Rockets brought in only 12% of SpaceX’s revenue in the third quarter, according to results just published by the company. The Super Intelligence division, which houses the group’s artificial-intelligence business, brought in 52%.
Revenue reached $14.6 billion, against roughly $13 billion expected by analysts. The stock gained about 8% in after-hours trading.
The contradiction in the numbers
Out of every 100 dollars of revenue, roughly 52 now come from the Super Intelligence division. It houses the artificial-intelligence business Elon Musk has built around the group: the Grok language model, the Cursor developer tools the company acquired, and, above all, the renting out of data center computing power, so-called compute renting, to outside AI developers.
Starlink accounts for 36 dollars out of every 100. Its satellite broadband subscriptions are the group’s steadiest source of income.
Launches are left with 12 dollars out of every 100. That covers Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship, commercial missions, NASA contracts and government payloads, the business that gave the company its name.
Why it matters for your portfolio
With barely 12% of revenue tied to rockets, SpaceX as a pure play on space conquest is closer to a historic shop sign than to a reading of the accounts.
Should the company one day join aerospace or space-exploration indexes, or the sector’s thematic ETFs, buyers of those products would be holding mostly artificial intelligence and satellite connectivity. Anyone who owns funds built on a space thesis should check what is inside them.
Does the Musk system work?
The numbers say it does, provided you read them all the way through.
The operating margin runs at around 19 dollars for every 100 of revenue, helped by Starlink, which appears to have left its most capital-hungry years behind. Net income is more striking at roughly 30 dollars per 100, or $4.4 billion in the quarter, though it is inflated by items unrelated to the core business, including financial income, capital gains and tax benefits.
The line item that weighs most
The figure that deserves the most attention is capital spending. Capex reached about 134 dollars for every 100 taken in during the quarter, nearly $19.6 billion, more than revenue itself. The money goes into AI data centers, GPU infrastructure, new Starlink satellites and rockets.
Since the start of the year, operating cash flow stands at $13 billion against $48 billion invested in infrastructure. A gap of roughly $35 billion leaves little room for the idea of a space company that is sparing with its cash.
A problem shared with the other AI players
SpaceX burns cash the way most artificial-intelligence giants do, spending first and collecting later, if all goes well. The group’s risk profile now sits close to that of Alphabet or Meta, with the same sensitivity to interest rates and to the same technology investment cycle. Investors treating the space sector as a shelter from that dynamic need to recalculate.
What the market already knows
Large investors have in all likelihood known about this mix for some time. The convictions that need updating are the average retail saver’s.
On the conference call, Musk spoke favorably of a possible merger with Tesla, while warning that it is too early to treat it as done. He confirmed that both companies have appointed committees of independent directors to study it. If the deal went through, slotting the group into a traditional category would be harder still.
Before you decide
Feeling wrong-footed by numbers like these is normal, especially for anyone who bought thinking about rockets. Before making a move, work out how much of that bet is really space and how much is artificial intelligence.
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Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Tommaso Scarpellini on November 03, 2026 as «SpaceX, solo il 12% dei ricavi arriva dai razzi. Cosa si compra davvero investendo nel titolo». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
