The largest customer of SpaceX, accounting for more than one-third of the company’s revenue in the third quarter, has been identified as Anthropic, according to a report by Bloomberg citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

The disclosure is the latest sign of the high degree of concentration in the lucrative but still nascent AI industry, with a handful of companies dependent upon one another for revenues.

In its financial filings in October for the quarter, SpaceX said a single unnamed client, referred to as “Customer B”, accounted for about 34.5 percent of its revenue during the period, propelling the company to its first-ever profit.

“Customer B” was a client of SpaceX’s AI division, with its payments going to computing power from facilities such as SpaceX’s Memphis data centre, the filing said.

The customer’s payments surpassed revenue from the US government, previously SpaceX’s largest customer, according to the filings.

Anthropic formed a deal with SpaceX earlier this year to buy computing power, along with similar deals with so-called neocloud providers such as Nscale and Lambda.

Compute costs

The company has agreed to spend up to $120.5 billion (£90bn) over contracts with SpaceX through 2029, amounting to about $3.1bn per month starting in December of this year, according to Anthropic’s IPO paperwork published last week.

The company has the option to cancel its two SpaceX contracts by giving 90 days’ notice after January 2027 and March 2027, according to the filing.