Starlink satellites over an abandoned house in Florence, Kansas.Image: Keystone
SpaceX’s IPO will take place on Friday. It could end in a record. SpaceX is, above all, a bet on the future.
June 10, 2026, 6:11 p.mJune 10, 2026, 6:11 p.m
Once again it’s all about the money. Will Elon Musk become the first trillionaire? How rich could I become if I invest now? There is much more to SpaceX’s basic idea than just plain money. As our overview shows, SpaceX diversified away from this years ago.
The founding
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 after failing to acquire an ICBM in Russia in 2001. He and the space engineer Michael D. Griffin wanted to use one of these to launch a small greenhouse on Mars – a first step towards colonizing the planet. The colonization of Mars is a necessary insurance for humanity against extinction. That was Elon Musk’s belief – and perhaps still is. But over the years it has slipped further and further down SpaceX’s priority list.
The experiences in Russia convinced Musk that purchasing rockets would not get him anywhere, and the idea of building rockets himself to save costs arose: SpaceX was born. Musk had enough starting capital after selling PayPal. He risked around half of that (around $100 million) for SpaceX.
Peter Thiel (l.) and Elon Musk (r.) in 2000, two years before PayPal was sold.Image: AP
The successes
After initial difficulties, SpaceX achieved a breakthrough with the Falcon 9. The launch vehicle has an unrivaled price-performance ratio, which also gave NASA a taste for it. Starting in 2008, the US space agency booked twelve initial supply flights to the ISS for $1.6 billion and became increasingly a lucrative customer.
A Falcon 9 takes off from Cape Canaveral. The rocket has become SpaceX’s cargo and cash cow.Image: keystone
SpaceX had contracts with NASA until February 2025 $13 billion which also benefited the development of the Falcon 9. Apart from the Soyuz-U (765 launches in 44 years), no other system flew into space more often (Falcon 9: 648 launches in 16 years). There is a launch almost every other day – so far in June there have been four (as of June 10, 2026). When it comes to cadence, Soyuz’s record is likely to fall next year.
A Falcon Heavy taking off from Cape Canaveral in 2026.Image: Keystone
SpaceX produced a few spectacular explosions. But that belies how reliable the rockets are. The 648 Falcon 9 launches have a success rate of 99.55 percent and the current version (Block 5) has a success rate of 99.83 percent (only one failure). The larger Falcon Heavy has been used since 2018 for heavier loads. Together with the Dragon capsule (for cargo and astronauts), they form the backbone of SpaceX’s current space program. In the future, the even larger Starship rocket will replace the Falcon.
A spaceship will take off for a test at Starbase, Texas, in May 2026.Image: Keystone
SpaceX’s real achievement is the reduction in the cost of space travel and consistency. However, individual campaigns were more effective in PR:
- In 2015, for the first time in the history of space travel, to shoot a carrier rocket into space, unload the cargo and then land back on its launch site. Since then, various parts of the rockets can be reused. This particularly affects the first stage boosters and their fairings or Dragon capsules. In over 570 Falcon 9 rocket launches, certain components were later reused.
- During a demonstration flight in February 2018, the most powerful commercial rocket at the time, the Falcon Heavy, carried a Tesla into space.
- During the first flight test of the Falcon 9 successor Starship, the giant rocket went into a tailspin. This triggered the self-destruct mechanism. The giant rocket exploded to the cheers of SpaceX employees. The company considered the test a success.
- In 2025, SpaceX brought ISS astronaut Sunita Williams and her colleague Butch Wilmore back to Earth. The two were only supposed to spend eight days in space. Due to technical problems with their spacecraft, it took more than nine months. The “rescue” was all the more prestigious because the faulty spacecraft came from direct competitor Boeing – and SpaceX was able to present itself as the golden savior.
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore prepare a “pizza” in the ISS.Image: Keystone
Musk’s hand slipped politically. When it comes to hiring capable engineers, he always shows a fine hand. He regularly signs people who make seemingly impossible things possible. This includes Tom Mueller. The rocket engineer and space geek is in no way inferior to the South African when it comes to crazy things – and was frustrated that his ideas were seeping away in the executive suites of the major TRW corporation.
Mueller, also known as Employee #1, designed the first SpaceX engines that were lighter but also more powerful than those of the competition. He left the company in 2014 to start his own startup. Today he builds so-called space tugs that can be used to deliver several satellites.
Before Mueller left the company, Musk found the right man in 2011, the Brit Lars Blackmore, to be the first company in the world to develop a functioning landing system for launch vehicles. It still makes the company unique today and is a cornerstone of SpaceX’s success.
Also spectacular: a Starship is “caught” at its starting point
source: youtube
The other branches
The company has now developed into a tech group. Their largest source of income is not space travel – but a product that was made possible by it: the financial backbone of SpaceX is the over ten million subscribers to the Starlink satellite internet (which belongs to SpaceX). Starlink accounts for 50 to 80 percent of sales (61 percent in 2025).
Starlink satellites are not only received favorably. Here they destroy a romantic picture of the sky.Image: Keystone
In February, Musk brought his AI company xAI under the SpaceX umbrella and with it the AI chatbot Grok and the so-called social network X (formerly Twitter). He doesn’t make any money from it – at least not directly. While competitors like ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Alphabet) and Claude (Anthropic) are all setting new user records this year, Musk’s Grok even lost users. This results in unused data centers that can be rented out expensively. Colossus is one of them. A first stage of the world’s largest AI training computer was built in just 122 days in 2024. The competition was amazed. “Everything that could have caused delays was taken into our own hands,” said xAI – including the power supply. For this purpose, methane gas turbines were installed on the site. xAI did not have the necessary approval for this. A typical Musk move. During the construction of the Gigafactory in Germany, Tesla rammed over 100 concrete piles into the ground in the drinking water protection area. Also without permission.
Colossus is currently rented entirely from competitor Anthropic. Just recently, Google also signed a lease for xAI computing power. That will bring in almost a billion ($920 million) per month for SpaceX by 2029. However, it remains to be seen whether this will reduce the gap to the AI competition.
In 2024 it was announced that, in addition to the commercial variant Starlink, SpaceX was also working on a satellite program for the government. The project, called Starshield, offers a network of (spy) satellites that can be used for reconnaissance purposes or encrypted data transmission. According to the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is said to have received $1.8 billion from the US government for this.
No profit, but debt
In the last 20 years, $18 billion in taxpayer money has flowed towards SpaceX from the US government alone. Because the company was private, it didn’t have to make its numbers public. It is known that a debt mountain of five billion US dollars will have been accumulated by 2021. At that time, government contracts were still SpaceX’s main source of income by a significant margin (2020: 83.8 percent, 2021: 76 percent).
Before going public, the company had to publish its figures. In the first quarter of 2026, SpaceX posted a loss of $4.3 billion on sales of $4.7 billion. This is primarily due to investments in new AI infrastructure and in the development of the Starship. The only division that made an operational profit is Starlink.
In addition, SpaceX has to cope with the fact that the planned moon landing in 2027 was postponed by NASA. Instead of landing spectacularly on the celestial body, the crew only flies around the earth on a pure test flight. Despite the setback, a record IPO is expected on Friday. By the way: Elon Musk currently owns 42 percent of SpaceX. He owns 79 percent of the shares with voting rights.