Musk Presents Concrete Timeline: AI to Account for 99% of SpaceX's Value in Five Years

SpaceX (SPCX-US) released, in the early hours of October 12, 2023 (Wednesday), a roughly 30-minute video of CEO Elon Musk’s speech at an internal all-hands meeting. After reviewing the company’s development, Musk shifted focus to AI, presenting specific revenue forecasts and a clear timeline.

Musk stated, 'Not possibly, but definitely—our AI revenue will likely exceed all other SpaceX revenue by September, that is, next month, and will significantly surpass all other revenue in the fourth quarter.'

This marks the first time Musk has publicly given a specific timeline for AI revenue overtaking traditional operations.

He said, 'No matter how strong rockets, Starlink, Dragon spacecraft… these businesses are, they will be overshadowed by AI. AI has already become an extremely important part of SpaceX’s future.'

'We must win at AI, because the future will inevitably be about AI and robotics,' Musk emphasized.

Musk’s vision for SpaceX’s future has fundamentally shifted.

He stated, 'In the not-too-distant future—roughly four to five years—AI will account for 99% of SpaceX’s value. I dare say that in five years, AI will represent 99% of SpaceX’s value. And SpaceX’s value will be an astronomical number.'

In Musk’s narrative, SpaceX is no longer just a space company, but a technology company with Starship as infrastructure and AI as its core value.

In addition to AI, Musk also shared updated data on Starlink.

Starlink is now active in 167 countries, with 22 million mobile terminal users and 13 million high-bandwidth users. There are nearly 11,000 satellites in orbit—more than double the total number of satellites operated by all other telecom companies combined. With the deployment of V3 and future versions, the satellite target is set at 100,000.

Citing a Cloudflare prediction, Musk noted that at the current growth rate, AI-generated traffic could reach 1,000 times human-generated internet traffic within five years. He believes Starlink may eventually carry over 90% of global internet traffic.

Musk’s vision for Starship remains grand.

'Starship will increase our ability to deliver payloads to orbit from about 2,500 tons per year to over one million tons per year—I think it could even reach ten million tons per year,' he said.

This scale of launch capacity, Musk emphasized, is the prerequisite for establishing lunar and Martian civilizations.

'If you cannot deliver millions of tons of cargo to Earth orbit, you cannot transport the necessary materials to the Moon and Mars, and thus cannot make us a sustainable multiplanetary species,' Musk said.