SpaceX's near-term AI payoff seen tethered to Earth, not outer space

SpaceX's near-term AI monetisation is driven by terrestrial data center compute deals rather than its orbital AI ambitions. Existing contracts with Anthropic, Alphabet's Google, and Reflection AI for its Colossus clusters are projected to generate over $28 billion in annual revenue, significantly exceeding its roughly $3.2 billion AI revenue in 2025. Analysts view orbital data centers as a 10-year-plus prospect, with J.P. Morgan expecting terrestrial AI compute capacity to scale to about 9 gigawatts by 2029.