Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ:SPCX) CEO Elon Musk just told employees that artificial intelligence (AI) will soon out-earn everything else the company does, like launching rockets or beaming broadband internet down from space. His prediction was made during a 30-minute all-hands video released yesterday on X.

Here's the full quote: "Probably our AI revenue -- not probably, definitely -- our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September, like next month."

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Musk bets big on AI as SpaceX's future growth engine

In the video, Musk called AI "an extremely important part of SpaceX's future" and laid out a target of 10 gigawatts (GW) of AI computing capacity by the end of next year. He put the value of that capacity at roughly $30 to $50 per watt. By his math, that works out to annual revenue of $300 billion to $500 billion from AI alone by 2028 -- "big numbers," as he puts it.

He also described plans to train Grok, SpaceX's AI model, on the company's entire store of internal information, including the work of its employees. "So in a way, it'll be trained on you," he told staff.

Q2 results show AI gaining ground, but it's not there yet

In its second-quarter report, SpaceX brought in total revenue of $7.81 billion, up 92% from a year earlier. The AI segment contributed about $2.56 billion of that, while Connectivity -- the Starlink satellite internet business -- and Space -- the rocket business -- brought in a combined $5.25 billion.

So, while AI growth has been rapid recently thanks to new compute contracts with Anthropic and Alphabet's Google, the segment needs to more than double, assuming the rest of the business isn't done growing.

This isn't out of the question in the short term, given its new contracts, however. Goldman Sachs modeled about $15.6 billion in AI revenue for all of 2026 after SpaceX signed its two massive compute deals.

The road to 10 gigawatts is paved with obstacles

As for Musk's 10 GW goal by the end of next year, the company has its work cut out for it. Access to power is a huge constraint, and SpaceX is already facing enormous pushback for the methane-producing gas turbines it is using to power its current data centers: Colossus 1 and 2.

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