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By Theron Mohamed You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images Elon Musk always shoots for the moon , but he's aiming even higher with his latest suggestion. "As crazy as this sounds, $1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible," the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said in a Tuesday post on X. As crazy as this sounds, $1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible https://t.co/jF3Wue95nL — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 20, 2026 That's an even more ambitious timeframe than Musk has previously given.
He said in August that SpaceX was internally projecting $1 trillion of revenue in 2030, and there was a "non-zero" chance it could reach that amount in 2029. Musk made his latest pronouncement within hours of saying on SpaceX's third-quarter earnings webcast that annual recurring revenue could reach between $500 billion and $1 trillion by the end of 2027. In a post-earnings note, JPMorgan forecast SpaceX would generate $254 billion of revenue in 2027.
If SpaceX were to generate $1 trillion in revenue in 2028, that would represent a 53-fold increase in three years. It earned just under $19 billion in 2025. It shared its historical financials prior to going public this summer.
After the bell on Tuesday, SpaceX — the company behind Falcon rockets, Starlink satellites, X, and AI chatbot Grok — posted close to $15 billion in revenue last quarter , up 161% from the same period of 2025. The key driver was its super-intelligence division, where revenue surged 830%, from around $800 million to $7.6 billion. SpaceX attributed the growth to new cloud services agreements, around $600 million of revenue from its recent Cursor acquisition, and increased Grok adoption by enterprises.
To put Musk's $1 trillion revenue figure in context, Amazon and Walmart, the two highest-revenue companies on the planet, both generated a little over $700 billion in net sales last financial year. Musk is floating the possibility that SpaceX could generate more than 40% more revenue than either of them did last year, in about two years' time. It's unclear whether Musk is including Tesla, which generated about $95 billion of revenue last year, in his newest revenue figure.
He revealed on Tuesday that Tesla and SpaceX have formed committees to explore a potential merger. Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Bank, told Business Insider by email that SpaceX raking in $1 trillion of revenue by 2028 was "pushing it." That figure "would imply such an enormous pull-forward in demand as to defy credibility," he said. Wilson added that he'd "never say never" about SpaceX hitting $1 trillion of revenue, "but by 2028 I'd say the chance is zero, whatever Elon says!" Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Theron Mohamed You're currently following this author!
Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. Theron Mohamed is a London-based correspondent on the International team at Business Insider. His coverage spans finance, investing, wealth, markets, and the economy.
Theron joined BI in 2019 as a reporter at Markets Insider and rose to the rank of correspondent before moving to the Trending team then the broader International team. He previously covered tech, media, and telecom stocks for Investors Chronicle magazine and had a brief stint on the Financial Times' Data team. He interned at the Wall Street Journal in New York where he primarily wrote for Heard on the Street.
Theron has freelanced for The Independent, The Telegraph, WIRED, and several smaller publications. He holds an undergraduate degree in geography from the London School of Economics, and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. Theron often covers Warren Buffett, Michael Burry, and other elite investors.
He also writes about the world's wealthiest people and shares financial advice from all manner of rich and successful people. Email Theron at tmohamed@businessinsider.com and follow him on X @theron_mohamed . Tech SpaceX Elon Musk More Tesla Billionaires Earnings Starlink AI
Source: Business Insider
