SpaceX made more money from artificial intelligence than from Starlink in the third quarter, as total revenue rose 161% to $14.6bn.
The company also swung to a net profit of $4.4bn, from a $1.1bn loss a year earlier, according to its quarterly results, the second it has published since its listing.
Both numbers beat Wall Street forecasts, as analysts expected revenue of $12.72bn and a profit of $1.57bn, according to LSEG data Reuters cited, which reported that shares rose 2.5% in extended trading on October 20.
The AI unit, which SpaceX now calls Super Intelligence, brought in $7.56bn, more than nine times its revenue a year earlier. Most of it comes from renting data centre computing power to other companies, and Reuters named Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI among the customers.
Beyond that rental business, the unit also includes the Grok chatbot, the X social network and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX bought during the quarter.
Connectivity, mainly Starlink, grew 69% to $5.25bn. The satellite internet service ended September with 13.6 million consumer subscribers, up from 7.2 million a year earlier.
Each of those customers pays less, however. Average monthly revenue per subscriber has fallen to $69, from $99 in 2023, as Starlink adds cheaper plans and moves into poorer markets, Reuters reported. The space business, which covers rocket launches, grew more slowly, to $1.77bn from $1.67bn.
Spending is rising even faster than sales. SpaceX invested $19.6bn in the quarter, nearly three times the $6.9bn of a year earlier, and $16.4bn of that went into AI and its data centres. On a call with analysts, the company said it expects to spend $35bn to $40bn in the fourth quarter as more capacity comes online.
“We are in an inflection moment for SpaceX across launch, connectivity and superintelligence,” Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, said, according to Reuters.
Brad Coffman, the chief financial officer, told analysts that new computing capacity pays for itself in less than a year at current prices. SpaceX expects revenue of $33bn to $37bn in the first quarter of 2027, according to a call transcript.
Starship, the company’s next-generation rocket, is still not carrying paying customers. Its first orbital test flight last month released several Starlink satellites, but an engine fault cut the flight short by several hours.
Investors are also waiting for news on a possible merger with Tesla, which reports its own results on Wednesday. No deal has been agreed.