SpaceX Earned Much More Money, and Its Boss Is Looking at a Tesla Merger
SpaceX reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $14.6 billion and net income of $4.4 billion in a release issued after the market closed on Tuesday, October 20, 2026. Revenue is the money a company brings in from sales. Net income is the profit left after all costs are paid. Revenue rose 161% from $5.6 billion. A year earlier, the company lost $1.1 billion. Now it made a profit, a swing of $5.5 billion.
Most of the growth came from one part of the business. Reuters reported that SpaceX's AI revenue rose more than ninefold, to $7.6 billion. That is a little over half the total.
The second quarter was also strong. The company reported revenue of $7.8 billion, up 92% from $4.1 billion, and a net loss of $541 million. Revenue nearly doubled from one quarter to the next. The company went from a loss to a profit in a single quarter.
The earnings were not the only news. Bloomberg reported that Elon Musk said SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to explore a merger. A special committee is a small group of board members set up to review a deal. Ideally, they are separate from the executives who want it. Reuters quoted Musk calling a merger "a good idea." Bloomberg described the committees as an early step toward what would be a major merger. This is still an exploration. The two companies have not agreed to anything, have not announced terms, and have not set an end date.
The Tesla connection is not new. Tesla's report for the period ended June 30, 2026 says Tesla put $2.00 billion into SpaceX stock. SpaceX's own report for the same period says that in June 2026 it sold senior unsecured notes. Those are loans from investors, with The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A. acting as trustee. Reuters reported that SpaceX investors asked Musk about a Tesla merger before the results came out. Reuters also estimated that a combined company would be worth about $3.5 trillion, the fifth largest in the world.
Stock prices moved fast. CNBC reported that SpaceX shares rose about 8% in extended trading, the trading that happens after the regular day ends. MarketWatch reported that Tesla shares rose nearly 2% in extended trading after Musk's comments.
On January 30, 2026, Tesla shares jumped nearly 5% after reports that SpaceX was in deal talks with Musk's other companies. Those talks did not turn into a deal.
In my view, the smaller Tesla move today makes sense. Nobody knows yet who would buy whom, or on what terms. Investors are reacting to a process, not to a price.
In April 2023, a group of 17 Tesla shareholders asked the board to limit Musk's role. They argued that his work on SpaceX and Twitter was hurting the car company.
This is the question I think deserves the most attention. A merger would bring that same worry into the middle of any deal. Boards often use special committees when one powerful person is on both sides of a deal. How those committees are built and how independent they are will matter more to Tesla owners than any headline price.
For SpaceX owners, the picture is different. The quarter shows much higher revenue, an AI business doing most of the growing, and a return to profit. A merger would tie that to a publicly traded car company, whose shares follow different expectations. Whether the combination would create value is still unknown. The committees have not answered that yet.
The main point is simple. The earnings are facts that have been reported. The merger is an announced intention, with committees formed but no agreed plan. Whatever prices moved after hours are bets on what that intention could become.
