Analysis of SpaceX's Business Model: Full Breakdown of Starlink Growth, AI Computing Power, and Revenue Structure

June 12, 2026, Friday, Eastern Time in the United States, SpaceX will officially list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker SPCX. The offering price is locked at $135 per share, with plans to issue approximately 555.6 million Class A common shares, raising up to $75 billion in initial capital—this will be the largest IPO in global capital markets history, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $29.9B record in 2019. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan jointly serve as co-lead underwriters, with 18 other banks participating in distribution, forming an almost complete Wall Street major investment bank underwriting lineup.

But the $1.77 trillion valuation—corresponding to roughly 90 to 100 times sales—has also brought enormous valuation controversy from the very beginning. How can a company with a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025 and an even larger net loss of $4.28 billion in Q1 2026 be valued? By dissecting SpaceX’s true financial foundation across three dimensions—Starlink user growth, revenue structure, xAI merger, and Colossus computing leasing—and evaluating the actual value of Gate’s US stock and direct IPO products from a trading entry perspective.

From 9.2 million to 12 million: The exponential growth engine of Starlink

Starlink’s user growth curve is the most verifiable part of SpaceX’s valuation. Throughout 2025, Starlink achieved a leap from 4 million to over 9 million users, with a net increase of about 4.6 million users for the year, setting a record. Entering 2026, growth has not slowed: as of March 31, 2026, Starlink had about 10.3 million subscribers worldwide, a year-over-year increase of approximately 105%. On June 5, 2026, SpaceX officially announced that global active users surpassed 12 million, covering over 160 countries and regions, with more than 11,000 satellites in orbit. The jump from 9.2 million to 12 million in less than six months shows that the compound user growth rate is still accelerating.

Revenue similarly reflects this growth trend. According to Payload Space data, in 2025, Starlink’s annual revenue was approximately $10.4 billion to $11.39 billion, accounting for 61% to 69% of SpaceX’s total revenue (roughly $15 billion to $18.67 billion). More critically, profit quality: in 2025, Starlink achieved an operating profit of $17.7k, with an operating margin of about 39%; in Q1 2026, operating profit further expanded to about $1.14 billion, maintaining an operating margin around 38%—a very high level in the satellite broadband industry.

Industry estimates project that in 2026, Starlink’s revenue will grow by 80% to $18.7 billion, accounting for 79% of SpaceX’s total revenue. Based on the predicted total revenue of about $34 billion in 2026, Starlink’s revenue weight will further approach the $20 billion level, with long-term growth expectations forming the only core asset in SpaceX’s valuation system that can be anchored by traditional “profit-cash flow” models.

Three time dimensions of revenue structure: Launch, Connectivity, and AI

In its latest prospectus, SpaceX divides its business into three segments: Space (space launches), Connectivity (Starlink satellite internet), and AI—corresponding to “Now (rocket launches), Near-term (Starlink), and Future (AI compute and models)” across three time horizons.

Commercial launches (space segment) are SpaceX’s earliest core capability. With Falcon 9’s full rocket reuse technology, SpaceX has reduced the cost of a single launch to about $15 million to $30 million, only one-tenth or even less of traditional expendable rockets. In 2025, SpaceX completed 137 launches, accounting for about 70% of the global commercial launch market, essentially monopolizing markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. On the government contract side, SpaceX secured two major orders just before the IPO: a $4.16 billion “Space-Based Advanced Mobile Target Indicator” (SB-AMTI) contract for deploying satellite constellations to track aerial threats; and a $2.29 billion “Space Data Network Backbone” contract to build a secure, high-speed military satellite communication network—totaling $6.45 billion.

Starlink (connectivity segment) has become SpaceX’s most critical financial pillar and the only segment currently generating stable operating profit. In 2025, Starlink’s operating profit was $4.42B, with an operating margin of about 39%; in Q1 2026, operating profit was about $1.14 billion, with a margin around 38%. Based on the 2026 revenue estimate, Starlink’s single-segment operating profit could exceed $5 billion.

The financial characteristics of the AI segment are entirely different. In February 2026, SpaceX officially announced the acquisition of Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, completing the merger through equity exchange, with a combined valuation of about $1.25 trillion. Financially, the AI segment shows very high capital expenditure and unprofitable status: in Q1 2026, SpaceX’s combined capital expenditure reached $4.42B, with $12.5k attributable to AI; during the same period, cash and cash equivalents decreased from $10.11B to $7.72B, with SpaceX burning through about $3 billion in cash each quarter.

From the combined financial performance of the three segments, SpaceX exhibits a pattern of high revenue growth coupled with high capital expenditure expansion: from 2023 to 2025, combined operating revenues were $10.39 billion, $14.02 billion, and $18.67 billion, respectively, with a 33.2% year-over-year increase in 2025; in Q1 2026, revenue was about $4.69 billion, continuing the growth trend. However, net losses in 2025 reached $15.85B, with an operating loss of $2.59 billion; in Q1 2026, the consolidated net loss further surged to $4.28 billion, nearly matching the total loss of 2025. The dual features of rapid revenue growth and expanding losses constitute the core financial contradiction facing SpaceX today.

Colossus compute leasing to Anthropic: a key monetization of AI

In May 2026, SpaceX announced a notable compute leasing agreement with Anthropic. Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion per month to lease SpaceX’s Colossus and Colossus II data center compute resources in Memphis, Tennessee, with the agreement planned to last until May 2029, totaling about $40 billion.

Colossus 1’s scale is substantial: over 220k Nvidia GPUs, including H100, H200, and the new GB200 accelerators, with a compute capacity of 300 MW, capable of supporting large language models, multimodal systems, and edge-scale generative AI. This deal is strategically significant for both sides—Anthropic gains cutting-edge AI training infrastructure; for SpaceX, during the transition phase before AI operations turn profitable, leasing compute resources provides stable and large-scale cash flow.

According to disclosures in the IPO prospectus, annualized revenue from AI compute leasing has exceeded $15 billion. Combined with Anthropic’s rent and other collaborations like Google Cloud, SpaceX’s annualized recurring revenue (ARR) from AI compute leasing has reached about $26 billion. This means that even before the large AI models are commercialized, its compute infrastructure already has independent revenue-generating capacity—an asset monetization path unique in the AI and broader tech industries.

Elon Musk publicly commented in late May 2026 that the lease term was only 180 days rather than a long-term commitment, and he reserved the right to reclaim compute resources if necessary. Regardless of the final terms, turning 220k GPUs into annualized leasing revenue of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars has already become a key support for SpaceX’s AI valuation system.

Why does the $1.77 trillion valuation still face controversy?

No matter how impressive Starlink’s growth or how solid the monetization logic of AI compute leasing, the valuation disagreement for SpaceX remains hard to ignore.

Question 1: Is a price-to-sales ratio over 50 reasonable? Based on the projected 2026 revenue of about $34 billion, the IPO’s PS ratio is approximately 52; using the actual 2025 revenue of $18.67 billion, the PS ratio exceeds 90 to 100. Morningstar analyst Nicholas Owens estimates SpaceX’s fair value at about $780 billion—about 55% below the IPO offering price—and warns that “under almost any scenario, the company is overvalued, at least in the short term.”

Question 2: The sustainability of capital expenditure and financing needs. As of the IPO eve, SpaceX’s cumulative deficit was about $41.3 billion. The prospectus admits the company “has a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future,” and expects significant capital expenditure until AI products become profitable. At a quarterly cash burn rate of $3 billion, the $75 billion raised in the IPO could cover about 6 to 7 quarters of capital expenditure.

Supporting views: Unique asset attributes and ecosystem premium. The closest comparable assets are not traditional aerospace stocks but tech platform companies with AI infrastructure attributes. Oppenheimer gave a “buy” rating post-IPO, with a 12- to 18-month target price of $190, roughly 40% above the $135 issue price; New Street Research set a target of $165, estimating xAI’s valuation could reach $575 billion. With Grok large models, massive real-time training data (from X platform), and potential deep integration with SpaceX’s rocket launches and Starlink network, this “space + AI” vertical integration structure has no fully comparable counterparts in global capital markets.

How to participate in SPCX investment via Gate?

With SpaceX’s IPO landing, retail investors’ most pressing question is: how to buy SPCX shares?

Gate launched a new service called “IPO Access” in June 2026, with the first project being SpaceX. Users can submit subscription requests before the company’s official listing and quickly receive the actual shares after listing, completing a one-stop loop from IPO subscription to secondary market trading. Users participate in the “Gate IPOs” zone, supporting USDT payments, with a weighted allocation mechanism (earlier subscription, higher allocation). After successful IPO allocation, shares are directly distributed to users’ Gate stock accounts on June 12, with no need for additional account opening, enabling real US stock holding and trading.

Additionally, on June 1, 2026, Gate officially launched real stock trading, becoming one of the first crypto platforms to directly access the US stock market. As of June 2026, Gate TradFi has listed over 10,000 real stocks and ETFs, covering NYSE, Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, NYSE American, and BATS.

The core advantages of Gate’s real stock trading include three dimensions: ultra-low fractional trading thresholds starting at just 0.01 shares, with as little as $1 to start investing in US stocks; USDT settlement; and full SIPC protection, with all stock trades executed by compliant brokers holding US Broker-Dealer licenses and clearing qualifications, with assets independently custodied via DTC.

For investors wishing to get ahead of SPCX or other hot US stocks, Gate’s stock trading system offers a low-threshold, efficient, and secure one-stop solution.

Conclusion

SpaceX’s IPO pricing has set a historic milestone—raising $75 billion, a PS ratio of 52 to 100, and the unprecedented “space + AI” business concept—forming the core driver of the current IPO premium. From a fundamental perspective, Starlink’s 12 million active users and 39% operating margin provide a solid cash flow pillar; commercial launch business maintains a dominant position with $6.45 billion in government contracts and 137 launches annually; and xAI’s Colossus compute leasing (over $15 billion annualized) and potential monetization of large models support the high valuation of the AI segment.

However, the $41.3 billion accumulated losses, quarterly cash burn of about $3 billion, and geopolitical risks in international revenue remain long-term factors investors cannot ignore when allocating SPCX. Institutional forecasts of the first-day trading price (between $165 and $190) already show a significant premium over the $135 issue price, and the market will make its own valuation judgment on listing day.

For investors interested in SpaceX IPO, the long-term value of SPCX ultimately depends on three core variables: whether Starlink can surpass 20 million users before 2027 and maintain profitability; whether xAI (and AI monetization via Colossus and other compute leasing) can break even within 3 to 5 years; and whether SpaceX can sustain its dominance in launch frequency, reuse efficiency, and government contracts renewal. These three key questions will be answered one by one over the coming year.