SpaceX profit beats estimates on 161% revenue jump, growth in AI, satellite internet businesses

[WASHINGTON] SpaceX exceeded estimates for quarterly revenue and profit, driven by substantial growth in its artificial intelligence and satellite internet businesses.

Elon Musk’s satellite, rocket and AI conglomerate posted US$4.4 billion in net income for the quarter ended in September, far better than analysts’ average projection of US$1.88 billion. Revenue increased 161 per cent from a year ago and also beat expectations.

SpaceX shares rose as much as 4.7 per cent as at 4.50 pm in New York, after the close of regular trading. The stock has been volatile since the company’s record-setting initial public offering in June at US$135 a share and closed Tuesday at US$147.79.

SpaceX’s US$2 trillion market value – which rivals a number of megacap firms and tops Musk’s Tesla – has been fuelled by the billionaire entrepreneur’s promises to deliver futuristic technology across an expanding business empire.

Musk’s growth plans include putting data centres in space and delivering a rapidly reusable Starship rocket – endeavours that will be costly, risky and likely take years to materialise.

Still, Wall Street remains overwhelmingly bullish on the company due to Musk’s track record of upending mature industries.

Revenue from SpaceX’s AI business – now going by Super Intelligence, or SI – soared to US$7.56 billion in the quarter, more than nine times what the company generated a year ago.

SpaceX has become a major compute and infrastructure supplier to Anthropic, Alphabet and others, and in August acquired Cursor, the developer of a popular AI-powered coding tool.

Those factors – along with increased adoption of Grok, the large language models developed by Musk’s xAI – contributed to SpaceX’s AI business posting US$431 million of income from operations in the third quarter, swinging from a US$1.7 billion loss a year ago. 

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SpaceX said subscribers to its satellite internet service Starlink – its biggest income generator – reached 13.6 million by the third quarter, short of the 14.2 million analysts were expecting.

Revenue from the company’s connectivity business still managed to beat expectations, rising 69 per cent from a year ago to US$5.25 billion. BLOOMBERG