SpaceX Q3 revenue doubles to $14.58 billion as AI compute rental brings in $7.6 billion

SpaceX said its third-quarter revenue more than doubled to $14.58 billion, beating analysts' estimate of $12.72 billion, Reuters reports. Net profit was $4.4 billion, against an expected $1.57 billion.

AI revenue rose more than ninefold to $7.6 billion, mostly from renting out computing capacity to developers such as Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI rather than from its own models, according to Reuters. AI also took $16.4 billion of SpaceX's $19.6 billion in capital spending, a level the company expects to hold in the near future. SpaceX's AI business spans xAI's Grok, the social platform X and its data-center operation, and Reuters notes the unit's operating losses have been large.

On the earnings call, Elon Musk said SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 gigawatts of computing capacity, expects 2.5 to 3 gigawatts by year end and is confident it can add another 10 gigawatts by 2027, CoStar reports. Musk said the aim is to split compute roughly 50-50 between internal use and renting to others, at about spot-market rates rather than long-term deals. Executives put fourth-quarter spending at $35 billion to $40 billion, and the company hopes to reach volume production of memory chips at its planned Terafab in Texas around the third quarter of 2028.

Starlink reached 13.6 million subscribers in the quarter, ahead of the 12.19 million analysts expected, though average monthly revenue per subscriber has fallen to $69 from $99 in 2023, Reuters reports.