SpaceX is quietly building an AI compute business that may become key to its eye-popping valuation

Key Points:

• SpaceX has secured major contracts to rent out Nvidia GPUs from its Colossus data centers, providing approximately 325,000 GPUs to Anthropic for $1.25 billion per month and 110,000 GPUs to Google for $920 million per month, potentially generating around $26 billion annually.
• These deals offer SpaceX immediate revenue from existing infrastructure and help justify its $1.8 trillion valuation by diversifying its business beyond rocket manufacturing, capitalizing on the growing demand for AI computing power.
• Despite AI segment losses due to costly investments in training its Grok language model, SpaceX’s GPU rental business demonstrates a viable profitability path and flexibility to allocate compute resources between external clients and internal projects.
• The contracts include a 90-day cancellation clause, allowing SpaceX to reclaim compute capacity if needed, but also posing a risk that customers might leave if cheaper options emerge, making the sustainability of this revenue stream uncertain.
• Competitors like Meta are exploring similar compute leasing deals, and SpaceX is reportedly in talks with the Pentagon for a potential multi-billion-dollar AI data-center contract, indicating strong demand for its computing capacity amid a persistent AI infrastructure shortage.