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SpaceX Reveals Its Finances For the First Time (nytimes.com) 103

Posted by BeauHD from the drawing-back-the-curtains dept.
SpaceX has revealed its financials for the first time as it prepares for a potentially massive IPO. The New York Times reports: SpaceX's revenue soared to $18.7 billion in 2025, up 33 percent from a year earlier, the company disclosed in a filing required of firms that are seeking to go public. In the first three months of this year, revenue rose to $4.7 billion from $4.1 billion in the same period a year ago. But the company lost more than $4.9 billion last year, compared with a $791 million profit in 2024, as capital expenditures nearly doubled to $20.7 billion from heavy spending on artificial intelligence development. In the first three months of this year, SpaceX lost almost as much money as all of 2025, recording a $4.3 billion loss.

SpaceX Reveals Its Finances For the First Time More | Reply

SpaceX Reveals Its Finances For the First Time

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  • Investing = Polymarket betting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @07:23AM (#66153893)
    Pretty sure buying and selling shares in Spacex will ( for a few years ) be like placing Polymarket bets on the Success/Failure of launches.

    I hope we nerds can outguess the market !

    • Re:Investing = Polymarket betting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @08:56AM (#66153953)

      Unfortunately not. The whole point of this story is that SpaceX looks like a reasonably sure bet on space and the military industrial complex (which wants/needs SpaceX's launch capability). However, in fact it's a bet on Elon Musk's ability to deliver AI this time, having failed already in Tesla and OpenAI. He's seemingly let his ego get ahead of himself and forgotten that Tesla, SpaceX and his other success were due to good engineers.

      • What does SpaceX have to do with AI?

        • Musk unloaded X's (twitter) failed AI experiment onto SpaceX. Part of this included a 220K node DC, which Anthropic recently announced they will be using.

        • In addition to the correct statement from @bad-badtz-maru, SpaceX has been pretty clear that Starlink is intended to eventually become a constellation of data-centers in addition to network access points.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            In addition to the correct statement from @bad-badtz-maru, SpaceX has been pretty clear that Starlink is intended to eventually become a constellation of data-centers in addition to network access points.

            That never made much sense to me. The power requirements and cooling requirements for a data center in the vacuum of space would be completely infeasible.

            The most any commercial satellite has ever dissipated, as far as I know, is only low-double-digit kilowatts worth of heat. Three high-end NVIDIA AI cards per satellite would basically fully max out a typical satellite's heat dissipation, without factoring in any of the heat produced from communication hardware, energy storage, solar heating, or heat diss

            • I've seen some people who claim to know what they are talking about say that the thermal emissivity scales by the fourth power, so the hotter you let your satellite run, it scales considerably. I have not seen an analysis by anyone I know. However, even if you can cool it, the cost and logistics of launching and maintaining said satellites far outweighs everything else.

              SpaceX is just a "let's bet on Elon again!!!", except instead of being Tesla of 20 years ago, it's priced like Tesla of today.

              Starlink as so

              • I've seen some people who claim to know what they are talking about say that the thermal emissivity scales by the fourth power, so the hotter you let your satellite run, it scales considerably.

                I'm not a physicist, but that would make sense -- the hotter you are, not only do you emit more light, you also emit a broader spectrum. If that wasn't the case, I think the sun could be infinitely hot and would only emit infrared. Or to put it another way, the more thermal energy you have in a system, the more it wants to dissipate. Ties into the second law of thermodynamics.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          What does SpaceX have to do with AI?

          Musk brought xAI (maker of Grok) into the SpaceX umbrella. SpaceX is reasonably profitable, xAI is burning money. So Musk, who controls both companies, incestuously merged them together to cover the losses. Musk has pulled similar self-deals to merge X (formerly Twitter) into xAI last year, and SolarCity into Tesla years before that. SpaceX/xAI has a large AI datacenter that its leasing to Anthropic, and has plans to build its own AI chip fab (in partnership with Tesla - more corporate incest). And Spa

        • What does SpaceX have to do with AI?

          Musk decided to fold his unprofitable businesses (Twitter and xAI) into his profitable business (SpaceX) and then take SpaceX public.

          This will pay back the private investors, put cash back in Musk's pockets to fund his next big idea, and make the public-investors eat his shit (the failing AI and social media businesses).

      • That is the sad reality of the IPO. It is solely to fund xAI for the next decade. The space business will eventually be spun off in a bailout after absorbing all the debt from the Twitter acquisition and AI burn.

    • Re:Investing = Polymarket betting (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @09:47AM (#66154026)
      A publicly traded company whose main income is from the USA taxypayer. HINT: that is why they turned a profit last year, even though they were losing money every year before that.

      Yet again US taxpayers are propping up an oligarch instead of a public entity like NASA, where money was and still is, efficiently spent.
      Oligarchs started the "500 dollar hammer boondoggle" and the "pencil that could write in space" narratives to transfer public taxes to private Oligarchs. This is literally Russia.

      • Re:Investing = Polymarket betting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @10:05AM (#66154056)

        Yes, because it provides launch to orbit capabilities at a fraction of the cost of what NASA ever managed to achieve.
        When it comes to its space industry business alone, SpaceX is a big win for the American public, however it should be mandated to split its AI business off as it's basically parasiting those profits and turning them into a loss.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Aiming for too big to fail, because his AI stuff is failing and he needs to be sure that you will be forced to bail him out when it does.

        • it should be mandated to split its AI business off as it's basically parasiting those profits and turning them into a loss.

          By whom? And under what basis?

        • Perhaps if NASA had a proper budget and was free from congressional meddling they would be able to provide similar costs.

          • That's why privatization is better then a government funded entity. SpaceX doesn't need to hold a congressional hearing every time a rocket fails. Now, they lead the way in rocket launches.

            For innovation, I'll most certainly take the private sector over the public sector. Public sector is better for things that don't turn a profit but are still useful services to have. The DMV is a good example of a pretty good government entity. Public libraries make sense as well. OSHA and the EPA are other examples. The

          • That wouldn't change anything. NASA came to the the conclusion that the direction SpaceX went would never make any financial sense for them, no matter what the budget was. So did countless other space entities around the world, including other private sector companies. And for what NASA does, it still wouldn't make sense. NASA isn't interested in commercial spaceflight, it's interested in science. The days when it made its own rockets was just a means to that end.

            For SpaceX, Elon essentially determined:
            - De

      • A publicly traded company whose main income is from the USA taxypayer. HINT: that is why they turned a profit last year, even though they were losing money every year before that.

        Yet again US taxpayers are propping up an oligarch instead of a public entity like NASA, where money was and still is, efficiently spent.

        Oligarchs started the "500 dollar hammer boondoggle" and the "pencil that could write in space" narratives to transfer public taxes to private Oligarchs. This is literally Russia.

        What are you smoking? NASA efficient in what way? NASA cost plus contracts are a national disgrace on overspending and waste

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          A publicly traded company whose main income is from the USA taxypayer. HINT: that is why they turned a profit last year, even though they were losing money every year before that.

          Yet again US taxpayers are propping up an oligarch instead of a public entity like NASA, where money was and still is, efficiently spent.

          Oligarchs started the "500 dollar hammer boondoggle" and the "pencil that could write in space" narratives to transfer public taxes to private Oligarchs. This is literally Russia.

          What are you smoking? NASA efficient in what way? NASA cost plus contracts are a national disgrace on overspending and waste

          Yeah, there's not enough crack in the world for that to make sense. The cost-to-orbit is well documented. Artemis 2: $4.1 billion for a launch that can lift 95 tons to LEO. SuperHeavy/Starship: $90 million for a launch that can lift 150 tons to LEO. Ignoring minor details (e.g. that nobody is willing to expend a SuperHeavy to do trans-lunar injection), the reality of the matter is that the cost per ton to orbit for NASA rockets is 72x what it is expected to cost for SpaceX rockets.

          And that's consistent

      • NASA contracts out missions, they don't really do missions in-house. SpaceX is currently winning the launch and visit ISS missions by a mile. Competition like Boeing is more expensive and less reliable.

        $500 hammer was actually a set of hammer, shovel, and pick. It had to be non-magnetic, non-sparking, yet durable enough for work. Intended use was for digging out old unstable explosives that the government had let sit around for far too long after WWII.

        Pencil that could write in space - standard pencils

        • NASA contracts out missions, they don't really do missions in-house.

          The next question you should be asking is why.

      • The crazy part? US taxpayers are propping up ALL the things! NASA didn't just stop receiving any government funds because Space-X exists. You get to foot the bill for both now!

      • You end your comment with a non sequitur about government wasting money, yet SpaceX - who *does* make a lot from gov't launch contracts, you're not wrong - is CRUSHING the competition.

        SpaceX - $2500-$6000/kg depending on mission profile.
        Others: ~$20,000/kg
        NASA (Space Shuttle era) $55,000/kg.

        I'm DELIGHTED the US gov't uses SpaceX. They're saving a HUGE pile of my taxpayer dollars.

        How do you complain about the gov't 'wasting money' and yet insist somehow they shouldn't use SpaceX as the cheapest-possible orb

      • NASA is a weird thing. NASA money spent on science is smart. They do the best space science in the world. Their launch program, um, well, let’s just say it isn’t nearly as impressive. No, let’s just be blunt. For the last 25 years, NASA has absolutely sucked when it comes to development of launch vehicles. The current division of labor has actually worked fairly well. NASA continues to do bleeding edge space science and the money for the launches has mostly been outsourced to SpaceX, which

    • Perhaps, although what this filing shows is that they are actually losing money from their launch business, and all the profit is coming from Starlink.

      • It shows they have thrown $15 billion plus into Starship, which has only made about $2 billion back ( from NASA milestone grants ).
        But once Starship is launching it will be by far the cheapest and most capable launcher.

        • But who's going to be the customer for frequent Starship launches? Starlink? Left hand sells product to right hand?

          So then I guess they get to choose to they want to sell it to themselves at a high price to report a "Space" profit, or sell it to themslves at a low price to report a "Starlink" profit.

  • >>But the company lost more than $4.9 billion last year, compared with a $791 million profit in 2024, as capital expenditures nearly doubled to $20.7 billion from heavy spending on artificial intelligence development.

    At first I assumed that this was because Musk merged xAI with SpaceX, but that didn't actually happen until 2026. Why was SpaceX spending so much on AI during 2025? Is this research for the bonkers data-centers-in-space nonsense?

    • So they can sell AI services to the government.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Onthax ( 1322089 )
      I expect since he controlled both companies and knew the acquisition was going to happen anyway, he shifted the financial burden to SpaceX
    • They need AI because it is one more thing they can grift—I mean sell. Just like SpaceX didn’t need $131M worth of Cybertruck. Musk however could not have it appear that the Cybertruck was a disaster. Technically he sold a lot of them . . . to other companies that he controls.

    • The xAI data is prorated in for financial comparisons, but (IIRC) only 12 months prior to acquisition.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      In the 60s, NASA looked at recovering and reusing the first stage of the Saturn V but concluded that it would take sixty launches for the savings to exceed the development cost so they scrapped the idea.

      The reason Falcon 9 is the cheapest launcher in its class is because it flies 100+ times a year and the most expensive part is reusable, and the reason it's reusable is that it flies 100+ times a year. And the reason it flies so often is to launch Starlink satellites.

      To recover Starship's costs and make it c

    • To add to parent post

      SpaceX is valuing itself at $28.5 trillion,

      $370 billion of that comes from launches.
      $1.6 trillion comes from Starlink
      $26.5 trillion (~90%) they are attributing to their share of the AI market
      SpaceX brought in ~$20 billion in revenue in 2025, but it spent $13 billion on AI data centers, models, GPU's etc. Q1 of this year AI spend

      So its an AI company that might also launch spaceships. Or more s

  • Once again Patrick Boyle on YouTube covered this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @09:57AM (#66154042)
    And the SpaceX IPO is just a scam. There's simply aren't enough launch customers to justify the valuation and starlink can't make that up because they're only so many people in the world who can afford $100 a month for internet and don't have access to high quality wired internet. SpaceX is basically out of customers they are maxed out which is why they're pushing this now.

    NASDAQ where the shares get listed knows this but they're going to make so much money off of the launch of this IPO and the trading of the stock they couldn't say no. More importantly they let muskrat break and bend rules all over the place making this a extremely high risk investment unless you are part of the inner circle that will be protected. If you have less than a billion dollars in your bank account you are not part of that circle.

    Eventually all this bad stock is going to have to go somewhere. Traditionally it would go into public pensions but we've been using those to dump bad stock for so long there's no way they can absorb it. Over and over again we see rules around 401ks being changed. They're going to dump it into your 401k.

    Because you currently have a measure of control over your 401k I'm sure you're telling yourself that as a sophisticated investor you will avoid those traps and it's those other suckers who are going to get stuck with the bill.

    Now we're going to ignore the fact that the economy is heavily interconnected and when all those other suckers lose their money it will have effects on you. We're just going to pretend they all shoot themselves or something.

    Here's the thing there's a hierarchy of suckers. You are in that hierarchy with everybody else. It is a little harder to get to your money. It is not impossible for somebody who has a trillion dollars. Rules can be changed and more complex traps laid. And when you wake up one day and you have $0 in your bank account and investment accounts you're going to stop and ask yourself how could this happen but that's not going to get you your money back.

    I used to think the old farts around here would safely die before the shit hit the fan for them but Trump is moving things so fast so badly I don't think that's the case anymore. And with AI data centers basically doubling the price of electricity and water the shit's going to hit the fan all at once. So unless you are planning on dying before the midterm elections I don't think you're going to escape this shit.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      simply aren't enough launch customers to justify the valuation and starlink can't make that up because they're only so many people in the world who can afford $100 a month for internet and don't have access to high quality wired internet.

      Militaries and wealthy people in bombed-out areas seems to be a growing customer base. Invady McTintface and Bibi McZionbribe are leading the way.

      That being said, it's stupid to try to be both an AI company and a space company. Split focus like that has rarely worked well

    • Re:Once again Patrick Boyle on YouTube covered thi (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @11:34AM (#66154170)

      It is a scam, but the launch and Starlink portions aren't it. Launches can easily expand 10x, and Starlink has huge opportunities in backup service for residential and business, not to mention connected vehicles. Think of Starlink as an alternative to mobile phones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      I don't totally agree with that Starlink assessment though. They're far from "maxed out" on potential customers. Where I work, alone, we have 50+ remote docks and warehouses in random parts of the country. All of them need Internet access desperately but most are only serviced by an LTE cellular connection because they're in too rural an area for other options.

      Starlink would be ideal for them, and we've used it in a couple of locations already. The main objection seems to be the complexity of the setup. (

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        When I got my Starlink antenna I just put on the ground in the back yard pointing south, plugged it into a power outlet and connected to the Wifi and had it going in about five minutes. It's now mounted to the frame of the back yard swing with a battery pack and solar panel to power it.

        I guess it's more of a problem if you don't want it to risk it getting stolen as then someone probably has to go up on a roof and run a power cable and possibly LAN cable to it. I doubt SpaceX are going to pay for someone to

        • Ha! I did nearly the same thing you did with my Starlink dish. Just plopped it down in the backyard, used the little phone app to line it up, then ran one single ethernet cable from the starlink device in through a window and into the provided router. The whole thing was really easy to setup and the service is pretty good. A bit pricey but when you have zero other options, it's wonderful.

  • It's interesting how revenues, and profits, from Starlink far outweigh that from their actual Space/Launch business.

    In 2025 Starlink made $12B in revenue, and a profit of $4B

    In 2025 Space made $4B in revenue, and LOST $0.6B

    As always with Musk, the real potential is described as what they MIGHT do, not what they are actually doing, with his X.ai failure seeming to do most of the heavy lifting (excuse the pun) there.

    In fact Musk embraces the pun and refers to their maxed out fanboy $300/mo Grok subscriptions

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      It's worth remembering that most SpaceX launches are Starlink launches and those are presumably counted as a cost rather than revenue since SpaceX is its own customer for those launches. If they get Starship working, even if they can only reuse it a few times like the early Falcon 9s, that will likely reduce those costs significantly.

      • I'd have thought both? They are reporting separately for their Starlink and Space/Launch segments, so presumably the Space segment is on paper selling launch services to the Starlink one. It's a cost for Starlink and revenue to Space.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      real potential is described as what they MIGHT do, not what they are actually doing

      You might want to look up the definition of "potential."

    • In 2025 Space made $4B in revenue, and LOST $0.6B

      There's a (...hmm...big?) reason for that.

  • Musk had claimed SpaceX could never go public because a big goal of SpaceX/Musk going to Mars which is NOT profitable. Good news the goal is built into Musk's pay package. Still, you have to wonder how that squares with investors who only want PROFIT

    The SpaceX board granted Musk one billion restricted shares of Class B common stock on top of his existing stake of roughly 5 billion shares, worth roughly $700 billion at the expected IPO valuation of $1.75 trillion. The new shares, potentially worth an additi

  • SpaceX plans a float of 5% AND per the NASDAQ weights it with a "NEW and IMPROVED" hidden multiplier of 3X!
    So SpaceX will get weighted at 15% for the index. Oof.
    So they retain 95% of the shares to slowly dribble out when they need cash.
    In return you get a 401k with a giant turd "floating" there.

  • "Blah blah Elon baaaad blah blah ..."

    There you go. You're welcome.

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