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SpaceX earned more money from its data centers and Grok AI agents than investors expected in the third quarter of the year. The company is moving away from its original focus on space and putting more attention on artificial intelligence (AI), which now makes up 52% of its income.
Elon Musk’s technology company reported $14.6 billion in revenue for the third quarter on Tuesday, according to its regulatory filing.
Revenue grew in every part of the company, but its renamed “Super Intelligence” business grew especially strongly. This business brought in $7.5 billion from the recently acquired Cursor coding tool, the Grok chatbot, and, most importantly, its growing cloud computing business, which now has 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of computing power. The AI business made $431 million in profit. Its profit would have been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time stock-based compensation costs linked to the Cursor purchase.
Total revenue also rose by about $1 billion because Bitcoin prices recovered and SpaceX received other income from related companies. Some of this income may have come from a SpaceX investment in another company, but the source was not specified.
The higher revenue came alongside $19.6 billion in total spending on major investments. SpaceX is continuing to build its second data center, Colossus II, and spend more on Starship, its large rocket. The company believes Starship is important for launching a new generation of Starlink satellites and building data centers in space. Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said the company planned to spend $35 billion to $40 billion on new investments in the fourth quarter.
During a live online discussion of the results with investors, Musk said he was spending four days a week in Memphis, Tennessee, where Colossus II is being built, to help bring the data center online.
“People are starting to realize [that] the constraint on deployment of of super intelligence is more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips,” Musk said. He explained that he had asked a team of SpaceX engineers to solve this problem. “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 gave an example of the problem. Companies that make turbines to power data centers must wait 12 to 18 months to get the metal blades and vanes needed for these machines. SpaceX is now using its own metal-casting technology to make these parts, helping the company get turbines more quickly.
Musk also said SpaceX expected to test its Starship rocket again in November. During this test, the company plans to try to recover both the first-stage booster and the second stage. Musk called recovering both parts a “massive technology milestone,” but said the real achievement would be flying both stages again after recovering them.
SpaceX also gained more customers for Starlink, its satellite internet service, which now serves 13.6 million consumers. Musk predicted that the growing use of AI agents would lead to greater demand for internet connections.
Despite its large spending on investments, SpaceX earned enough revenue to return to profit. The company reported net income of $4.4 billion, compared with a loss of $1 billion in the same quarter last year. However, it still needs to improve its results to make a profit for the full year. In the first nine months of the year, it recorded a net loss of $413 million.
Musk was especially optimistic about the company’s Super Intelligence business. He predicted that SpaceX’s annual recurring revenue would reach “somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion” by the end of 2027.
Johnsen gave a more specific forecast. He said SpaceX’s total revenue in the first quarter of 2027 would be between $33 billion and $37 billion.
This story is still developing. TechCrunch will update it.