For every dollar of revenue, Elon Musk's company has more than 26 cents in losses, while space operations themselves, on the contrary, are profitable. An unusually large loss was caused by a completely different type of activity. Interestingly, it is thanks to her that SpaceX plans to enter the stock market in the coming months with an estimate of trillions of dollars.
SpaceX is the largest space company on the planet. More precisely, it is the largest in terms of the number of launches into space (165 last year), the production of satellites (thousands of units per year), the number of controlled satellites (tens of thousands), as well as the tonnage of payload launched into space. In terms of the number of employees, it is far from the first lines: according to the latest unambiguous data from 2023, there were only about 13 thousand of them, which is less than many competitors. High intensity of operations with a small amount of invested labor often makes the company profitable.
As the first public report on its finances in the history of SpaceX shows, this was the case — but until 2025. Last year, with revenue of $18.67 billion (close to NASA's annual budget) She made a loss of $4.94 billion. The loss here is the difference between the company's expenses for the year and its revenue, which turned out to be almost five billion dollars less than expenses.
This loss occurred even though revenue in 2025 was $4.65 billion more than in 2024 (for comparison, Roscosmos had total revenue of $6.07 billion last year). However, it did not come from space operations, but mainly from investments in the field of neural networks and infrastructure development for the deployment of data centers for neural networks, including in orbit.
Nevertheless, the document is full of optimism about the neural network part of the business, which is still deeply unprofitable. The SpaceX report claims that its total potential market is $ 28.5 trillion per year (comparable to the US GDP), of which $26.5 trillion is accounted for by neural networks and only two trillion by all other space activities, including Starlink and other small, by the standards of this report, projects. The report contains a number of phrases in a typically Masked style, such as:
"We believe that we have found the largest market in the history of mankind. "We believe that our next trillion—dollar market is artificial intelligence [as the report calls neural networks— N.S.], which we believe will use our rockets and satellites to launch [neural network data centers— N.S.] into orbit on a large scale."… We believe that we are the only company that has a commercially viable path to large-scale development of AI-based orbital computing systems. This is due to our unique ability to efficiently put significant masses into orbit using reusable rockets and produce safe, reliable and high-performance satellites at low cost and in high volumes. Our goal is to eventually put 100 gigawatts of computing power into orbit every year."
To understand the scale of SpaceX's goals: 100 gigawatts of electric power is equal to 37 percent of the capacity of all Russian power plants. In other words, the company plans to launch data centers into space every three years with a total capacity greater than that of the entire Russian energy industry.
Since such data centers cannot be deployed without the low cost of space launches, the report indicates the target payload cost for the Starship rocket: no more than $ 185 per kilogram. Of course, we are talking about the cost for SpaceX, and not about the price at which rocket services will be offered to third-party customers.
Due to SpaceX's monopoly position in the global space market, the gap between the launch cost and the price at which it sells can be multiple. In particular, for the Falcon 9, the estimated cost of withdrawal at full mass loading is below $ 1,000 per kilogram. And to a third-party customer, launch sales go for about $4,000 per kilogram of payload output.
The document also reveals the so-called salaries of the management. In the case of Elon Musk, it was $54,000 last year. A strange figure arose from the laws of the state of California, where SpaceX is registered: this is the minimum wage for employees who do not fall under the minimum wage act (in particular, company executives). Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president, had a salary of $1.08 million in 2025. In addition, she received compensation in shares totaling 84.8 million. The latter figure is relatively high for company executives.
Since the report was prepared for the American Securities Commission, which is necessary before the company enters the stock market, it should have described the possible risks for SpaceX. Among them, the document highlighted the following:
"Our relations with U.S. government agencies, the favorable regulatory environment ... may be affected by which political party controls the presidency or one or both houses of the U.S. Congress."
This is a reasonable enough remark. Although SpaceX pursues space goals — as Naked Science recently noted, Musk's remuneration from the company has as its main condition the creation of a million city on Mars — due to the scale of its business, it has already become a major political factor.
The achievability of Musk's goals in the field of neural networks remains a big question. And not in the sense of whether or not SpaceX can launch data centers into orbit, as it plans to do starting in 2028. In 2026, an unbiased observer can no longer doubt its ability to make complex satellites and launch them into space quickly and massively.
But, as our publication noted two years ago, the question remains whether the neural network market ("AI" in SpaceX terminology) even has the capacity of tens of trillions of dollars per year that the company attributes to it. If not, its very large investments in this area can bring billions of dollars in losses in the following years. And this could jeopardize her far-reaching Martian plans.
