SpaceX

SpaceX flies most of the world's orbital launches, operates the largest satellite constellation ever built, and is the only company carrying NASA astronauts from American soil. Starlink is the business rather than a sideline: 10.3 million subscribers and $11.4 billion of 2025 revenue against $4 billion from launch. Since February 2026 it also owns xAI, and since June it has been listed on Nasdaq, which makes it a company whose numbers anyone can now read.

The strategy has been consistent for two decades and is finally visible in the accounts. Reusing Falcon 9 drove the price of launch down, cheap launch made a constellation affordable, and the constellation pays for Starship. The stated reason for buying xAI extends the same chain one link: if Starship can put enough mass in orbit cheaply enough, solar-powered data centres in space become cheaper per unit of compute than data centres on the ground.

Disclosure after twenty-four years of privacy complicated the story. SpaceX lost $4.9 billion in 2025, carries $29.1 billion of long-term debt, and spent $18.37 billion of capital in the second quarter of 2026 alone, close to its entire spend the year before. Starlink's revenue per subscriber has fallen by a third since 2023 even as subscriber numbers quadrupled. Starship is the unresolved part: the Block 3 vehicle has flown twice and lost the booster both times, most recently with ten of thirteen engines relighting for the landing burn, and orbital propellant transfer, on which the whole lunar architecture depends, has not been attempted. NASA reopened the Artemis III lander competition in late 2025 citing SpaceX's schedule, then recast the mission as an Earth-orbit docking demonstration and moved the landing itself to Artemis IV. The shares have traded below their offer price since the float.