The space industry and public got the first real look into SpaceX’s financials on Wednesday as the company published initial documents ahead of a planned IPO.
SpaceX published its S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on May 20, a prospectus to inform investors about the company’s business ahead of an IPO.
The company reported $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, with Starlink serving as the largest driver of revenue. Despite the high revenue, SpaceX still lost money. Net loss in 2025 was $4.9 billion
Loss from operations was $2.6 billion in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.6 billion.
The company’s Space segment including its launch business and crew services to NASA generated $4 billion in revenue in 2025, and spent nearly as much — $3 billion — in R&D funding on Starship development for the next-generation rocket.
The Connectivity segment, driven by Starlink, accounted for $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025 — about 61% of overall company revenue.
The AI segment, from the recently acquired xAI company, generated $3.2 billion in revenue.
The company’s total long-term debt at the end of March 2026 was $29.1 billion.
SpaceX laid out a number of growth strategies across its business lines including the lunar economy and manufacturing and energy production on the moon, growing Starlink Mobile, consumer AI platform monetization, and deploying orbital AI compute at scale. It called out future markets as space tourism, in-orbit manufacturing, and asteroid mining.
SpaceX has a massive estimation of its total addressable market (TAM), estimating TAM at $28.5 trillion — ”the largest actionable total addressable market in human history.” The company cites at total addressable market of $370 billion in space, $1.6 trillion in connectivity, and $26.5 trillion in AI.
Starlink Numbers
The filing gave some firm numbers in terms of Starlink subscribers and average revenue per user (ARPU), showing growth from 2023 to 2025.
Starlink subscribers have increased from 2.3 million in 2023 to 4.4 million in 2024, and 8.9 million in 2025.
Starlink has added more subscribers since the end of 2025, and cites 10.3 million subscribers at the end of March 2026.
However, ARPU has decreased over the years, going from $99 per subscriber per month in 2023 to $66 per subscriber per month at the end of March 2026.
Risk Factors and Controlled Status
As part of a prospectus, a company has to flag risks to its business model. Starship delays and development topped the list of risk factors.
“If we are unable to successfully complete the development, testing, and deployment of Starship at scale in accordance with our anticipated schedule, or at all, or if we are unable to achieve sufficient launch cadence, reusability, and capability, our ability to execute our growth strategy (such as the deployment of our next-generation V3 satellites, V2 satellite-to-mobile connectivity, and providing orbital AI compute infrastructure) would be materially and adversely affected,” the company said.
SpaceX had a string of three Starship test failures in a row last year, before recovering ground in test flights in August and October 2025. The S-1 came out just as SpaceX is expected to launch Starship for the first time in months on Thursday, debuting the new third generation of the rocket.
The risk factors also cite that SpaceX is “highly dependent” on CEO and founder Elon Musk, who “has been and continues to be, a driving force behind our growth, innovation, and operational success.”
The risk factors also note that Musk has considerable other roles like CEO of Tesla, and his former role with the U.S. government. “Although Mr. Musk devotes significant time to our businesses and is highly active in our management, he does not devote his full time and attention to our businesses and devotes time and attention to other significant roles (and may in the future serve in additional roles).”
It also cites a risk due to Musk’s actions and the attention he receives: “The actions and statements of Mr. Musk and his affiliated ventures, whether or not directly relating to us, may draw significant public attention and scrutiny to us and could potentially have a positive or negative impact on our business, relationships with customers and regulators, or stock price.”
Other risk factors included potential regulatory delays from the FCC, FAA, international regulators, and the company’s “significant indebtedness.”
The version of the S-1 released Wednesday did not state a price per share, or the total SpaceX expects to earn from the IPO.
It notes that SpaceX will be a controlled company after it goes public, which means that a single shareholder, a family, or group holds more than 50% of the voting power, according to the SEC definition. Controlled companies are not required to have a majority of the board composed of independent directors or to establish independent compensation and nominating committees.
In addition, SpaceX does not expect to pay dividends to its stock holders “in the foreseeable future,” and will instead “retain future earnings, if any, to finance the growth of our business.”
