SpaceX's Profit Turnaround Is Real — the $40 Billion Question Is How to Pay for It
Published on 10/25/2026 at 03:03 | Editorial boerse-global.de
SpaceX posted its first meaningful profit as a public-facing growth story this week. The harder puzzle sits on the other side of the ledger: how to fund an AI buildout whose quarterly price tag is now larger than the revenue the company booked a year ago.
Results published Tuesday showed third-quarter 2026 revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% year over year, according to Reuters. Net income came in at $4.4 billion, reversing a $1.1 billion loss in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA reached $8.8 billion.
Those headline numbers carry real weight, but they answer a narrower question than the one investors are now asking. A profit-and-loss statement captures one period's business success. It says nothing about the cash SpaceX must lay out to keep expanding. In the third quarter alone, capital expenditure hit $19.6 billion, of which $16.4 billion went to AI. Chief financial officer Bret Johnsen has guided to $35–40 billion of investment in the current quarter.
The AI engine is outrunning Starlink
The segment detail explains the urgency. AI revenue reached $7.6 billion in the quarter, ahead of the $6.3 billion analysts had expected and above Starlink's $5.2 billion. Johnsen has said new computing capacity pays for itself in under a year at current prices — a strong economic argument for expansion, with one important caveat: that math holds at today's prices and offers no guarantee for every future facility.
That is where the funding conversation begins. Bloomberg reported that negotiations over roughly $40 billion in debt financing are coming under pressure as higher credit costs complicate the picture. The plan under discussion would have a special purpose vehicle finance Nvidia chips and other AI infrastructure, keeping the associated debt off SpaceX's balance sheet and protecting its investment-grade rating. Goldman Sachs is negotiating with investors including Apollo Global Management; terms and timing remain open.
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The structure is more than an accounting exercise. It is meant to let the company invest at scale while preserving its credit quality. Market volatility driving up the price of that debt, however, pits the growth plan directly against lenders' return requirements — and the vehicle itself does not resolve that conflict.
A precedent worth remembering
How difficult off-balance-sheet treatment can be was illustrated by an earlier episode. Media reports said a failed off-balance-sheet financing at xAI left SpaceX booking roughly $13 billion as its own debt. That does not mean the new structure will fail. It does set a clear test: what matters is not only where an obligation first appears, but whether the intended treatment holds up. Rating protection is the goal of the transaction, not a secured outcome.
Elon Musk has said power supply, cooling and infrastructure — not chip availability — are the binding constraints on the buildout. Capital, increasingly, looks like a fourth.
Starlink's battlefield test, and a rating upgrade
Operationally, there was encouraging news on the connectivity side. Starlink communications were restored in Ukraine at speeds above 400 km/h, Reuters reported, citing Ukraine's defense minister. The development is a solid operational signal: it shows satellite communications working again under those conditions. It does not, on its own, say anything about additional revenue or how long the restored link will hold. "Restored" describes the return of a function, not the arrival of a new capability — worth keeping in mind before reading a larger growth story into an uptime bulletin.
The stock rose 2.1% on Friday, though no causal link should be drawn to the Ukraine news, which surfaced only a day earlier.
Sentiment got a separate jolt from Phillip Securities analyst Glenn Thum, who upgraded SpaceX from "Sell" to "Buy" on Friday and lifted his price target to $250 from $75, according to media reports. A swing that wide is a notable mood shift, but a recommendation condenses expectations rather than proving a valuation is fair. Business results and technical milestones still have to carry that weight.
The next technical hurdle is already scheduled: SpaceX said Tuesday it aims to catch both stages of Starship on its next test flight, planned for November. That is an ambitious target, not an achieved result.
Taken together, the quarter offers a genuinely stronger operating case — restored service, a swing to profit, AI revenue beating forecasts. What it does not offer is a settled financing. Until the $40 billion question is answered on acceptable terms, the price of growth belongs in the valuation right alongside its pace.
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