SpaceX built its name on landing rockets upright. Its fastest-growing business now involves renting out computers.
The company’s revenue climbed 161% year-on-year to $14.6 billion in the third quarter of 2026. Data centre leasing deals did most of the heavy lifting. Its AI segment, labeled AI/Super Intelligence, contributed $7.6 billion of that total, which means rocket launches and satellite internet are no longer the majority of the story.
The numbers behind the surge
The third-quarter result did not come out of nowhere. In the second quarter of 2026, SpaceX posted total revenue of $7.8 billion, a 92% increase from the prior year.
AI revenue in that earlier quarter came to $2.6 billion. One quarter later, it was $7.6 billion. That is nearly a threefold jump in three months.
The customer list reads like a roll call of the AI arms race. Anthropic is paying $1.25 billion per month. Google Cloud is paying $920 million per month. Reflection AI is paying $150 million per month, and other clients round out the roster.
In September 2026, SpaceX signed a $13.3 billion annualized AI compute leasing deal with a customer it has not disclosed.
Add it all up and SpaceX’s total annualized compute lease revenue comes to approximately $41.1 billion. The company is aiming for $100 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026.
How a rocket company became a landlord for AI
The pivot traces back to February 2026, when SpaceX merged with xAI. After the deal, the combined company began using excess capacity in its data centres to host AI compute for outside customers.
Capacity is the bottleneck in this business. As of June 30, 2026, SpaceX’s data centre capacity stood at 1.4 GW. The company wants to push that past 2 GW by year-end and reach around 10 GW by the close of 2027.
Most of that buildout is expected to rely on Nvidia hardware.
What this means for SpaceX and the AI market
Anthropic and Google Cloud are committing hundreds of millions to more than a billion dollars a month. There is an irony in Google Cloud appearing on the list. A company that sells cloud computing is itself renting compute from SpaceX.
A large share of SpaceX’s leasing revenue comes from a small number of clients, including one it will not name. Contract terms and durations were not part of the reported figures.
The next milestones to track are straightforward. Watch whether SpaceX clears the 2 GW mark by December, whether the undisclosed customer is ever identified, and how close annualized revenue gets to that $100 billion goal by year-end.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.