Elon Musk Predicts SpaceX Annualized Revenue Will Exceed $100 Billion by Year-End at Baron Conference
The 33rd Baron Investment Conference was held on November 6, 2026, at Lincoln Center in New York in a virtual fireside chat that lasted about seventy minutes. Baron Capital founder Ron Baron hosted on site, and Elon Musk joined remotely.
Musk said SpaceX’s annualized revenue is expected to break $100 billion in December this year; next December, annualized recurring revenue may exceed $500 billion, and he said this was the best guess rather than a commitment. He also said that $1 trillion in annualized revenue is not impossible, but the probability is about 2%.
On chips, Musk said Terafab aims for annual output of 1 terawatt of AI chips, equivalent to about 30 times next year’s global AI chip production. StarMind, the Starlink computer co-designed with NVIDIA, is expected to begin entering orbit in the third quarter of 2027, and then gradually ramp up in 2028 and 2029.
On traffic, Musk said agent internet traffic has already exceeded human traffic; Cloudflare predicts it may reach 1,000 times human traffic within five years, and he believes this forecast may be conservative.
Original source:
Title: Elon Musk Reveals Massive Tesla, SpaceX Plans at Ron Baron Conference Publisher: Tesla North (Sarah Lee-Jones) Publication date: 2026-11-06 URL: https://teslanorth.com/2026/11/06/baron-conference-full-recap/ Source type: media report Verification status: key passages were read in full for this article, and cross-checked against the official agenda and multiple English-language reports Supporting content: the meeting time, the virtual fireside chat format, Musk’s remarks on SpaceX revenue, Terafab scale, StarMind’s orbital deployment timing, and AI traffic
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From 2014 to 2016, Ron Baron cumulatively invested about $400 million in Tesla, and he began investing in SpaceX in 2017. As of the April 2026 shareholder letter, his SpaceX stake had appreciated to about $15 billion; in the disclosure at the end of September, SpaceX accounted for 32.6% of Baron Partners Fund’s long-term holdings, and Tesla accounted for 13.4%. This interview was public communication after his long-term heavy positions, not a first contact.
Terafab is a joint chip project between SpaceX and Tesla, with a target annual output of 1 terawatt of AI computing power. In SpaceX’s earnings call on October 20, Musk previously said the mass-production target is the third or fourth quarter of 2028, and he plans for the first test chips to be produced at the Austin research factory around mid-2027. The collaboration with NVIDIA is focused on the StarMind orbital computing system, with the first batch to be based on the Vera Rubin platform and expected to begin launches in the third quarter of 2027.
Compared with relying solely on ground-based data centers, Musk is putting part of the computing power into orbit to avoid ground-based power and land constraints. Average U.S. electricity consumption is about 500 gigawatts, with a peak of about 1.2 terawatts; if 200 gigawatts of AI computing power were added on the ground each year, it would be equivalent to adding about 40% load to the U.S. power grid each year, which is not feasible in practice. Orbital solar power can receive direct sunlight around the clock, and there is no atmospheric attenuation; once Starship pushes launch costs below $100 per kilogram, the marginal cost of space computing would be significantly lower than on the ground.
Agent traffic has surpassed human traffic, which is a statement Musk made after citing Cloudflare data, not a conclusion from his own independent measurement. If it reaches 1,000 times within five years, Starlink would need to expand from the current roughly 10,000 satellites to the scale of tens of thousands or even 100,000 satellites, and work with V3 and V4 satellite bandwidth increases in order to handle this demand. This further ties SpaceX’s revenue path, beyond traditional satellite communications, to the sustained online bandwidth of AI agents.
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The annualized revenue forecast is a best guess, not an achieved financial result.
The 1-terawatt chip target first requires solving two constraints: ground-based power and orbital launch costs.
The statement that agent traffic has exceeded human traffic is based on third-party data, not SpaceX’s own measurements.