Since Elon Musk took SpaceX public in June, he has increasingly made the rocket company the center of his business empire.
Mr. Musk recently weighed in on the war in Ukraine when SpaceX limited its satellite internet service in the country. He has used hundreds of millions of dollars, fueled partly by his fortune from SpaceX, to fund Republican groups ahead of the midterm elections. And on Monday, he pledged one share of SpaceX to “every kid in America” next year through a government-operated savings account program championed by President Trump.
On Tuesday, SpaceX showed why it continues to be a source of Mr. Musk’s influence: The company’s quarterly sales soared, driven by a fast-growing artificial intelligence business. The tech billionaire also said SpaceX and Tesla, his electric car company, were exploring a merger, which would consolidate his empire.
In its second earnings report as a public company, SpaceX said revenue for the three months that ended Sept. 30 was $14.5 billion, more than 2.5 times as much as the $5.6 billion from a year earlier. Profit totaled $4.4 billion, or 37 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $1.05 billion last year. The numbers surpassed Wall Street projections of $13 billion in revenue and profit of 16 cents a share.
How much SpaceX is spending on A.I. — which includes its Grok chatbot and data centers — was particularly scrutinized. The company said its capital expenditures had risen to $19.6 billion, nearly three times the $6.9 billion from a year earlier. And SpaceX is likely to spend $35 billion to $40 billion in the current quarter, Bret Johnsen, the company’s chief financial officer, told investors on Tuesday.
Still, A.I. has become the largest part of SpaceX’s business, with the technology’s revenue — $7.6 billion — exceeding what the company is generating from space launches and its Starlink satellite internet service.
“I’ve never seen anything grow this fast,” Mr. Musk said during a call with investors, referring to Grok Bot, an A.I. agent created by the company that can autonomously complete tasks that users assign to it. Mr. Musk, who has often been overambitious in his business goals, said he envisioned that SpaceX’s revenue would continue to accelerate, reaching “between $500 billion and $1 trillion” by the end of 2027.
Mr. Musk also addressed speculation that he would merge SpaceX with Tesla, which is reporting earnings on Wednesday. He said that the two companies had formed committees to discuss the idea and that he had not participated because of the conflict of interest.
“At the end of the day, the shareholders have to be supportive of this,” Mr. Musk said, adding that he thought the idea had “a lot of merit.”
SpaceX’s stock rose more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Its shares are trading above their $135 initial public offering price, but have swung up and down.
SpaceX’s performance on the stock market is a barometer for Anthropic, the A.I. company that may go public as early as next month. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is also preparing for an initial public offering, which could come next year. SpaceX’s results are viewed as offering clues to the direction of the A.I. industry, which has faced questions over whether the spending and borrowing by data center companies such as CoreWeave and Oracle can be sustained.
Melissa Otto, who leads a research group at S&P Global, said she expected SpaceX’s capital expenditures to increase to nearly $195 billion by 2028 from about $70 billion this year. Spending “is what the market is very focused on right now,” she said.
Jacob Bourne, an analyst with eMarketer, said SpaceX could further differentiate itself in A.I. with “its longer-term ambitions to build data centers in space,” but these efforts require large sums and face “enormous technical and practical challenges.”
SpaceX said revenue from its A.I. business had grown to $7.6 billion in the quarter from $813 million a year earlier. The company attributed the growth to deals it struck to lease its computing power to others, as well as the August acquisition of Cursor, an A.I.-powered coding service. Mr. Musk said he was being “hounded relentlessly” by other A.I. companies that want to rent computing power.
SpaceX added that Starlink had 13.6 million consumer subscribers, along with hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers. The satellite internet service generated $5.2 billion in revenue, up 69 percent from $3.1 billion a year earlier.
Revenue in the space business grew more modestly, rising 6 percent to $1.8 billion. The company said it was continuing to book launches and was developing a new Starbase spaceport in Louisiana, which is set to begin operating in 2029.
Jack Ewing contributed reporting.
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