SpaceX's AI Business Outperforms Expectations in Third Quarter
Elon Musk's SpaceX reported $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, with artificial intelligence making up 52% of income. The company posted a $4.4 billion net profit for the quarter.
SpaceX, the space and technology company led by CEO Elon Musk, disclosed its third-quarter results in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. Revenue reached $14.6 billion, and 52% of it came from artificial intelligence. The figures show the company's weight shifting from its origins in the space industry toward AI.
The AI segment
The renamed "Super Intelligence" division brought in $7.5 billion. It includes the recently acquired Cursor coding tool, the Grok chatbot and a computing-infrastructure business that now has 1.7 GW of compute. The segment earned $431 million in profit, which would have been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time stock-based compensation costs tied to the Cursor acquisition.
Total revenue was also lifted by about $1 billion related to the recovery of Bitcoin prices, plus unspecified related-party income.
Spending and profit
Capital expenditures for the quarter were $19.6 billion. SpaceX is continuing to build a second data center, Colossus II, and is increasing investment in Starship, the heavy-lift rocket it considers vital for deploying a new generation of Starlink satellites and for developing orbital data centers. CFO Bret Johnsen said the company would spend $35 billion to $40 billion on new capital investments in the fourth quarter.
The company posted net income of $4.4 billion for the quarter, compared with a $1 billion loss in the same period a year earlier. Over the first nine months of the year, however, it still has a net loss of $413 million.
Musk on infrastructure and Starship
Musk said he spends four days a week in Memphis, Tennessee, where Colossus II is being built. In his view, the constraint on deploying superintelligence lies more in power, cooling and infrastructure than in chips. He noted that turbine makers face delays of 12 to 18 months in obtaining metal blades and vanes, so SpaceX is using its own metal casting capabilities to make those parts.
The next Starship test flight, expected in November, will attempt to recover both the first-stage booster and the second stage. Musk called that a major technology milestone, but said the real milestone would be reflying both stages.
Starlink subscribers grew to 13.6 million. Musk predicted annual recurring revenue of between $500 billion and $1 trillion by the end of 2027, while Johnsen forecast first-quarter 2027 revenue of $33 billion to $37 billion.
