SpaceX’s AI division, now dubbed “Superintelligence,” was the main protagonist of the company’s financial results last quarter. And for the first time, it is the segment that has earned the highest revenue, even above Starlink. Although Wall Street was aiming high in its forecast, the company broke all the molds.
record. SpaceX recorded revenue of $14.6 billion in the third quarter of this year, a 161% increase over the previous year. Its AI division brought in about $7.6 billion, 52% of the total. A year ago it was $813 million, according to the New York Times. Rocket Company is increasingly behaving like an AI infrastructure provider.
Details. Net profit rose to $4.4 billion compared to a loss of $1.1 billion the previous year, the report showed. Reuters reported that analysts were expecting a profit of about $1.57 billion. ‘Superintelligence’ alone reported about $431 million in operating income, which would have been higher had it not been for the Cursor acquisition, which gave the company about $1.2 billion net of one-time stock compensation.
Beyond AI, Starlink continues to excel with revenues of nearly $5.2 billion, up 69%, and 13.6 million subscribers. According to the report, operating income was about $2.4 billion. On the other hand, the company in its space division posted revenue of $1.8 billion, up 6%, and a smaller operating loss of $7 million.
between the lines. That growth doesn’t come from SpaceX’s own model, as Reuters notes, with most of its AI revenue coming from leasing data center capacity to developers like Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI, making its business more like a cloud provider than an AI lab.
Factors that have driven the company’s relevance in terms of AI include the acquisition of Cursor and growing adoption of Grok among enterprise and consumer customers.
Demand seems to outstrip supply. Musk told investors that SpaceX is “relentlessly harassed by all the hyperscalers” looking for more computing power and can lease its capacity “many times over.” Its approximate goal is to use half of the computing power internally and lease the other half, though the split could vary between 60/40 either way, Musk said during a meeting with investors, confirmed by Business Insider.
Musk also argues that chips are no longer the main barrier to deploying his AI. But there is electricity, cooling and infrastructure, he said. The tycoon also claims that SpaceX can build that infrastructure faster than its rivals thanks to its engineering base, and as shared by TechCrunch, he also cited the company’s metal casting capabilities as a way to overcome delays in turbine components.
Imperfection. Costs are still huge. Its capex nearly tripled, to $19.6 billion, of which $16.4 billion went to AI. Brett Johnson, the company’s chief financial officer, expects between $35 billion and $40 billion in the fourth quarter, arguing that the new deployment of computing power pays for itself in less than a year at current prices.
S&P Global’s Melissa Otto told the NYT that she expects capital spending to be close to $195 billion by 2028, up from about $70 billion this year, and calls that the market’s main focus.
What next? Musk predicts annual recurring revenue of “between $500,000 million and $1 trillion” by the end of 2027. But of course, there is a long way to go from there to that reality, because according to Johnsen himself, they expect between 33,000 million and 37,000 million dollars for the first income.
There are two threads that are still pending. On the one hand there is the potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla. Meetings have already taken place to look at the viability of this operation, although at the moment it is complicated and, according to Reuters, the deal may never materialize. It should also be noted that the results are a barometer for the AI sector in general, with Anthropic and OpenAI preparing their respective IPOs.
Cover image Matt Rourke/AP
In Xataka | Elon Musk could live wherever he wanted, but he chose a caravan next to a huge, sprawling data center complex.
