Famously secret about its finances, SpaceX opens its books for the first time
Source: Ars Technica
SpaceX, after nearly a quarter‑century as a private company with tightly guarded financials, released a detailed 400‑page S‑1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The filing, submitted in anticipation of a potential IPO as early as June 12, provides the first public look at the company’s finances.
The document confirms the expected scope of SpaceX’s operations—launch services, crewed spaceflight, satellite‑based Internet (Starlink), and, following the acquisition of Musk’s xAI, social media and AI. Revenue rose to $18.67 billion in 2025, up from $14.02 billion in 2024. After a modest profit in 2024, the company posted a $4.94 billion loss in 2025, primarily due to AI‑related spending.
That’s a big market you’ve got there
SpaceX projects a total addressable market (TAM) of $28.5 trillion across its current and future space, data, and AI services. Roughly $2 trillion of that is tied directly to space activities and the Starlink network; the remaining $26.5 trillion is expected to come from AI, especially enterprise applications.
SpaceX estimate of total addressable market. – Credit: SpaceX S‑1 filing
“We believe we have identified the largest TAM in human history,” the filing states on page 171. “We believe our next trillion‑dollar market is AI compute, which we contemplate will leverage our rockets and satellites for massive orbital deployment.”
Sources for the AI market estimate
The filing explains that the AI market figures are derived from a combination of:
- Projections of global data‑center compute demand from third‑party sources, including estimates published by the RAND Corporation.
- Internal assumptions about the share of global compute capacity that could be allocated to AI workloads.
- Operational factors such as power usage, utilization rates, and pricing.