Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) is reportedly in talks with Microsoft (MSFT) to lease computing capacity, according to a report from The Information. While Microsoft declined to comment on the discussions, Bernstein analyst Douglas Harned has forecasted significant growth for the company's AI revenue.
Harned projects that SpaceX's AI revenue will increase from $24.6 billion in 2026 to $115.1 billion in 2027, representing a nearly fivefold increase. To meet this target, the company would need to add more than $90 billion in AI revenue within a single year.
SpaceX currently has several large customers for its AI compute services. Anthropic pays approximately $1.25 billion per month, while Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) has agreed to pay about $920 million per month. Additionally, an unidentified customer is expected to begin paying around $1.11 billion per month starting in December. These three disclosed agreements would generate about $3.28 billion per month, or more than $39 billion on an annualized basis.
SpaceX is actively expanding its infrastructure to meet this demand. The company expects to end 2026 with a little over 2 gigawatts of compute capacity and plans to increase that to between 5 GW and 10 GW next year. CFO Bret Johnsen stated last month that the company is building AI compute capacity at scale faster than anyone else. Furthermore, SpaceX is preparing to bring about 420,000 additional Nvidia GPUs online in November.
Microsoft has been aggressively seeking more AI capacity, with CFO Amy Hood noting in July that demand was still exceeding available supply despite plans for approximately $175 billion in capital spending this year.
