SpaceX could make $500 billion in 2028, Elon Musk says (video)

SpaceX isn't a launch company anymore.

SpaceX is famous for launching, and landing, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and sending astronauts to space aboard its Dragon crew capsule.

Recently, however, the company has been transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI) outfit — and that journey is now mostly complete.

"Our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September — like, next month — and will significantly exceed all other SpaceX revenue in in the fourth quarter," company founder and CEO Elon Musk said during an address to employees that the company posted on X today (Aug.

11).

"So, AI has become an extremely important part of SpaceX's future." Illustration of an electromagnetic mass driver on the moon, which SpaceX plans to use to launch AI satellites into space. (Image credit: SpaceX) Earlier this year, SpaceX bought xAI, a startup that Musk founded in 2023. xAI created the chatbot Grok and also operates a powerful supercomputer cluster in Tennessee called Colossus.

But that was just the beginning.

Musk laid out just how deeply SpaceX is diving into AI during his 29-minute talk, which came a week after SpaceX's first-ever quarterly earnings call as a public company.

"Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX; I'd say five years for sure," Musk said.

"And the value of SpaceX will be some astronomical number." Astronomical is right.

According to Musk, the company aims to get 10 gigawatts of AI compute up and running by the end of next year.

That's a big jump from its current 1.4 GW, which SpaceX sells to tech companies and AI labs.

"The value per watt is probably going to be 30 to $50, which means if we bring 10 gigawatts of AI online by the end of next year, it will be 300 to $500 billion a year in revenue," he said.

"Big numbers." And those numbers will get even bigger over time, if all goes according to plan.