SpaceX says big AI growth fueled revenue jump

is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.

SpaceX announced revenues of $14.6 billion in its Q3 earnings on Tuesday, which it says was a growth of 161 percent year-over-year “fueled by our Super Intelligence (SI) segment and accelerated growth in Connectivity.” While its Space division posted a $7 million loss in income from operations, its Connectivity group posted income from operations $2.4 billion and its SI group posted $431 million.

The company’s so-called “SI” business saw revenues of $7.6 billion, which were up 830 percent year-over-year, “primarily driven” by “the activation of new cloud services agreements, the acquisition of Cursor, and increased Grok adoption across enterprise customers and consumers.” For its Connectivity business, SpaceX reported revenues of $5.2 billion and 13.6 million Starlink consumer subscribers. Space business revenues were $1.8 billion, up six percent year-over-year.

This is the second earnings report from SpaceX after the company’s IPO in June. The earnings follow a busy Q3 for Elon Musk’s rocket, AI, and social media company, which included the official closing of its $60 billion deal to acquire AI coding tool Cursor, the 13th launch of SpaceX’s Starship, and the launch of a new V5 Starlink residential dish.

During the Q2 earnings call, president Gwynne Shotwell described plans to build out a terrestrial mobile network to compete with T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. In SpaceX’s Q2 earnings, the company also noted that its “connectivity” business, which encompasses Starlink, didn’t have a loss from operations, while its AI and space businesses did.

Tesla, where Musk is also CEO, reports earnings on Wednesday.

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