SpaceX Is Going Public But Without Starlink There Is No Story

SpaceX made public its S-1 registration statement, the official prospectus companies must file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission before going public.

Bloomberg, which published a detailed analysis of the filing, described the IPO as "poised to be the largest stock-market debut in history" and said SpaceX's public success "will depend on its ability to meet lofty goals across space exploration, satellite communications and artificial intelligence."

The filing was first submitted confidentially on April 1. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, targeting a raise of up to $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion or more.

If completed at that scale, it would surpass Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion debut in 2019 as the largest IPO in history. It will be "more than triple the size of the biggest US IPO to date," which was Alibaba's $22 billion offering in 2014, as per CNBC.

Goldman Sachs is leading the deal, with Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan as co-underwriters, according to reports. The roadshow is expected to begin the week of June 8, with listing on June 12, as per reports.

But the most important thing revealed by the S-1 has nothing to do with rockets or AI. It is the extent to which the entire IPO rests on the performance of one division: Starlink.

Without Starlink's revenues and profits, the SpaceX that investors are being asked to value at nearly $2 trillion would be posting losses at every level. As Investing.com put it in its analysis of the prospectus: "The SpaceX prospectus is at its core, a Starlink offering with ancillary and capital-intensive assets attached."

Starlink: The Engine That Runs the Entire Firm

Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet service, a constellation of more than 9,600 satellites in low-Earth orbit that delivers broadband to homes, businesses, ships, planes and governments in more than 155 countries. It is the only division in SpaceX that consistently makes money, and by a wide margin.

CNBC, in its detailed breakdown of the IPO filing, reported that Starlink's connectivity unit generated $11.39 billion in revenue in 2025, accounting for 61% of total company sales. That share rose to 69% in Q1 2026, meaning Starlink's dominance is growing, not shrinking.

In December 2025, Elon Musk himself described Starlink's commercial service as "by far" the largest contributor to SpaceX revenue.

Starlink was also the only profitable division in 2025. The S-1 shows the connectivity segment earned $4.42 billion in operating income for the full year, with adjusted EBITDA of $7.17 billion, a margin that Yahoo Finance's IPO analysis described as closer to a software company than a hardware business, because once the satellite constellation is in orbit, each new subscriber adds high-margin recurring revenue at near-zero marginal cost.

Morningstar, which published a chart-by-chart breakdown of SpaceX's pre-IPO financials, found that Starlink's adjusted EBITDA grew 86% between 2024 and 2025, while its total subscriber base doubled in the same period.

The other two divisions — rockets and AI — both posted operating losses. Morningstar's summary said that "Starlink success is effectively subsidising xAI extensive expenditures."

In Q1 2026, the pattern held. Starlink made $3.26 billion in revenue and $1.19 billion in operating income. The rocket launch segment lost $662 million. The AI segment (xAI) lost $2.47 billion. Starlink was the only reason the consolidated company had any operating income at all, according to CNBC.

The subscriber growth story is one of the most striking numbers in the entire S-1. Starlink had 2.3 million paying customers in 2023. By end-2024, that had doubled to 4.4 million. And by end-2025, it had doubled again to 8.9 million. By March 31, 2026 the number had risen to 10.3 million subscribers across 155 countries. Analysts at Quilty Space project Starlink will reach 16.8 million subscribers by year-end 2026.

Revenue has kept pace. Starlink's connectivity revenue grew 83% year-on-year (YoY) in 2025, from $7.7 billion in 2024 to $11.4 billion. The Quilty Space analysts believe that figure will climb to around $20 billion in 2026, at which point Starlink would account for approximately 79% of SpaceX's total revenue for the year.

However, there is one nuance worth noting. Average revenue per subscriber fell 18% , from $99 per month in 2023 to $81 per month at end-2025. This is a deliberate choice, SpaceX has been cutting prices to drive adoption in lower-income markets globally, and so far subscriber growth has more than compensated.

Whether that trade-off continues to hold as the service penetrates harder markets is one of the key risks heading into the listing.

Starlink also serves a rapidly expanding set of enterprise and government customers.

CNBC reported that the service is used by dozens of airlines including United, Southwest and Hawaiian, for in-flight wireless internet. A $537 million US Department of Defense contract runs through 2027.

The government-focused Starshield division is expected to contribute $3.2 billion in revenue in 2026, according to multiple reports. The maritime segment alone is expected to contribute $1.9 billion this year, a 55% YoY increase.

The Competition Is Years Behind

Part of what makes Starlink's financials so compelling is the state of the competition. CNBC noted in its IPO filing review that rival services are either years away from viability or restricted to commercial niches.

OneWeb, operated by France's Eutelsat, has a constellation of more than 600 satellites. Amazon's Leo service — which aims for a constellation of roughly 7,700 satellites — is not yet publicly available, with CEO Andy Jassy promising a 2026 launch.

China's Spacesail is building its own constellation but has launched far fewer satellites than Starlink.

Starlink's head start is structural. SpaceX operates roughly 65% of all active satellites in low-Earth orbit globally, according to the S-1. No competitor can replicate that position quickly, because SpaceX also builds its own rockets and launches its own satellites, a vertically integrated model that dramatically reduces the cost per unit deployed.

The one potential threat to Starlink's unit economics is a trend already visible in the S-1: average revenue per subscriber is falling as SpaceX prioritises growth in price-sensitive markets.

The xAI Problem

The most reported tension of the SpaceX IPO is the business that is performing is being used to fund a business that is not.

In February 2026, SpaceX absorbed Elon Musk's AI company xAI, which had itself previously acquired X Corp (formerly Twitter), as a third operating division.

The financial impact was stark. SpaceX made a $791 million net profit in 2024. After absorbing xAI, it posted a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025. In Q1 2026 alone, the loss was $4.28 billion, one quarterly loss nearly equal to Starlink's entire annual operating income.

The money trail is explicit in the S-1. According to multiple reports, SpaceX spent $10.1 billion in capital expenditure in Q1 2026 alone, more than doubling from a year earlier. Of that, $7.7 billion or 76%went to xAI. Starlink received $1.3 billion. The rocket launch business got $1 billion. And in all of 2025, xAI consumed $12.7 billion of SpaceX's $20.7 billion in total capex. That is 61% of everything the company spent, more than the combined amount spent on Starlink and the launch business.

Morningstar found that xAI lost $6.36 billion on $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, spending roughly two dollars for every dollar earned. In Q1 2026, it lost $2.47 billion on $818 million in revenue.

One Man, Two Share Classes, No Exit

The governance structure in SpaceX's S-1 has drawn more direct criticism than almost any other element of the filing.

After the IPO, Elon Musk will serve simultaneously as CEO, CTO and Chairman of the Board. He will hold 12.3% of Class A shares on the economic side, and 93.6% of Class B shares on the voting side, shares that carry 10 votes each compared to one vote per Class A share.

Musk currently controls 85.1% of total voting power, a figure that will decline after the IPO but remain above 50% , preserving his ability to appoint directors and veto any shareholder resolution. The consequence, according to Axios, is that the only person who can remove Musk from his CEO and Chairman roles is Musk himself, because removal requires a vote of Class B shareholders, which he controls.

The S-1 tells prospective investors plainly. "This will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters and the election of our directors."

The structure has drawn a formal protest from major institutional shareholders. Fortune reported that CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the Controllers of New York City and New York State wrote to Musk on May 13, calling the registration statement "the most management-favourable governance structure ever brought to the US markets at this scale."

Columbia Law professor Dorothy Lund, who studies securities law, told Axios, "This set of extreme governance provisions will essentially eliminate investor input into the company for the duration of its life."