The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship—will it finally deliver?
These days, one would be forgiven for forgetting that SpaceX is, at its core, a rocket company.
Consider the company's mega deals over the last year. SpaceX paid $17 billion-more than it has spent developing every one of its rockets-to EchoStar for wireless spectrum to boost its Starlink network. It revealed plans to launch 1 million orbital data centers. SpaceX merged with xAI in a deal that valued Elon Musk's artificial intelligence firm at $250 billion, and it announced plans to become a major computer chip manufacturer. And earlier this month, SpaceX sold an enormous amount of ground-based compute to Anthropic.
As a result of all this activity, an impending IPO will value the company at something like $1.5 or $2 trillion. That's trillion, with a t.