# SpaceX's AI business just passed Starlink. OpenAI and Anthropic show the other side of the AI money story

> Revenue was $14.6 billion, up 161% from $5.6 billion a year earlier, and net income was $4.4 billion, compared with a $1.1 billion loss a year ago

Published 2026-10-20T16:16:12-07:00 · News · Canonical: https://news.littlewolflabs.com/posts/2026-10-20-spacex-earnings-ai

SpaceX reported third-quarter results on Tuesday. Revenue was $14.6 billion, up 161% from $5.6 billion a year earlier, and net income was $4.4 billion, compared with a $1.1 billion loss a year ago ([SpaceX earnings release, SEC](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026066482/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm)).

Most of that growth came from AI. SpaceX's "Super Intelligence" (SI) segment brought in $7.56 billion, more than half of total revenue. A year earlier it brought in $813 million. Connectivity, which is mostly Starlink, brought in $5.25 billion, and the launch business brought in $1.77 billion.

**What counts as "AI" here.** SpaceX says SI growth came mainly from new cloud services agreements, its acquisition of Cursor, and wider use of Grok ([The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/science/1014150/spacex-q3-2026-earnings)). Reuters reports that most of the money came from renting data-center capacity to other AI developers, including Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI, and not from SpaceX's own models. That makes the business look more like a cloud provider than an AI lab ([Reuters via NBC News](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/spacex-quarterly-revenue-jumps-data-center-rcna604655)). The segment also includes X. SpaceX broke out $538 million in advertising revenue and said Cursor contributed $608 million after the deal closed in mid-August, but it did not separate cloud rentals from Grok revenue ([SEC](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026066482/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm)).

**The cost side.** SI earned $431 million in operating income this quarter, its first profitable quarter in the comparison periods SpaceX disclosed. Over the first nine months of the year, it still lost $3.3 billion on an operating basis. It also took $16.4 billion of SpaceX's $19.6 billion in quarterly capital spending, and SpaceX expects spending to stay near that level. Starlink is still the steadiest profit engine, with $2.37 billion in operating income.

**The pure-play labs.** [OpenAI and Anthropic](/posts/2026-10-20-morning-digest) don't have a satellite business to lean on.

- **OpenAI** reported an operating loss of $12.3 billion in Q2 2026, including stock-based compensation, up from $9.3 billion in Q1. Revenue was $6.7 billion ([WSJ via Investing.com](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/openais-q2-revenue-growth-lagged-anthropic-as-losses-deepened-wsj-reports-4866258)). Investor documents reviewed by the WSJ show OpenAI expects to burn about $85 billion in 2028 and doesn't expect to break even, once training costs are counted, until the 2030s ([WSJ](https://archive.ph/celkY)).
- **Anthropic** lost $42 billion in 2025. About $34 billion of that was a non-cash accounting charge tied to its financing, and its operating loss was more than $8 billion ([Reuters via CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/28/anthropics-ipo-prospectus-shows-sweeping-ai-vision-surging-costs-reuters.html)). Its draft IPO prospectus shows a net loss of $80.7 billion for the first half of 2026, about $72 billion of it non-cash, on revenue of $16.3 billion ([WSJ report via Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/anthropic-prospectus-shows-revenue-growing-224511416.html)). The company told investors it was cash-flow positive in Q3, with $16.8 billion in quarterly revenue ([Axios](https://www.axios.com/2026/10/15/anthropic-q3-revenue-cash-flow)). That is not the same as GAAP profit. It has also committed to more than $500 billion in compute and infrastructure spending.

Note that Anthropic is one of SpaceX's compute customers. Part of SpaceX's AI revenue is money that Anthropic spends.

**What to weigh**
- **Diversification buys patience.** SpaceX can fund AI spending from Starlink's profits. Standalone labs depend on raising outside capital and on their own cash flow.
- **Selling compute isn't the same as winning on models.** SpaceX's AI revenue rests mostly on contracts with other labs. If those labs cut back, the revenue goes with them.
- **"Profit" depends on the definition.** Watch for GAAP net income, operating income, adjusted figures and cash flow, and for whether training costs are included. A headline loss can be mostly a non-cash charge. A headline profit can leave out large costs.
- **Losses can be a deliberate choice.** Spending ahead of revenue is how infrastructure gets built. The risk is that demand or pricing, under pressure from cheaper open models, doesn't keep up with commitments worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
- **One quarter is one quarter.** SI turned an operating profit for the first time in these disclosures. Whether that holds while capital spending stays above $16 billion a quarter is the real test.

*Disclosure: Grok, which SpaceX names as part of its SI segment, is related to the tools used in producing this site.*