SpaceX booked $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, with artificial intelligence accounting for 52% of it. That’s a striking shift for a company built on rockets, financed largely by private capital.
TechCrunch reported that SpaceX’s data centers and Grok agents were more profitable than investors expected during the quarter. The outlet described the company moving its focus from its roots in space toward AI.
The Numbers
The renamed “Super Intelligence” business line brought in $7.5 billion in revenue. It combines the recently acquired Cursor coding tool, the Grok bot and a growing neocloud business with 1.7 GW of compute. The AI unit made a profit of $431 million. It would’ve been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time stock-based compensation expenses tied to the Cursor acquisition.
Across the company, SpaceX reported net income of $4.4 billion for the quarter, compared with a $1 billion loss in the same quarter last year. The year-to-date figures tell a less rosy story. In the first nine months, the company still posted a net loss of $413 million. About $1 billion of the quarter’s income came from the recovery of Bitcoin prices, and SpaceX also reported unspecified related-party income that might be attributed to its investment in another company.
The Spending
The money going out is enormous. Capital expenditures reached $19.6 billion. CFO Bret Johnsen said SpaceX would spend $35 billion to $40 billion on new capital investments in the fourth quarter alone. The company is building its second data-center project, Colossus II, and increasing investment in Starship, its heavy-lift rocket, which it sees as central to deploying a new generation of Starlink satellites and developing orbital data centers.
No government subsidy accompanied that spending in the reporting. Investors are betting on the outcome, and they’ll absorb the downside if the forecasts miss.
Power, Not Chips
CEO Elon Musk told investors during a live-streamed discussion that he spends four days a week in Memphis, Tennessee, where Colossus II is located, working to bring the data center online. He said power, cooling and infrastructure—not chips—are the bottleneck.
“This is a bit like the New York Yankees playing in Little League. It’s not fair, but the net result is being able to deploy power cooling infrastructure at a rate that is vastly faster than any anyone else,” Musk said. He added that he’d assigned SpaceX engineers to tackle the issue.
Musk said turbine manufacturers face 12 to 18 month delays getting the metal blades and vanes their machines need. SpaceX plans to use metal-casting capabilities it developed for the company to make the components itself and get turbines faster. It’s a vertical-integration play: solve the supply problem in-house instead of waiting in line.
Starship and Starlink
SpaceX expects the next Starship test flight in November. The company plans to try to recover both the first-stage booster and the second stage. Musk called recovering both segments a “massive technology milestone,” but said reflying both stages would be the true milestone.
Starlink had 13.6 million consumer subscribers, and Musk predicted AI agents would increase demand for connectivity.
The Forecasts
Musk predicted annual recurring revenue for the Super Intelligence business would reach “somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion” by the end of 2027. Johnsen forecast total first-quarter 2027 revenue of $33 billion to $37 billion. These are projections, not results, and the report said the story was still developing.
Why This Matters:
SpaceX’s quarter shows private capital funding the build-out of AI infrastructure, with the company taking on the risk of a $35 billion to $40 billion fourth-quarter spending plan. The profit is real, but so are the caveats: a nine-month net loss of $413 million, roughly $1 billion of quarterly income tied to Bitcoin, and ambitious forecasts that remain unproven. Musk’s focus on power and cooling suggests that physical limits could constrain AI growth, and that companies able to solve supply bottlenecks themselves may gain an edge. Investors will judge whether the projections hold.
- spacex
- artificial intelligence
- elon musk
- grok
- data centers
- starship
- starlink
- revenue