【AI前沿】Famously secret about its finances, SpaceX opens its books for the first time

$paceXFamously secret about its finances, SpaceX opens its books for the first time“We believe we have identified the largest TAM in human history.”Eric Berger–May 20, 2026 7:02 pm|169SpaceX’s Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster stand ready for liftoff.Credit:

      SpaceXSpaceX's Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster stand ready for liftoff.Credit:

      SpaceXText
    settingsStory textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth*StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers onlyLearn moreMinimize to navAfter nearly a quarter of a century operating as a private company, with its financial accounts a closely guarded secret, SpaceX on Wednesday afternoon released a detailed accounting of its business in a nearly 400-pageS-1 filingwith the US Securities and Exchange Commission.SpaceX, founded in 2002 and still led by Elon Musk, submitted the filing in anticipation of an initial public offering of its stock as soon as June 12.The document revealed no major surprises about the company’s space operations, but there was a trove of details about its sprawling operations, which now encompass launch, spaceflight, space-based Internet, and, thanks to its recent acquisition of Musk’s xAI, social media and AI.The company reported revenues of $18.67 billion in 2025, up significantly from $14.02 billion the year before. However, after turning a small profit in 2024, the company lost $4.94 billion in 2025 largely due to spending on artificial intelligence development.That’s a big market you’ve got thereSpaceX projects a “total addressable market,” or TAM, of $28.5 trillion across its present and future offerings in space, data, and AI services. However, of this amount, only about $2 trillion is directly related to space or the company’s Starlink network. The remaining $26.5 trillion is believed to come from AI, largely from enterprise applications.SpaceX estimate of total addressable market.Credit:
                                  SpaceX S-1 filingSpaceX estimate of total addressable market.Credit:

      SpaceX S-1 filing“We believe we have identified the largest TAM in human history,” the company states on page 171 of the filing. “We believe our next trillion-dollar market is AI compute, which we contemplate will leverage our rockets and satellites for massive orbital deployment.”The company said its estimates for this large market were based on a number of sources.“Our AI market estimates are based in part on projections of global data center compute demand from third-party sources, including estimates published by RAND Corporation, together with internal assumptions regarding the portion of global compute capacity that may be utilized for AI workloads and other operational assumptions such as power usage, utilization rates and pricing,” the filing states.Compensation detailsThe document includes some interesting details about the company’s leadership. After the IPO concludes and SpaceX becomes a public company, Musk will retain 85.1 percent of the “combined voting power” in leading SpaceX. He will serve as the company’s chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors. It will be very difficult to remove him from this position.Musk’s salary in 2025 was $54,080, a value tied to California’s minimum salary for exempt employees. Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of the company, received a salary of $1.08 million in 2025, but including stock awards, her total compensation was valued at $85.8 million.The S-1 filing notes that Musk has served as an advisor to President Trump and alludes to the possibility that changes in politics might materially affect the company’s future.“The current political environment in the United States is highly polarized, and shifts in the composition of the US Congress or changes in the presidential administration can result in significant changes in government spending priorities, regulatory posture, and the allocation of contracts and resources across industries and programs,” the filing states. “Our relationships with US government agencies and the favorability of the regulatory and procurement environment in which we operate may be affected by which political party controls the presidency or one or both chambers of the US Congress.”The space businessThere is relatively little new information in this document about the company’s launch business. For example, there is no breakdown of the Falcon 9’s internal launch cost (believed to be about $15 million per launch) relative to the base public price of $74 million.As for the larger Starship vehicle, the filing states that SpaceX aims to reduce the price per kilogram to orbit to at least $185. SpaceX intends to begin launching V3 Starlink satellites during the second half of this year on the super-heavy rocket, but this is predicated on a series of test flights that will resumeas early as Thursdayfrom Starbase in South Texas.The filing also acknowledges the significan