SpaceX reported $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, driven by growth in its AI-focused 'Super Intelligence' business line. The AI business generated $431 million in profit, which would have been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time stock-based compensation expenses related to the Cursor acquisition.
The AI business line, which includes Cursor, Grok bot, and the neocloud business, generated $7.5 billion in revenue. The neocloud business now boasts 1.7 GW of compute, highlighting its significant growth.
"People are starting to realize that the constraint on deployment of super intelligence is more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips," said Elon Musk. Musk argued that the challenge lies in power and cooling infrastructure, not just chips, and that SpaceX is addressing this issue through its engineering capabilities.
Musk is spending four days a week in Memphis, Tennessee, working on Colossus II, the second data center project. He noted that manufacturers of turbines for data centers are facing 12 to 18 month delays in obtaining the required metals blades and vanes.
SpaceX is using its metal casting capabilities developed for rocketry to produce these components more quickly. Musk also mentioned that the next Starship test flight in November would attempt to recover both the first-stage booster and the second stage, which would be a "massive technology milestone."
Despite significant capital expenditures of $19.6 billion, SpaceX returned to profitability with a net income of $4.4 billion, up from a $1 billion loss in the same quarter last year. However, the company still had a net income loss of $413 million in the first nine months of the year.
Source: techcrunch
