Elon Musk Pitched AI in Space. Wall Street Is Betting on AI on the Ground.
SpaceX has spent the last year building a genuine AI narrative around orbital compute, data centers floating above the atmosphere, powered by endless solar energy. It's a compelling story. According to Wall Street analysts, it's also not where SpaceX is actually making its money right now, or where it will be for a long time. The real business is refreshingly unglamorous: terrestrial data centers, sitting firmly on Earth. SpaceX is already monetizing this through its Colossus supercomputer clusters, striking compute deals with enterprise customers including Anthropic, Alphabet's Google, and Reflection AI. Those contracts alone are expected to generate more than $28 billion in annual revenue. For context, that dwarfs SpaceX's entire 2025 AI revenue of roughly $3.2 billion, and it individually surpasses revenue from both SpaceX's rocket launch business and its Starlink connectivity business. The spending backs up the story. SpaceX poured nearly $18 billion into AI i...
