Posted on 10/14/2026 4:08:07 AM PDT by Cronos
While SpaceX's most recent earnings report barely mentions X -- the social media platform previously known as Twitter -- it is clear that the company's advertising revenue has fallen hundreds of millions of dollars since Elon Musk took over in 2022.
Tucked into SpaceX’s “AI Segment” category, X’s second-quarter ad earnings were $367 million between April and June of this year. While this number is an improvement over the previous quarter ($343 million), prior to SpaceX becoming a publicly traded company, it marks an $83 million year-over-year decline.
X's current quarterly ad revenue has dropped even more drastically compared to the last quarter before Musk bought the popular social-media platform. In the second quarter of 2022, Twitter reported $1.08 billion in ad revenue, roughly $713 million more than Q2 2026.
Compared to SpaceX's additional monetization streams, X's ad revenue is minuscule. According to the earnings report, the company made $2.2 billion from its AI division, $4.3 billion from Starlink, and $962 million from its "space' division.
The company's earnings report and its call with analysts on Tuesday did not mention X's ad business, aside from SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen relating X's quarterly ad revenue boost to a recently "overhauled' ad-tech platform.
There is also a vague reference to X's subscription revenues, which the report says saw "an increase' as the company continues to push and ad-free Premium+ tier.
Over the past year, X has seemingly tried to reclaim its reputation as a trustworthy place for advertisers and creators. Still, the once-profitable social platform has not yet been able to rekindle the advertising dollars it once did
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Elon only cares about freedom of speech.
If Democrat scum get back in power, Elon goes to prison and X is gone.
My take is this shows how much the corporate Leftist were propping up Twitter to do political censorship.
Elon Musk has done as much to save the Republic as President Trump! The two are Godsends!
X is essentially subscription based now. Does the article mention subscription revenue, which Twitter never had? I am totally convinced that the financial media hates Musk and never ever misses an opportunity to attack Musk via SPCX or Tesla. They consistently try to drive the stock down through negative stories. Clear pattern.
I would imagine that cutting out all of the fake and bot accounts would result in fewer views/impressions. That’s what the ad market runs on.
I have faith in Elon…I am sure he will be OK.
Once SpaceX starts its cell service, he will be raking it in.
USAID money dried up...
I hope Elon will be able to afford his groceries next month.
Twitter was in fact losing money before Musk bought it.
In addition to TDS, the Enemedia have also contracted MDS.
X is pretty good, but it’s no FreeRepublic.
Just a bunch of clickbait posts run over and over again . It gets annoying pretty quickly.
In other words... it’s still profitable.
I wonder if the cutting of USAID dollars had anything to do with the decline in ad income? Was it money laundering? Those millions seemed extravagant when it was liberal owned
A more interesting stat is how - after Ukraine bombed
Russia’s biggest data center (which has since come back online) - Tucker Carlson’s “views” and “likes” on X dropped by 71%. Many other anti-Western whores also saw their fake “engagement” drop by large amounts while the Russian bot farms were down.
Always look for what’s missing;
Grok;
“Key omissions and inaccuracies relative to SpaceX’s own SEC materials and other coverage:
Accurate year-over-year figure and half-year numbers. Official data show Q2 2025 advertising revenue was $426 million, so the Q2 2026 decline is $59 million (not the $83 million the article states). First-half 2026 ad revenue was $710 million versus $870 million in H1 2025 (a $160 million drop). The article’s YoY math is off; some other outlets repeated the $83 million figure.
Company attribution for the recent decline. SpaceX’s 10-Q and earnings materials explicitly attribute the advertising drop to the transition to a new ad platform that “impacted ad sales for a short period of time.” The article notes the CFO’s sequential-boost comment but does not highlight the company’s stated short-term disruption explanation for the year-over-year decline.
Subscription and other AI-segment details. It mentions a vague “increase” in subscription revenues tied to the ad-free Premium+ tier. Filings break out more: AI solutions & infrastructure revenue (including Grok and X subscriptions) jumped sharply (e.g., contributing to the AI segment’s rise to $2.56 billion), with specific sequential/YoY growth notes, while advertising became a much smaller share of the AI segment. No user metrics (MAU/DAU) or precise subscription dollar figures appear in the article.
Longer historical trajectory and prior projections. It compares only to Q2 2022. It does not include the multi-year decline from pre-Musk levels (roughly $4.5 billion annual ad revenue in 2021 down toward the ~$1.8 billion range by 2025, per S-1-era analysis) or Musk’s earlier public targets of growing ad revenue substantially (toward figures like $12 billion annually in later years). Critical coverage has highlighted the gap versus those forecasts.
Broader causes of the multi-year shrink and strategic context. The piece focuses on recent recovery efforts and the raw drop without discussing the well-documented reasons for the larger post-2022 decline (advertiser concerns over brand safety, content moderation changes, Musk’s public statements, the GARM-related disputes, and related lawsuits). It also does not note how ads are now a minor piece of an AI segment dominated by new compute/infrastructure revenue, or the vertical integration/IPO context that forced the disclosure.
In short, the article is a short, numbers-focused trade piece that captures the headline shrink and recent product moves but understates the precise recent YoY math, omits the company’s own short-term platform-overhaul explanation, lacks the multi-year and forecast context, and stays light on the underlying drivers and the relative unimportance of ads inside the larger AI segment. The $83 million figure appears to be a reporting error that some outlets echoed.”
And there is the real story with context which also substantiates my point of a pattern of deliberateness of effort to try and damage Musk by driving down his stock.
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO???????????
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post even though it is a money loser.
The $50 billion Trillionaire Musk paid for Twitter turned out to not even break his stride towards more wealth.
Both Bezos and Musk get benefits from these ventures that do not show up on the balance sheet.
He fired 2/3 of the company and instituted a paid subscription. He also ousted hundreds of thousands of bots the were artificially pumping up ad engagement numbers. At this point ad revenue is an apples to oranges comparison. To truly track financial success we should compare 22’ vs 25’ total profit and profit as a percentage of operating costs.
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