SpaceX’s AI business is beating expectations

SpaceX’s data centers and Grok agents have been more profitable than investors expected in second quarter of the year, as the company leaves its roots as a space company behind to focus on artificial intelligence, which now makes up 52% of its income.

Elon Musk’s deep conglomerate reported on Tuesday $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue. That number was driven by growth in all segments, but especially it’s renamed “Super Intelligence” business line, which includes the recently-acquired Cursor coding tool, Grok bot, and most importantly, the company’s burgeoning neocloud business, which now boasts 1.7 GW of compute.

That number was also boosted by about $1 billion in income related to the recovery of bitcoin prices and an unspecified related-party income that might be attributed to a SpaceX investment in another company.

The growing revenue is balanced against total capital expenditures of $19.6 billion, as SpaceX continues to build out a second data center project, Colossus II, and increase investment in Starship, the heavy lift rocket it sees as vital to deploying a new generation of Starlink satellites and developing orbital data centers.