SpaceX conference call: Musk says computing capacity is expected to exceed 13 gigawatts next year, with ARR potentially reaching $1 trillion.

October 21 — SpaceX announced its third-quarter 2026 results. As of September, the company's revenue grew 161% year-over-year to $14.58 billion, exceeding analysts' expectations of approximately $12.8 billion by more than 10%; net profit turned to a gain of $4.4 billion from a loss of $1.1 billion in the same period last year, and adjusted EBITDA grew 306% year-over-year to $8.8 billion. Among this, the superintelligent cloud services business achieved quarterly revenue of $7.6 billion, an increase of $5 billion quarter-over-quarter. On the earnings call, management stated that AI compute demand is currently robust, and the payback period for newly deployed compute has shortened to less than one year. Musk even expects that, as demand and pricing continue to strengthen, the payback period could further shorten to 6 months in the future.

Regarding AI compute expansion, Musk stated that by the end of 2026, SpaceX expects to have 2.5 to 3 GW of compute in operation, and is confident in adding 10 GW of compute in 2027; if less than 13 GW of compute is online by the end of 2027, he would be surprised. To avoid power and cooling becoming expansion bottlenecks, the company plans to add an additional 20 GW of power supply and cooling infrastructure in 2027, and continue deploying Nvidia GPUs, with approximately 200,000 GB300 units expected to come online per month for the remainder of this year, while next year it will primarily deploy Vera Rubin computing systems. In addition, the company plans to deploy a training cluster composed of 440,000 Vera Rubin computers by the end of the second quarter of 2027 to support the Grok large model. Musk also expects SpaceX's annual recurring revenue (ARR) to potentially reach $500 billion to $1 trillion by the end of 2027. Grok Bot (an agent assistant) launched in August and, as of early this month, had 800,000 paid weekly active users, doubling from the previous month. B2B is the fastest-growing business category, with more and more enterprises using Grok Bot as a productivity multiplier in sales, marketing, IT, and engineering, viewing it as an around-the-clock team member for handling complex end-to-end workflows.

Musk stated that the main constraint on superintelligence development has shifted from chips to power, cooling, and supporting infrastructure. SpaceX has assigned some of its top aerospace teams to ground-based compute infrastructure construction, and claims that its speed in deploying power and cooling facilities is expected to exceed the combined total of all other vendors. The company expects fourth-quarter capital expenditure to reach $35 billion to $40 billion, and prefers to sign short-term compute leasing contracts at spot market rates to capitalize on the current supply-constrained market environment. Musk stated that hyperscale cloud service providers and dozens of smaller enterprises are all rushing to lease its compute, and some GPUs and other computing resources are difficult to obtain in the market.

In terms of aerospace and Starlink operations, Musk stated that the 15th test flight of Starship is scheduled for next month, with the goal of attempting for the first time to recover both the booster and the spacecraft during an orbital mission; the company expects Starship to achieve weekly flights in the first half of next year and increase to twice per week or higher in the second half. Musk also said that a single deployment of V3 Starlink satellites can provide bandwidth equivalent to 10 Falcon 9 launches, and the Starlink network bandwidth is expected to reach approximately 100 times the current level within three years to meet the communication demands brought by the development of AI agents. Starlink's direct-to-cell mobile service has surpassed 22 million monthly active users, aviation terminal production is expected to double by the end of this year, and revenue from enterprise and government businesses is expected to surpass consumer business revenue in the future. In addition, SpaceX plans to manufacture its first functional test chip at its Austin laboratory between May and June 2027, and aims to achieve mass production at the TerraFab main facility in the third quarter of 2028.

Regarding the possibility of a merger between SpaceX and Tesla, Musk confirmed that the two companies have established a special committee to discuss the relevant plans, but no agreement has yet been reached on the merger terms. He believes the merger could have significant value, but emphasized that the deal is far from certain, still carries uncertainty, and must obtain shareholder approval. Musk stated that due to his own conflict of interest, he did not participate in the committee's discussions; according to him, Tesla would need support from 50% of all shareholders, not just a majority of those voting.