SpaceX: The Revenue Playbook

How Does the World’s Most Successful Aerospace Company Make Money?

One of the important aspects of building a company is finding the right business model. There are only a couple of different things a company can do to generate revenue, but what works for one company may not work for another.

And this is where it gets trickier.

OpenAI for example, generates revenue primarily through subscriptions. But as Ben Thompson argues that in order for OpenAI to skyrocket the revenue and become profitable, they “Must” Introduce ads to the platform. It’s really hard for a company to scale a B2C product with a subscription, Ben believes, especially when the platform has billions of users.

I agree with Ben.

But introducing ads to the platform is kind of a big deal for OpenAI. What if showing ads on the platform just makes the user experience bad? What if users start churning out and move to a different platform? You may think it’s an easy decision, but it’s totally not.

That said,

Now let’s talk about SpaceX. It’s one of the most successful aerospace companies in the world, but unlike these digital platforms (ChatGPT, Google, Amazon), SpaceX can not simply have ads or monetize the main product through subscription just because of the nature of the business.

This begs the question: How does SpaceX make money? Well, SpaceX’s business model is very unique compared to Google, OpenAI, or Amazon. Although SpaceX does make money through subscriptions (just a hint), but it’s not the primary source of income for the company.

Most of us know what SpaceX is and what it does, right? But very few know how in the world the company generates revenue. If you’ve been asking the same question for a while now, good news, you’ll know today how the world’s most valued #1 private company makes money.

Let’s dive in!

What is SpaceX

Before we discuss how SpaceX makes money, it’s important to understand what SpaceX actually is, what it really does, and most importantly, what it’s really trying to accomplish.

In simple terms, SpaceX is an aerospace company that builds reusable rockets and sends them to space for various purposes. The company’s mission is to “Make mankind a multiplanetary species." It’s the only private company that successfully returned a spacecraft from low Earth orbit for the first time in 2012.

The founder and the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk says this:

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great - and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

Elon is building so many cool things: electric cars, brain chips, humanoid robots, an AI tool (Grok), and others, but he is obsessed with sending people to Mars more than anything else. The company, SpaceX, was founded in 2002 and is now valued at $350 billion, making it the #1 most valued, successful private company in the world.

But this “Game” isn’t for everyone, because building rockets is expensive. So this again begs the question: How did the guy pull it off? How in the world did Elon not only make SpaceX a multi-billion-dollar company but also make it profitable?

One of the biggest factors for this would be their ability to build reusable rockets, which allows them to reduce expenses on building the same boosters/capsules again and again. Without the reusability of the rockets, it would’ve been impossible for a company like SpaceX to become profitable or to even become a successful aerospace company.

Onto the simplest explanation on how SpaceX makes money.

Government Contracts

Government contracts are the single most reliable source of income for the company. This government contract includes partnerships and long-term deals with NASA, the Department of Defence, the US Space Force, and others. How does the contract work?

SpaceX builds the rockets and charges money for the payloads. For example, if NASA wants SpaceX to send equipment, materials, utilities, or other items to the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX would charge money for that.

These are not short-term or individual contracts, but rather long-term, big-budget contracts worth billions of dollars. Another thing SpaceX charges money for is sending astronauts to space. You may already know the International Space Station is a governmental project, so if NASA wants SpaceX to send an astronaut to ISS, SpaceX would charge money for it.

SpaceX generated over $13 billion in total revenue last year (2024), of which roughly $2 billion, close to 15% revenue, came from government contracts, making it one of the important revenue sources for the company.

Commercial Launches

SpaceX launches new rockets every week or every other week, and that’s a lot. Some of these launches are commercials. Meaning, these launches are for private space companies, telecom companies, Earth observation startups, and constellation operators like OneWeb and Inmarsat.

SpaceX charges money to these private companies for payloads (cargo and stuff). The price of commercial launches varies depending on how much stuff a particular company wants in the payload, starting from the lowest of $325k.

SpaceX also has this thing called “Rideshare Missions” through which small startups can book payloads, and the price gets split between the total companies that want their stuff sent to space through that rocket. This makes the pricing affordable for startups that are fairly new with tight budgets. You can find more information about ridesharing here.

Starlink

Starlink is an internet connectivity service SpaceX provides to people around the world. As of now, the service (Starlink) works in 130 different countries and territories. You might already have seen something like this in the sky:

That’s Starlink.

Last year, SpaceX generated over $8.2 billion from the Starlink service alone, which is huge. Well how does the business model work? In order for you to use Starlink, you have to subscribe to its plans that usually come as $90-$120 per month or ~$1200 per year (varies based on region).

It seems like Starlink is quickly becoming a major source of income for the company, roughly 63% of the total revenue coming from it. As of 2025, Starlink has over 5 million users worldwide, which will continue to grow as the service expands to more countries.

Space Tourism

Have you seen this guy, channel name Dude Perfect, who went to space through Blue Origin rocketship? Blue Origin is a SpaceX competitor, founded by Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon).

Do you think that dude paid zero dollars to go to space? Nope!

I don’t know how much he paid to Blue Origin, but he definitely did. And this is another income stream of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin by letting people explore space as tourists. Of course, it’s not for everyone (yet!) as it’s expensive. But people who do have money can travel to space by paying money to these aerospace companies.

SpaceX Store

SpaceX also has got this online store where they sell merchandise of their products, for example, t-shirts, hats, mugs, bottles, hoodies, and more. Price varies from $20 to $499, depending on the product you buy.

Though it’s unclear how much money they make from it as there is no public data.

Future Monetization

One possible future monetization I can think of is, SpaceX will become an airline company when they officially start sending people to Mars. And this is where they’ll make banks just like airline companies now do.

Aside from that, let's be honest, what SpaceX has already accomplished is very hard to accomplish for most aerospace companies. Thus, there are only so many successful aerospace companies that will send people to Mars when things are ready. This makes SpaceX even more valuable in the future.

If today SpaceX is a $350 billion company, and it finally starts sending people to Mars within 10 years, guessing that SpaceX would be a trillion-dollar company wouldn’t be a wrong prediction.

Thanks for reading, catch you on the next one.