Elon Musk Says SpaceX Could Hit a $1 Trillion Revenue Run Rate by the End of 2027
Elon Musk just moved his trillion-dollar revenue target for SpaceX up by years, and the stock surged after hours, but the math behind his boldest claim deserves a much harder look.
On October 20, 2026, SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) reported third-quarter results. On the earnings call, Elon Musk said SpaceX’s annual recurring revenue by the end of 2027 would be “somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion.”
Later that night, Elon Musk went further in a post on X: “As crazy as this sounds, $1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible”. The quarter was excellent, but that number is a dream, and part of the share price likely depends on it.
The stock closed at $147.79, down 0.11% for the regular session, leaving the company with a market value of about $2.01 trillion. In after-hours trading, it reached $159.70 as of 7:59 p.m. ET, a gain of 8.06%.
Shares are still trading below their first close on June 12, 2026. At the October 20 close, they were 8.18% under that level, inside a 52-week range of $104.83 to $225.64.
What Musk Actually Claimed About Run Rate
Annual recurring revenue, or run rate, takes one month or one quarter of revenue and multiplies it out to a full year. It measures selling speed at a point in time. The revenue actually booked over a full year can come in well below it.
End-of-2027 run rate looks better than calendar 2027 revenue would. For a business growing this fast, that figure is built on the last month after a full year of growth. Musk linked the range to Grokbot, which he said: “may end up being what uses most of our superintelligence compute.”
Chief financial officer Bret Johnsen said SpaceX remains on track for its previously stated goal of $100 billion in run rate by the end of 2026, measured on December revenue.
The formal guidance covers a much shorter period. Bret Johnsen said, “We now see total company revenues in the range of $33 billion to $37 billion for Q1 of 2027.” Third-quarter revenue was $14.58 billion.
Bret Johnsen also guided fourth-quarter capital spending, the money that goes into equipment and facilities, to $35 billion to $40 billion, which is the cost of meeting the target.
A Trillion-Dollar Target That Keeps Moving Earlier
On the August 4, 2026, second-quarter call, Musk said the internal target for a trillion dollars in annual revenue had moved up from 2031 to 2030, with a chance of 2029. The X post moves it to 2028.
When management pulls a target forward twice in a few months, it tells you it sees demand speeding up, and it also makes a miss more expensive because each new date becomes the benchmark investors hold the company to.
However, things can go right for the trillion to come true.
Computing capacity drives the plan. SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 gigawatts of nameplate capacity, which is the maximum its hardware is rated for. Bret Johnsen expects 2.5 to 3 gigawatts by year-end, and Elon Musk said he is fairly confident of adding 10 gigawatts in 2027. All that capacity has to be powered, cooled, and connected. That is the thread we pulled on in a free report on seven AI infrastructure suppliers that aren’t chipmakers.
Demand looks real so far. Bret Johnsen put backlog at $63 billion, and he expects about $42 billion of it to turn into revenue within a year. Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer, said Grok had “paid weekly users of 800,000 earlier this month, more than doubling over the last month.”
Revenue rose 161% from $5.6 billion a year earlier, and that growth now hits the bottom line: net income was $4.4 billion, up from a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA grew 306% to $8.8 billion, though capital spending of $19.6 billion still exceeded it. EPS of 35 cents beat the Zacks Investment Research consensus of 10 cents.
The Super Intelligence division, SpaceX’s AI business, brought in $7.6 billion and passed Connectivity, which includes Starlink, at $5.2 billion. Starlink added 1.6 million consumer subscribers to reach 13.6 million. Separately, Musk said SpaceX and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) have formed special committees to discuss a merger.
What the Guidance Means for SPCX Shareholders
The research case for SPCX can still hold up. Without the trillion-dollar run rate coming true, the formal first-quarter guidance alone sits far above the quarter SpaceX just reported, and the business is now profitable even with heavy spending.
The main risk is funding. Fourth-quarter spending guidance is well above third-quarter revenue, so any slip in bringing computing capacity online would quickly hit cash flow. If the fourth-quarter report shows December run rate below Johnsen’s $100 billion goal or first-quarter 2027 revenue under $33 billion, the bullish case weakens.
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Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
