Starlink could deliver majority of world's internet within 10 years, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk has predicted that his Starlink system could deliver a majority of the world's internet within 10 years.

Starlink, operated by SpaceX, is a satellite internet service that provides broadband connectivity using low Earth orbit satellites.

It comes as SpaceX announced losses of $541m in the three months from April to June, from $1bn a year earlier, and less than half what financial analysts had expected this time.

The company has released its first earnings report since it made its US stock market debut two months ago.

SpaceX's revenue beat expectations, jumping to $7.8bn, up around 90% from the same period the previous year when it was $4.1bn, on strong growth in its Starlink satellite-internet and AI businesses.

But the company's capital expenditures ballooned to more than $18bn from $2.83bn a year earlier, and finance boss Bret Johnsen said he expected capital spending would be similar for the ​next couple of quarters.

Musk said of Starlink: "It's not out of the question that at some point Starlink will deliver a majority of the world's internet, at least in countries where we're allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries…in less than 10 years."

Its satellite communication business is a big cash generator for the company, with contracts around the world.

It operates in more than 160 countries and territories, and globally has 12 million subscribers, doubling from a year earlier.

Starlink revenue, which accounted for over half of total revenue, rose 66%, and revenue from SpaceX's AI business - which Musk has pitched as the company's future growth driver - surged about 250%.

"We're building AI compute capacity at scale faster than anyone else, we believe, ​and we're significantly improving our AI models," Musk said.

AI operating losses narrowed, as did total operating losses, to $143m from $970m. Operating income at Starlink rose 79%.

SpaceX said it had partnered with Nvidia, a leading AI company, to use its chips in the Starmind AI1 orbital compute satellites, which are space-based data centres operating in the Earth's orbit.

Musk said SpaceX expects to receive a "significant percentage" of Nvidia's sought-after graphics processing ​units next year.

SpaceXAI is known for its Grok tool, as well as the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Starship, SpaceX's next-generation reusable rocket system, is yet to enter commercial ​service but is expected to enable deployment of higher-bandwidth Starlink satellites and orbital AI-computing infrastructure.

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The share price of SpaceX, that includes rockets, jumped 19% on its first day of trading in June, making him the first-ever trillionaire.

But the price is down nearly half from its peak of about $225 to around $125. In after-hours trading, it fell about 6% to $116.

The drop since June, as well as a decline in the shares of Musk's electric vehicle company Tesla, have knocked his wealth down to $726bn, according to Forbes.

SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) price ahead of its 12 June debut on the Nasdaq was $135, but it started trading at $150.

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