Musk's SpaceX Splits Business Financial Report Revealed for the First Time, Only Starlink Making Money, xAI Burns Nearly $14 Billion in a Year

According to 1M AI News's monitoring, previously undisclosed SpaceX business unit financial data reveals that only the Satellite Internet Service Starlink is generating cash among the company's three main units, while the Rocket Launch and AI segments are both burning money.

Starlink had a revenue of $11.4 billion last year, a 50% year-over-year growth, accounting for 61% of SpaceX's total revenue. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, plus equity-based compensation) was $7.2 billion, with a profit margin of 63%, higher than 50% in 2024 and 41% in 2023. After deducting capital expenditures, Starlink had a free cash flow of about $3 billion, making it the only profitable segment within SpaceX.

The Rocket Launch business generated $4.1 billion in revenue, only an 8% increase, with a free cash flow of approximately -$3 billion. Most of SpaceX's over 160 launches last year were for deploying their Starlink satellites, with limited activity in the external customer market. The AI business (including the social platform X and the large-model company xAI, the latter of which was valued at $250 billion in February and merged into SpaceX) had a revenue of $3.2 billion, a 23% growth, but burned nearly $14 billion in a year. As a comparison, OpenAI and Anthropic burned about $9 billion and $4 billion last year, respectively, with SpaceX's AI segment alone exceeding the sum of the two. In terms of revenue scale and growth rate, xAI also lags far behind OpenAI and Anthropic.

The $3 billion free cash flow generated by Starlink is far from enough to cover the losses of the other two segments. SpaceX had a capital expenditure of $20.7 billion for the year, exceeding its total revenue. The overall free cash flow is about -$14 billion. According to a previous report by The Information, SpaceX had a net loss of nearly $5 billion last year.

SpaceX's recent valuation is $1.25 trillion, equivalent to 266 times EBITDA. Meta is at 16 times, Alphabet at 25 times, and NVIDIA at 36 times, while even the famously high-valued Tesla is only at 119 times. SpaceX plans to go public in June this year, expecting to be the largest IPO in history. The key question of this IPO is evident: Can Starlink's growth prospects sustain the massive losses of the other two business lines?