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Science & TechSpace

SpaceX posts $14.6 billion quarter as AI overtakes rockets and Starlink

Artificial intelligence now brings in more than half of SpaceX's income. Its satellite internet arm, meanwhile, is still waiting for security clearance to switch on in India.

From the editorial desk · San FranciscoPublished

Key points

  1. SpaceX reported $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday, with growth in every segment.
  2. AI, through Grok, Cursor and its cloud computing business, now makes up 52% of the company's income.
  3. Capital spending reached $19.6 billion as SpaceX builds Colossus II and pushes on with Starship.

SpaceX is now, by income, more an artificial intelligence company than a rocket company. The firm reported third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion on Tuesday, and its AI operations made up 52% of its income, ahead of what investors had expected.

Every part of the business grew, but the biggest push came from the line SpaceX has renamed “Super Intelligence”. It brings together the Grok chatbot and its agents, the recently acquired Cursor coding tool and a cloud computing business that rents out AI capacity. That cloud arm now runs 1.7 gigawatts of computing power.

Not all of the quarter came from operations. About $1 billion of revenue was tied to the recovery in bitcoin prices, and the results include a related-party income item that may be linked to a SpaceX investment in another company.

Spending on the next build-out

SpaceX’s capital spending for the quarter came to $19.6 billion. The money is going into Colossus II, its second big data centre project, and into Starship, the heavy-lift rocket the company needs to put up a new generation of Starlink satellites and, eventually, to build data centres in orbit.

The figures, from a company that listed on Nasdaq in June, show how far Elon Musk has tilted the business towards AI. Rockets and satellite internet built SpaceX, but on these numbers they now bring in less than half of its income.

Starlink, the satellite internet arm, remains the part of the business Indian users are watching most closely, and it is still not switched on here. Starlink, Reliance Jio Satellite Communications and Eutelsat OneWeb have all received GMPCS licences to offer satellite communication services. Each still has to clear security assessments and meet other conditions before it can be assigned spectrum and start selling connections.

The Ministry of Communications has denied giving any operator preferential treatment and says the three are at broadly the same stage. The delay has turned into a public quarrel. Musk has accused Indian business interests of blocking Starlink to protect their telecom businesses and asked whether Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani was the “real boss of India”. Reliance has rejected the charge, said it welcomes competition, including from Starlink, and pointed out that Jio’s own satellite service is also waiting for clearance.

The Centre is now reported to be considering a hardware device that would sit between foreign satellite networks and Indian users, at subscriber premises or ground stations, with all satellite traffic routed through it. The aim would be tighter oversight of foreign-controlled networks, including during conflicts or security emergencies. Technical specifications and a timeline have not been settled.