Elon Musk delivered a striking revenue prediction, downplayed the difficulty of constructing data centers relative to rockets, and discussed plans for lunar factories during SpaceX's debut earnings call on Tuesday.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, known for bold forecasts, also highlighted Starlink's prospects for widespread influence and anticipated significant advancements in AI by the close of the following year.

The following outlines Musk's five standout remarks from SpaceX's first earnings discussion after its major stock market entry in June.

1. Rocketing revenue

Musk informed financial analysts that SpaceX anticipates achieving $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, advancing from its prior 2031 target set before the IPO. He noted a nonzero chance it could happen in 2029.

For context, Walmart and Amazon, the leaders in revenue among public firms, posted sales of $706 billion and $717 billion in their most recent full years.

SpaceX achieved $12.5 billion in revenue during the first half, marking a 54% rise from the corresponding period in 2025.

Musk has a track record of ambitious goals, from self-driving cars to crewed Mars missions, often missing deadlines.

He has admitted to being typically optimistic on timelines but believes his predictions generally come true, albeit not precisely on schedule.

2. Data centers vs. rockets

Musk described building data centers as straightforward compared to rockets, which desperately want to explode into fragments.

He remarked that assigning rocket engineers to data center projects was kind of ridiculous, calling it a minor task for them.

He compared it to the New York Yankees competing against a Little League squad.

Major tech firms like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Oracle are investing vast sums in data centers for AI.

This demand strains supplies of chips, power, and water, impacting energy systems and water sources.

3. Linking up the world

Musk said it is not out of the question that Starlink will eventually deliver a majority of the world's internet, at least in countries where the service is allowed to operate, which covers the vast majority of nations.

In another example of his famously optimistic timelines, Musk added that this outcome will arrive in less than 10 years rather than the distant future.

Starlink, the satellite-communications arm of SpaceX, has emerged as a key provider of internet to planes, ships, and far-flung locales.

However, it has yet to meaningfully disrupt the core urban broadband businesses of established internet providers such as T-Mobile and Verizon.

4. Mission to the Moon

Musk predicted that SpaceX will build factories on the Moon, and robots will be helpful with that effort.

He acknowledged that this sounds like super sci-fi right now, adding it might seem totally nuts but you can probably scale to 1,000 times the economy of Earth in terms of intelligence launched into space, or maybe even 1 million times.

5. Getting smarter

Musk hailed the launch of Claude 4.5 last September as one of the milestones and a credit to Anthropic.

He said it was a shock to the system how good the AI model was.

Musk pointed to the immense progress in AI over the past two years, saying models from two summers ago feel like they should be in a museum.

Based on recent rates of improvement, Musk said that by the end of next year, it is not clear to him that there is anything digital at least that AI will not be able to do.