What SpaceX’s Numbers Do and Don’t Tell Us

The mysteries of SpaceX are no more. My colleague Cory Weinberg today wrote the second of two stories in four days that pulled back the curtain on the finances of Elon Musk’s space company, which is planning to go public in a couple of months. You don’t have to wait for the formal IPO filing to get the dirt on SpaceX.

The bottom line is that SpaceX as a whole is a money pit, although one of its businesses is not. The Starlink satellite-based internet access business is doing well—it generated $7.2 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization last year. But neither the rocket launch business nor SpaceX’s xAI is producing cash. The AI business is the biggest money-loser, but that’s not surprising given how costly AI development is.