SpaceX says its capex could double this quarter as AI spending grows

A SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images SpaceX's second-ever earnings report revealed it's spending more than ever on AI — and that could soon double.SpaceX reported spending $16.4 billion on AI-related capex in the third quarter, continuing the acceleration of AI spending seen in recent quarters.SpaceX spent roughly $19.6 billion on overall capital expenditures in the third quarter as Grok maker continues its AI buildout. That was squarely in line with what Wall Street analysts were expecting.Of that $19.6 billion, SpaceX reported spending $16.4 billion on AI-related capex. Analysts were expecting $16.9 billion.SpaceX expects capex to balloon in the current quarter, with CFO Bret Johnsen forecasting $35-$40 billion due to new compute coming online. Johnsen also said SpaceX expects to quickly see returns on its investments."At current pricing, new compute deployments are generating a payback of less than a year," he said.SpaceX's stock was trading up 4% after hours following the results. The company is broadcasting the earnings call on X, becoming one of a small list of companies to broadcast video of the gathering.During the earnings call, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that chips are no longer the biggest constraint to AI buildout."So talking about SpaceX superintelligence, SpaceXSI — "sexy," whatever — so as I think people are starting to realize the constraints on deployment of superintelligence is more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips," he said. SpaceX's AI revenue grew significantly quarter-over-quarter to $7.6 billion — ahead of analysts' estimates of $6.3 billion. This report also marks the first quarter since SpaceX purchased Cursor.That revenue means that SpaceX's AI segment officially brought in more revenue than its Starlink business. Starlink brought in $5.2 billion for the quarter.SpaceXAI has since rebranded as SpaceXSI, following Musk's alignment with President Donald Trump's preferred rebranding of "artificial intelligence" to "super intelligence."One area where SpaceXSI has found some success is leasing its compute to Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI. During the company's last earnings call, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said the leasing arrangements had generated $1.6 billion in additional revenue.Musk said that SpaceX is being inundated with lease requests."We are also frankly hounded relentlessly by every hyperscaler and by dozens of smaller companies to rent more of our compute," he said. "So we could rent out our compute several times over if we said yes to everyone."Overall, he said the allocation for SpaceX compute is something "that's going to change from one month to the next.""I guess as a rough approximation, our goal is to kind of split it 50/50 more or less, where half of the compute is used internally, and half of it is rented to others," he said. "But that number could shift 60/40 one way or the other." Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Brent D. Griffiths Brent Griffiths is a senior reporter at Business Insider who covers AI and tech. Previously, he worked at the Washington Post. He started his career at Politico. SpaceX Elon Musk