SpaceX's AI business reported $7.56 billion in third-quarter 2026 revenue and $16.444 billion in capital expenditures, while Craig Moffett argued that the buildout needs customers beyond the technology sector.
The quarter ended Sept. 30. In its filing, SpaceX identified Super Intelligence as the new name for its former Artificial Intelligence segment. Revenue rose from $813 million a year earlier, making it SpaceX's largest segment by revenue.
Solutions and infrastructure accounted for $7.022 billion of Super Intelligence revenue, while advertising brought in $538 million. SpaceX attributed the increase mainly to new cloud services agreements, its acquisition of Cursor and greater adoption of Grok. Segment costs and expenses rose $4.6 billion year over year, primarily as the company continued building compute infrastructure.
SpaceX said additional cloud agreements increased the infrastructure capacity it is preparing to offer third-party customers. The filing does not identify those customers' industries or quantify how much Super Intelligence revenue came from outside technology.
Moffett of MoffettNathanson made his demand argument in an interview with Ben Thompson published by Stratechery on Thursday, Oct. 22. He said the AI investment boom ultimately requires businesses beyond the technology sector to pay for AI products and services. The interview also covered SpaceX's businesses and lessons from the dot-com bubble.
SpaceX's Connectivity segment generated $5.248 billion in quarterly revenue and $2.367 billion in operating income. The company reported 13.6 million Starlink consumer subscribers as of Sept. 30, up 1.6 million from the previous quarter. The operating-income figure applies to Connectivity; the filing does not provide a separate profit figure for Starlink.
SpaceX reported 35 launches in the quarter: 23 internal launches and 12 customer launches. Its first revenue-generating Starship mission carried 26 Starlink V3 satellites. SpaceX estimates the payload increased downlink capacity by roughly a factor of 10 compared with a Falcon 9 Starlink launch.
