Shares of SpaceX jumped 9% to $161 in early premarket trade on Wednesday, October 21, after Elon Musk’s space and satellite venture reported its first quarterly profit since going public in June, driven by strong growth in its artificial intelligence (AI) business.
SpaceX’s revenue climbed 161% to $14.58 billion in the three months ended September 30 from a year earlier. Revenue from AI surged nearly tenfold to $7.56 billion, largely driven by renting out data centre capacity to developers such as Anthropic, Alphabet’s Google and Reflection AI, rather than by revenue from its own models.
Musk said the company was targeting $1 trillion in annual recurring revenue by 2028, as demand for its data centre capacity surges amid the AI boom.
The third quarter offered the clearest evidence yet that SpaceX’s heavy investment in AI is translating into revenue, even as spending on computing infrastructure remains enormous. Capital expenditure nearly tripled to $19.6 billion.
The rocket maker reported net income of $4.4 billion, compared with a net loss of $1.1 billion a year earlier and analysts’ expectations of a profit of $1.57 billion.