By Joel South
Publication Date: 2026-10-21 15:04:00
One quote from Elon Musk sent chip stocks surging in premarket trading, but whether that momentum signals a real turning point or just a brief relief rally is what the rest of October will decide.
Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction), used the company’s third-quarter earnings call last night to describe how fast SpaceX is adding AI computing capacity.
Chip stocks bounced in premarket trading. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) rose 1.82% to $220.42. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) gained 1.69% to $93.24, and SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) added 3.22% to $1,409.28. SpaceX rose 8.22%. Strong gains didn’t hold past the open, but as of 11 a.m. ET, all three stocks were still in the green.
The quote from Musk comes at an important time as AI infrastructure stocks have been hit hard in October. Over the past month, SanDisk is down 21.35% and Intel is down 14.14%. NVIDIA fell only 0.83%.
What SpaceX Reported Versus What Musk Expects
Reported: Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnson said SpaceX ended Q3 with 1.7 gigawatts of rated compute. Johnson put Q3 capital expenditures (spending on equipment and buildings) at $19.6 billion and guided Q4 to between $35 billion and $40 billion. Management said new compute pays for itself in less than a year at current pricing. A gigawatt of compute measures how much electricity a fleet of AI chips draws. One gigawatt is roughly what a large power plant produces.
Expected: Elon Musk said SpaceX is on track to bring roughly 200,000 NVIDIA…
