$SPCX SpaceX (SPCX) is no longer making money just by “launching rockets.” It now has three main businesses—its “three engines”: Starlink (selling internet), Launch (delivery services), and AI (working on computing power).

How exactly does it make money? It’s simple:

1. The biggest cash cow: Starlink

In plain terms, it’s selling broadband. It has sent nearly 10,000 small satellites into the sky to provide internet service to areas where fiber can’t reach—such as rural areas, offshore drilling platforms, and airplanes.
Earning path: users pay $120 to $5,000 per month (from consumer to commercial). Starlink now accounts for 61% of the company’s total revenue (it roughly did about $11.4 billion in 2025), making it the company’s “major cash lifeblood,” responsible for funding other businesses that burn money.

2. The most hardcore old-line business: Launch services

This is about helping NASA, the military, and other countries put satellites or people into space.
Earning path: it crushes competitors by relying on reusable rockets. Falcon 9 can be reused more than 20 times; each launch costs $28 million, which is 2/3 cheaper than Europe and Japan. That’s why 65% of global commercial launches are done by it, with orders stacked up—nearly $50 billion coming from both government and commercial orders. However, this business is currently losing money because investment in developing a new rocket (Starship) is too high.

3. The most money-burning but most imagination-filled: AI (xAI)

This is about building large models (Grok) and computing power. Although this business lost $6.3 billion in 2025, the market buys into it. Because it can combine the technology from rockets with AI computing power to tell a story—and it has already signed big deals with Google and Anthropic (the company behind Claude).
Core logic: it’s fine if it’s losing money now—the capital market looks to see whether it can make huge money in the future with “space-grade computing power.”

To sum up the way it plays:

Starlink is responsible for making money to support the household → Launch handles getting things up into space at low cost → AI is responsible for telling the future story, lifting valuations.

But you also need to know: the company is not profitable yet. In 2025, total revenue was $18.67 billion, net loss was $4.94 billion—everything was poured into R&D (Starship and AI are huge money pits).

One sentence: Starlink is desperately making money, the old-line launch business is building reputation, and AI is burning money to sell a dream.