SpaceX Stock Jumps 10% on Blowout Q3 Earnings and Musk's $1 Trillion Call

SpaceX shares climbed more than 10% midday Wednesday after the company posted $14.58 billion in third-quarter 2026 revenue, beating Wall Street's $12.72 billion forecast by nearly $2 billion. Adjusted EPS came in at 45 cents against an expected 13 cents.

The report, SpaceX's second as a public company, marks one of the sharpest growth arcs in recent market history. Revenue grew 161% year-over-year, which the company attributed to its "Super Intelligence (SI) segment and accelerated growth in Connectivity."

How big is the Super Intelligence business?

The AI-driven Super Intelligence segment is now SpaceX's largest business, per CNBC. Its revenue grew ninefold to $7.56 billion, up from $813 million in the same period last year. That single segment accounted for more than half of total quarterly revenue.

Profitability followed. In its SEC release, SpaceX reported operating income of $2.8 billion and net income of $4.4 billion. A year earlier, the company posted a net loss of $1.05 billion in the same quarter — a swing of more than $5.4 billion in twelve months.

What did Musk say about a $1 trillion target?

On Tuesday, the day of the earnings release, founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X: "As crazy as this sounds, $1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible."

That timeline is aggressive even by Musk's standards. In August, on the second-quarter earnings call, he estimated the trillion-dollar revenue milestone wouldn't come until 2030, with the caveat that "there's a non-zero chance of that being in 2029." Two months later, he's pulling the goalposts two years closer.

What's driving the Starlink numbers?

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, keeps scaling. The subscriber base reached 13.6 million, up from 12 million in the prior period, per CNBC. The service now operates in 174 countries with more than 11,000 satellites in orbit.

That installed base feeds the Connectivity growth the company cited alongside Super Intelligence in its earnings release.

Is a Tesla merger on the table?

Musk also hinted at a merger with Tesla, his struggling automaker, calling it a "good idea" — and he did so just hours before Tesla's own third-quarter earnings report, due after Wednesday's closing bell. He offered no deal structure, valuation or timeline in the remarks.

The comment lands at a delicate moment for Tesla, described in the source as an ailing automaker, and will likely dominate questions on its earnings call.

What happens next?

Investors have already repriced the stock: SPCX (Nasdaq) was up over 10% at midday Wednesday. The market's next test is whether Super Intelligence can sustain ninefold growth rates — and whether Musk's 2028 trillion-dollar target holds up better than his previous 2030 estimate.