Following the Democrats' victory in the US midterm elections, Elon Musk stated on X on November 6, 2026, that SpaceX is ready to cancel any government contract on demand: according to him, government orders provide the company with less than 10% of revenue in the current quarter and less than 5% in a year. Behind the exchange lies a more significant structural shift: according to The Next Web, citing Bloomberg and Reuters, SpaceX now earns the most from leasing AI compute, and its largest client is Anthropic, which will be able to terminate cooperation with just 90 days' notice starting in early 2027.

image
image

What happened

On November 6, 2026, on X, Elon Musk responded to a user's proposal to write a letter to Democratic senators and congressmen with the idea of canceling SpaceX contracts: “SpaceX contracts with the government are BOTH the best product AND the lowest price!”, followed by “Happy to cancel any that the government doesn't want. Just say the word!”. Assessing the company's dependence on the state, Musk reported that in the past reporting quarter, government contracts—primarily NASA and the Pentagon, including the Golden Dome missile defense system—brought in 16.6% of revenue, that their share will drop below 10% in the current quarter, and will be less than 5% in a year. Gizmodo separately notes that the market reassessed risks in two days: the combined market capitalization of Tesla and SpaceX decreased by approximately $450 billion.

Context

The background for this exchange is the US midterm elections, where Democrats won a majority and will gain control of both houses of Congress in January 2027, promising investigations into Musk's companies; in this campaign, threats of hearings and a letter regarding a conflict of interest over a $1.2 million White House contract have already been voiced. At the same time, SpaceX remains a key contractor for NASA and the Pentagon: Starship is carrying out the Artemis lunar program, and competitors like Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin have neither comparable launch statistics nor ready serial production, so there is no quick technical replacement in government space. Additional context is set by a Bloomberg and Reuters report, retold by The Next Web: SpaceX has already redistributed revenue in favor of AI compute leasing—a segment where demand for capacity exceeds the supply of hyperscale providers.

Why this matters for the industry

For the industry, this is primarily negotiation signaling: SpaceX is publicly fixing for the first time that the state's share in revenue has fallen below the psychological mark of 10%, thereby reducing the price of any threat of contract review by the new Congress. At the same time, a new concentration risk emerges: the key revenue segment is tied to a single private client, Anthropic, with the right to terminate with 90 days' notice starting in early 2027. It is also notable that compute leasing has become the largest revenue item for a rocket company: this is another signal of hyperscale compute shortage, the demand for which is already being met by non-standard suppliers. For product builders, the boundary is important: there are no public APIs, prices, SLAs, or technical descriptions of SpaceX's compute offering in the sources, so the realistic move now is customer development around the pain of “dependence on a single GPU supplier” and a backlog of failover tools, rather than waiting for a ready-made platform.

Why this matters for users

It is important for the reader to understand that sharp rhetoric does not cancel space commitments: the NASA lunar contract with Starship remains, and according to The Next Web, astronaut landing is possible as early as 2028, while Dragon continues to perform crewed flights. There is no direct effect for ordinary users yet: SpaceX has no public API, price list, or open terms for compute leasing, so it is currently impossible to rent capacity from the company, despite the loud formulations. The practical focus is on two forks in the road in early 2027: whether SpaceX will maintain compute leasing volumes if its anchor client uses the right to exit, and whether the promises of the Democratic majority will turn into a real review of NASA and Pentagon contracts.

What is currently unknown / limitations

The share of government contracts in revenue is a statement by Musk himself from a video on X: without methodology, independent verification, and open reporting, they remain estimated statements, not a measurement. The only correct interpretation of the Bloomberg and Reuters message via The Next Web is as follows: AI compute leasing is the largest revenue item for SpaceX itself, but this is not equivalent to SpaceX's leadership in the entire compute leasing market, and substituting the general population here would be an error. The prices, SLAs, and architecture of SpaceX's compute offering, Anthropic's decision on continuing cooperation, and whether the investigations promised by the Democrats will reach an independent verification of the revenue structure, which may only take place for the first time after the new Congress begins work in 2027, remain unknown.

Sources

Author

Look at AI, editorial team