Ten spokes. The bets that decide whether it all works.

The profit engine: the only profitable SpaceX segment in Q2. AI compute rentals (Google pays about $920M a month from Oct 2026) may rival it on revenue, so watch margins. Q2 (reported Aug 4): 12.0M subscribers, double a year earlier. Connectivity revenue $4.3B, up 66%, with $1.7B operating income, the only SpaceX segment in profit. Average revenue per subscriber fell from $85 to $66 a month. Oct 9: Venezuela granted Starlink a nationwide license. India: licensed, but security clearance and spectrum are still pending (government statement, Oct 8); Musk has escalated a public fight with Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani (Oct 9 and 11), and Starlink says its 20 Indian gateways are built. Airlines: Oct 8, American said it will put Starlink on all 1,030+ mainline jets from early 2027, and KLM (Oct 8) and Royal Air Maroc (Oct 7) signed on too. Delta picked Amazon Leo for 500 planes from 2028 (announced Mar 31), while United passed 600 Starlink planes this month.

Good sign

Q3 subscriber adds above Q2's 1.7M, and India clearing security review.

Bad sign

Growth only from price cuts, or more big airlines choosing Amazon.

Oct 8: SpaceX agreed to buy Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum (about $8B cash, per WSJ) and said it wants Starlink Mobile to be a major US carrier. Oct 6: the FCC approved up to 15,000 next-gen direct-to-cell satellites. The $17B EchoStar spectrum is approved, but commercial use waits for final closing, targeted Nov 30, 2027. Today US phone service runs only through T-Mobile. Abroad, partner launches keep coming: Banglalink in Bangladesh (Oct 7, first in South Asia), Beeline in Kazakhstan and CNT in Ecuador (late September). AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile just formed a joint venture to answer it.

Good sign

FCC approval of the Grain deal and a first own-brand plan.

Bad sign

Spectrum sitting unused until 2028, or carriers refusing wholesale deals.

Google pays SpaceX $920M a month for about 110,000 GPUs from October 2026 through June 2029 (SpaceX SEC filing, signed Jun 5). That is about $2.8B a quarter from one customer, starting this month, from the Colossus data centers. To buy more chips, SpaceX is reportedly in early talks to borrow about $40B for Nvidia chips (FT and Bloomberg, Oct 7); SpaceX has not confirmed and the talks could end without a deal. The open question is profit. In Q2, Starlink made $4.3B revenue and $1.7B operating income. The AI segment made $2.56B revenue and lost money. Starmind is the possible orbital version of this business later.

Good sign

Q4 shows rental revenue near Starlink's, with positive margins, and more outside customers.

Bad sign

Chip spending and debt outrun rental income.

Sep 28 (Flight 14): first orbit, all 26 Starlink V3 satellites released, controlled splashdown despite an early engine shutdown. Oct 10: Musk said Flight 15 is about 4 to 6 weeks out and will try to catch the ship with the tower. The FAA planning schedule lists Flight 15 no earlier than Nov 8. Ship 42 for Flight 15 went back for more cryogenic testing, and Ship 40, recovered after Flight 13, is back in Texas for inspection (Oct 7-9). Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas says Flight 16 is targeted before year-end (note shared Oct 11). Every other SpaceX bet, from V3 Starlink to Starmind, waits on this.

Good sign

A ship catch on Flight 15, then a reflight.

Bad sign

Long pauses after every problem.

SpaceX's Starmind design: up to 250 kW peak per satellite, with production of thousands as soon as late 2027. A target, not hardware in orbit. Google is already flying: on Oct 1 its Project Suncatcher prototype put four TPUs in orbit on a SpaceX rideshare, built with Planet, and Google confirmed it is operating as expected. Two more Google satellites with laser links come in 2027. The prototype runs its chips about 15 minutes at a time before cooling, and Google's research chief compared the timeline to 15 years of research (Fortune, Oct 10). Blue Origin has filed for a 51,600-satellite network, Project Sunrise. Google's own paper says orbit beats the ground only once launch costs fall under $200/kg, around the mid-2030s. That cost is what Starship is meant to deliver.

Good sign

Google publishing good chip data (a validator), or booking Starship rides (a customer).

Bad sign

Google proving the idea first and keeping the hardware in-house.

New name: the AI division's X account became SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) on Oct 10, after Musk said on Oct 4 it would. X ads were $1.8B in 2025, below Twitter's roughly $4B in 2021, and $367M in Q2 2026. X and Grok had 6.3M paying subscribers (May). Grok-only revenue is not reported. Oct 10-11: Tesla switched Grok Bot, Grok's task-doing agent, on in every Cybercab and Model Y robotaxi. X Money is live for US Premium subscribers, reported in 41 states (since Jul 27). A leaked all-in-one plan, reportedly called XPass (X, Grok, Cursor), had an Oct 9 promo date that passed with no launch. Unconfirmed.

Good sign

Paid subscribers and ad revenue both rising in Q3.

Bad sign

Flat ads, with subscriptions and X Money too small to matter.

Oct 7: Musk said Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab themselves, with no operating role for TSMC. Intel remains the named process partner. Oct 10: Musk said logic, memory, packaging and masks will sit in one building at Giga Texas, aiming for about 10 chip designs a year. Nothing produced yet.

Good sign

A signed partner deal and a first chip out of the building.

Bad sign

Years of plans with no output.

Robotaxi is moving: Oct 10, Tesla said 300+ Cybercabs are serving Austin, up 8x in 30 days, and AI software head Ashok Elluswamy wrote "Dallas soon." No ride counts or Dallas date yet. Europe: the supervised software, renamed Tesla Assisted Driving, faces an EU vote in December at the earliest.

Good sign

Dallas launch, published ride numbers.

Bad sign

Safety monitors back in, or expansion stalls in Austin.

Output reportedly rose to a few hundred a week, but the hand is still largely hand-assembled and Musk called it "shockingly difficult" (Oct 10).

Good sign

Optimus doing real shifts, a hand built on a production line.

Bad sign

Optimus stuck in demos.

Q3: 486,532 deliveries, above estimates. Storage missed: 13.7 GWh deployed vs about 15.9 GWh expected (Oct 2). Semi: Pilot and Tesla opened the first truck-stop Megachargers in Ellabell, Georgia (Oct 8) and Tulare, California (Oct 9). Roadster reveal Oct 15. Q3 margins Oct 21. Tesla lined up $30B of credit (Sep 29) and says it does not plan to draw it this year.

Good sign

Strong margins on Oct 21 and storage back above its record.

Bad sign

A miss big enough to squeeze the other bets.

Achieved

A bet that hit its goal, with the date and source.

None yet.

Retired

A bet dropped or failed, with the reason.

None yet.