On Dec. 10, 2025, Elon Musk shook up the space world.
For years -- nigh on decades -- the space CEO had insisted SpaceX would not go public because, once owned by and responsible to shareholders for maximizing profits, those shareholders might not permit Musk to sink tens of billions of dollars into a moonshot (or perhaps a Mars-shot?) project to colonize Mars.
Image source: Getty Images.
That all changed earlier this month, however, when, in a single laconic tweet, Musk confirmed rumors voiced by space reporter Eric Berger that SpaceX is indeed planning a 2026 IPO.
As usual, Eric is accurate
-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
All of a sudden, it turns out investors might actually get a chance to buy a piece of the first space company to send humans to Mars. Or will they?
Buy a space company, get an internet service provider instead
Make no mistake: Elon Musk established SpaceX with the goal of making humanity multiplanetary by building a colony on Mars. That's still the long-range plan. Before he can make it happen, however, he needs SpaceX to make a lot of money to finance the dream. He'll do that by dominating the business of launching rockets to Earth orbit, winning NASA contracts to land astronauts on the moon -- and building the biggest satellite constellation the world has ever seen.
In fact, SpaceX has already come close to accomplishing the third goal.
More than a decade ago, Musk invited investments from Google and Fidelity to kickstart a project called Starlink, the world's biggest satellite constellation -- 12,000 satellites -- providing broadband internet access all around the globe.
That many satellites in orbit, according to SpaceX internal documents accessed by The Wall Street Journal, should permit SpaceX to generate upwards of $36 billion in annual revenue, almost all from Starlink, and yield 60% operating profit margins -- for $22 billion in annual operating profit.
This was supposed to happen by 2025 (the documents were dated 2017, and peering far into the future at the time). At last report, SpaceX was still short of that mark -- but definitely in the ballpark.
9,000 Starlink satellites, 8 million Starlink customers
How close to the mark did SpaceX get? On Dec. 8 -- just two days before Musk confirmed the IPO rumors -- SpaceX launched its 159th Falcon 9 rocket of the year, putting 29 new Starlink satellites in orbit. Moreover, one of those satellites was the 3,000th Starlink satellite that SpaceX launched this year.
I'll repeat that. SpaceX put 3,000 Starlinks in orbit in 2025. And 2025's not even over yet.
And down here on Earth, Starlink itself just passed the 8 million-customer mark.
Starlink math
SpaceX currently has about 9,000 Starlinks in orbit servicing these customers. That puts the company about three-quarters of the way toward reaching its original target of 12,000. (SpaceX has since made noises about wanting to grow its constellation to 42,000.) The company may only be halfway to reaching its financial goals, however.
Multiple media outlets report that SpaceX is on track to generate approximately $15 billion in revenue in 2025. Space research company Payload, on the other hand -- which has been remarkably accurate in its past calculations of SpaceX's performance -- has estimated that Starlink generated $8.2 billion of SpaceX's total $13.1 billion in 2024 revenue (so 62.5%). It then forecast Starlink revenue to grow 56% to $12.8 billion in 2025, and total SpaceX revenue to grow 39% to $18.2 billion. If those numbers prove accurate, it will mean that Starlink contributed 70% of SpaceX's total revenue in 2025.
What it means for investors in a SpaceX IPO
What would this mean for SpaceX? It doesn't mean SpaceX is no longer a space company. With Falcon 9 rockets blasting off every day or two, continued progress on getting Starship certified for flight and reentry, multiple contracts to run moon landings for NASA, and an increasing number of orbital defense contracts with the Pentagon, SpaceX remains the foremost space company on Earth.
That said, with 70% of its revenue coming from Starlink today, SpaceX has turned into even more of an Internet Service Provider than a space company.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.
Established space companies such as Lockheed Martin (LMT 0.56%) and Boeing (BA 0.79%) routinely earn less than 10% operating profit margins, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Start-ups such as Rocket Lab (RKLB 8.25%) or Redwire (RDW 8.57%) struggle to earn any profit at all!
In contrast, terrestrial ISPs AT&T (T 0.04%) and Verizon (VZ +0.40%) routinely earn operating margins of 20% and up, while Comcast (CMCSA 0.40%) pulls down a 38% margin on its residential internet business, and 57% from its business customers.
If investors in a SpaceX IPO try to buy a space company and accidentally end up owning an ISP, they might even count themselves lucky.
