Musk: SpaceX Quarter to Top NASA's Whole Year Budget
Elon Musk has told investors that SpaceX will take in more revenue in the current quarter alone than NASA's entire annual budget. Speaking virtually at the 33rd Annual Baron Investment Conference in New York on Friday, Musk said fourth-quarter revenue should rise roughly 70% from the third quarter, putting sales near $24.8 billion. He drove the point home on X: "SpaceX revenue this quarter alone will be substantially higher than NASA's entire annual budget!" Third-quarter revenue was $14.58 billion.
The comparison needs a caveat
The comparison holds on one measure: NASA received $24.4 billion in regular fiscal 2026 appropriations, per a Congressional Budget Office assessment. But Musk did not specify his measure, and NASA also received $10 billion through the 2025 reconciliation law, so the claim does not hold against every measure of its funding. What is not in doubt is how far SpaceX's business has shifted. Its Super Intelligence AI unit generated $7.56 billion in third-quarter sales, more than half the total, ahead of connectivity at $5.25 billion and the space segment at $1.77 billion. Musk said US government contracts will make up less than 10% of revenue this quarter, down from 16.6% before.
Bigger bets ahead
Musk repeated his goal of an annualised revenue rate above $100 billion by December, possibly over $500 billion by December 2027, while cautioning: "This is not a promise. This is what I think will happen. This is my best guess." He also dated StarMind, SpaceX's planned space-based AI computing network co-designed with Nvidia, for first launches in the third quarter of 2027. SpaceX shares finished Friday up 8.6% at $134.27, recovering most of the previous session's drop. The company closed a $40 billion financing in October, largely to buy graphics processors arriving in the first half of 2027.
[Source: MarketSpeaker](https://marketspeaker.com/spacex-stock-q4-revenue-nasa-budget-musk/) | [Source: PakTechStan](https://paktechstan.com/article/musk-says-spacex-will-out-earn-nasa-s-entire-budget-this-quarter-as-its-ai-business-takes-over)
