of chip-stock selling had made seem impossible: they made AI spending look profitable. SpaceX, public since June, reported third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% from $5.6 billion a year earlier and ahead of the $12.72 billion that LSEG analysts expected; net income was $4.4 billion, or 35 cents a share, against a loss in the same quarter of 2025 and a $541 million loss in the second quarter, and operating income was $2.79 billion where analysts had modelled $2.33 billion. The shares, which had closed down 0.11% at $147.79, rose about 8% in extended trading, according to CoinDesk; the tokenised version that trades around the clock on Binance went from $148 to $162.
The segment that moved the number is the one the company renamed. Super Intelligence, formerly AI, generated $7.56 billion of revenue against $6.47 billion expected and $2.56 billion in the second quarter, from computing capacity leased to Anthropic, Google, Grok and X, according to Fortune; it overtook connectivity, which is mostly Starlink, at $5.25 billion, up 69% and above the $4.92 billion forecast, with operating income of $2.37 billion. Starlink added 1.6 million consumer subscribers to reach 13.6 million, short of the 2.29 million analysts had predicted, and average revenue per user rose 5% to $69. The space segment made $1.77 billion, up 6%, including what the company called its first revenue-generating Starship mission, which carried 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
The cost of all this was also in the release. Capital spending was $19.6 billion in the quarter, and Visible Alpha's Melissa Otto told Fortune that consensus now has SpaceX spending about $70 billion this year and $197.4 billion in fiscal 2028, with debt rising from $50.7 billion in 2025 to $350 billion by 2029. The company gave no full-year forecast. It also agreed to buy 800 MHz spectrum licences from Grain Management, a deal the Wall Street Journal put at $8 billion, and Elon Musk said he plans to give SpaceX shares to "every kid in America" next year; Fortune estimated that at about $10.5 billion. The stock listed at $135 in June, peaked at $225.64 on June 16 and had spent October between $140 and $151.
Super Micro Computer's update was shorter and, for the chip trade, more important. In a filing on October 20 the server maker said it expects revenue of $18.5 to $19.5 billion for the quarter ended September 30, compared with the $14.5 to $15.5 billion it had guided and the roughly $15 billion analysts had modelled, with a gross margin of 12% to 12.5%; it will report fully on November 3. The shares, which closed at $32.47, rose 16% after hours by Yahoo Finance's count and 11% by Reuters', and the move spread: Dell rose 6% and Hewlett Packard Enterprise 5% in extended trading, and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 1% by the Asian morning.
The pair answered a question the market had been asking since Lam Research lost 17% in a week: whether the companies renting out AI compute could show cash coming in rather than only debt going out. SpaceX showed $7.56 billion of it in one quarter. The next test is the buyers' side of the same ledger, Meta's capital-spending guidance on Wednesday evening, and the fact that SpaceX is itself expected to spend $70 billion this year says the two sides of the AI trade are, increasingly, the same companies.