Elon Musk at VivaTech in Paris, 16 June 2023
Elon Musk said government contracts will make up less than 10% of SpaceX’s revenue this quarter, down from 16.6%. SpaceX now earns most from renting AI computing, with Anthropic its biggest customer, though Anthropic can exit from early 2027.
Government contracts will make up less than 10% of SpaceX’s revenue this quarter, Elon Musk said on X, Bloomberg reported on Friday. That is down from 16.6% in the third quarter and roughly a fifth in 2025.
Musk said the share would fall below 5% about a year from now, Reuters reported . NASA and the Pentagon were long SpaceX’s most important customers, paying it to launch astronauts and national security satellites.
The money now comes from AI. In the third quarter, SpaceX’s AI unit brought in $7.56B , more than Starlink, mostly by renting out computing power from its data centres in Memphis. Anthropic alone accounted for 34.5% of revenue, making it SpaceX’s biggest customer.
That brings its own risk. Anthropic can exit its contracts with 90 days’ notice from early 2027, and Wall Street has recently soured on companies that rent out AI computing, Bloomberg said. Musk himself warned last month that few will survive without other sources of revenue.
Musk’s comments came days after Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. He spent more than $445M backing Republicans , most of whom lost, and Bloomberg said that could strain his companies’ ties with the new Congress. SpaceX still holds a NASA contract to land astronauts on the Moon with Starship as early as 2028.
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