SpaceX Q3 revenue jumps 161% to $14.6 billion on AI growth

SpaceX, the rocket, artificial intelligence and social media company led by Elon Musk, reported third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion on Tuesday, a 161 percent increase from a year earlier. The company credited its "Super Intelligence" (SI) segment and faster growth in its connectivity business. It is the second earnings report since SpaceX went public in June.

Results by division

Revenue in the SI segment reached $7.6 billion, up 830 percent year over year. SpaceX attributed this to the activation of new cloud services agreements, the acquisition of the AI coding tool Cursor, and wider use of the Grok chatbot among enterprise customers and consumers. The segment's income from operations was $431 million.

The connectivity division, which includes Starlink, brought in $5.2 billion and had 13.6 million Starlink consumer subscribers. Its income from operations was $2.4 billion.

The space division generated $1.8 billion in revenue, up six percent year over year. It ended the quarter with a $7 million operating loss.

What happened during the quarter

During the quarter, SpaceX officially closed its $60 billion deal to acquire Cursor, carried out the 13th launch of its Starship rocket, and released a new V5 Starlink residential dish.

On the second-quarter earnings call, company president Gwynne Shotwell described plans to build a terrestrial mobile network to compete with T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. In that report, the company also noted that its connectivity business had no operating loss, while its AI and space businesses did.

Tesla, where Musk is also CEO, will report its earnings on Wednesday.