SpaceX reported that more than one-third of its revenue in the last quarter came from the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, surpassing the U.S. federal government, which has long been its largest customer.
On October 29, Bloomberg News cited sources indicating that the single customer, referred to as 'Customer B' in SpaceX's recent earnings report, is Anthropic, which accounted for 34.5% of the quarterly revenue.
In its earnings announcement on October 20, SpaceX disclosed that it generated 34.5% of its total revenue from a single customer leasing computing power in the AI sector, although it did not specify the customer's name.
With this announcement, Anthropic has overtaken the U.S. government to become SpaceX's largest customer.
In the last quarter, the only customers contributing more than 10% to SpaceX's revenue were Anthropic (34.5%) and a customer estimated to be a government agency (16.6%). The government's share has slightly decreased from about 20% last year.
According to Anthropic's S-1 filing for its initial public offering (IPO), the company has signed a computing lease agreement with SpaceX worth up to $120.5 billion by 2029.
Starting this December, when the contracted computing capacity is fully operational, Anthropic will incur monthly lease payments of approximately $3.1 billion. The company is leasing computing resources from SpaceX's data center in Memphis, Tennessee, and has also contracted with other emerging cloud firms like Enscale and Lambda.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has prominently featured the 'Neocloud' business, which leases data center infrastructure to Anthropic and Google (which spends about $920 million monthly).
SpaceX's AI division achieved profitability for the first time last quarter, driven by a 161% increase in revenue compared to the previous year. This progress brings Musk closer to his goal of reaching an annualized revenue of $100 billion in the AI sector by the end of the year.
However, concerns are emerging in the market as Wall Street cools on investments in the Neocloud industry, highlighting SpaceX's heavy reliance on a single customer. Anthropic holds an option to terminate the contract with just 90 days' notice after early 2027, which could significantly impact SpaceX's performance if the contract ends.
Musk dismissed market concerns, asserting that SpaceX's business structure is distinct from other Neocloud companies.
He recently stated on his platform X (formerly Twitter), "The debt market has nearly completely cut off access to funding for any company without significant revenue unrelated to AI data centers," adding that over 200 Neocloud firms will face 'guppy-level' attrition and consolidation. He argues that SpaceX is secure due to its solid revenue from Starlink services and space launch vehicles.
Nonetheless, anxiety in the bond market is evident. Bloomberg reported that the credit default swap (CDS) premiums, which indicate the risk of default for tech companies, have surged, with SpaceX's CDS premium reaching 266.5 basis points, marking a record high since trading began earlier this year.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.