Tesla recorded a US$142 million unrealized loss on its SpaceX shares in the third quarter, giving back part of the gain it booked on the same investment three months earlier.
The figure appears as “SpaceX equity investment unrealized (gain) loss” in the cash flow statement and the non-GAAP reconciliation tables of Tesla’s Q3 2026 Update, which the company posted after the market closed on Wednesday, October 21. The same cash flow statement shows Tesla paid US$2,002 million for its SpaceX equity in the first quarter of 2026, then recorded a US$1,005 million unrealized gain on it in the second quarter before this quarter’s US$142 million loss.
Because the loss is unrealized, it’s a paper loss rather than cash leaving the company, and the deck shows no sale of SpaceX shares. It still counts against Tesla’s GAAP net income, which came in at US$787 million for the quarter. Tesla removes it from its non-GAAP results, where the after-tax impact was US$108 million, or US$0.03 a share. In the second quarter, the after-tax gain Tesla excluded was US$763 million, or US$0.22 a share.
Over the trailing 12 months, the SpaceX holding still shows a net unrealized gain of US$863 million, according to the deck’s reconciliation table. This quarter’s SpaceX loss was also more than offset by a US$288 million unrealized gain on Tesla’s digital assets, which ended September at US$962 million on the balance sheet.
Tesla doesn’t list a carrying value for the stake anywhere in the deck. By our own math, adding the second quarter gain to the original US$2,002 million purchase and subtracting the third quarter loss works out to roughly US$2.87 billion, but that assumes there were no other purchases, sales or adjustments that the deck doesn’t show.
The path to owning SpaceX shares started in January, when Tesla disclosed in its Q4 2025 update that it would invest about US$2 billion in Elon Musk’s AI company, which SpaceX later acquired and which now operates as SpaceXSI. Tesla said then that “the investment and the related framework agreement are intended to enhance Tesla’s ability to develop and deploy AI products and services into the physical world at scale,” as we covered in our story on Tesla’s US$2 billion AI investment.
After the February acquisition, Tesla received regulatory clearance in March to convert that investment into a minority stake in SpaceX, which we reported in our story on Tesla’s new SpaceX stake. The first unrealized gain showed up in the second quarter, the same quarter SpaceX went public in June.
SpaceX, for its part, reported US$14.6 billion in third quarter revenue and US$4.4 billion in net income on Tuesday, with Starlink connectivity revenue up 69% from a year ago, as covered in our SpaceX Q3 2026 results story. On SpaceX’s call, Musk said both companies have formed special committees of independent directors to study a possible merger, though he cautioned that a deal isn’t certain, as we reported in our story on the Tesla and SpaceX merger committees.
Investors may ask about both the stake and the committees on Tesla’s earnings call, which got underway at 2:30 PM PT today. For the rest of the quarter’s results, see our Tesla Q3 2026 earnings recap.
Should Tesla hold on to its SpaceX shares, or would you rather see the two companies merge?
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