SpaceX's FULL IPO Roadshow Presentation

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hi, I'm Bret Johnson, and uh Chief Financial Officer of SpaceX for the last 15 years. Only one of the companies ever had, actually. And uh it's a pleasure to uh talk with you about SpaceX.

[00:00:12]Elon started [music] SpaceX with the goal to change mankind and make us a multi-planetary species. And what's been very exciting is we've been able to expand that mission with our Starlink constellation, [music] as well as with our AI solutions. At our core, we're really builders. We're the only company building the integrated hardware and software [music] infrastructure to really power multiple businesses. But we started back in 2002 at our roots [music] as a space business. We achieve what others think is really the impossible, and we make that possible. If you look at some of the milestones that we have accomplished already in the space business, we're the first private company to develop and launch a liquid fuel rocket and reach orbit back in 2008 with the Falcon 1.

[00:00:57]We're then the first private company to successfully dock a spacecraft with the International Space Station in 2012. The first to successfully propulsively land a rocket from space, specifically the first stage booster back in 2015, and re-fly an orbital class rocket booster in 2017. The first private company to launch astronauts to orbit and fly to the International Space Station in 2020.

[00:01:21]We are the first to have really a fleet of rockets that end with reusability and drive from Falcon reusability today of the first stage to full reusability with Starship. 23 metric tons of capability with Falcon 9, going to 64 metric tons of capability with Falcon Heavy, to now about to be 100 metric tons with the version 3 of Starship.

[00:01:47]And really, from a rocket reuse perspective, that has been the unlock mechanism. It's really driven down the cost of launch and given us the ability to drive up launch cadence.

[00:01:58]Specifically, you know, having a hangar full of rockets to show our launch customers or having the ability to ramp to just last year alone 165 launches of our Falcon 9 and now moving into fully reusable with Starship.

[00:02:19]Starship really has an unparalleled capability from a cost efficiency perspective. If you look at where this industry has been historically and where we were able to get to with just first stage reuse on the Falcon class where we were able to drive out 85% of the historic cost. Now we're looking at a vehicle that's intended to go drive a 10x improvement even from where we were already industry leading with Falcon.

[00:02:46]Along with the unlock from a cost perspective, Starship also gives us an unlock from a throughput perspective.

[00:02:53]So you see with Falcon 9 in the expendable category, let alone Falcon Heavy at 64 metric tons going to 100 metric tons with version 3 and then already starting to work on version 4 in the design that should double that again to 200 metric tons to orbit. We talk about the mission and certainly how we accomplish the mission. One of the reasons that we're able to do this is we run what Elon calls the algorithm. And the algorithm starts with first and foremost making the requirements less dumb. Questioning the requirements is a key piece of our culture. We then move into deleting parts and process steps and you see that as an example in the picture here where you have the first version of the Raptor engine on the left going all the way to Raptor 3. And then once you delete the parts and the process step, you move into optimization, acceleration, and automation.

[00:03:45]And then pivoting to the connectivity business, you know, again the connectivity business is really enabled by our core launch capabilities. We have now launched and operate a high-speed, low-latency global broadband constellation, otherwise known as Starlink. And really, we feel Starlink is an unrivaled satellite constellation.

[00:04:03]The V2 satellites that we fly today on Falcon deliver 96 gigabits per second per satellite, and we fly roughly 27 satellites per launch. But the V3 satellites we're about to fly in the back half of this year are a huge step function in capability. In fact, per launch on a Falcon today with the V2 satellites to the version 3 satellites, it's a 20x improvement related to the capacity per launch with version 3. And in fact, that translates into with 60 satellites flying per launch on Starship and each of them delivering roughly a terabit per second that we will be able to fly 61 terabits per second of downlink capability per launch of Starship coming up here. What that quickly translates into is after 20 launches of Starship, we will be launching 1.2 petabytes of capacity per year. When you start talking about in petabytes, you start actually looking at the Starlink network as a percentage of global internet traffic.

[00:05:04]It's also important to note that because of the fact that we're delivering from space, we're able to deliver in many areas and in many cases where terrestrial just can't deliver, whether it's low-density populated areas uh whether it's very remote areas, whether it's in very challenging topography where you just couldn't handle it from a terrestrial perspective, or on the mobility side, in the air, on the ocean.

[00:05:31]And we've been able to demonstrate over and over again being able to bring capabilities and services and communication to areas in a disaster zone.

[00:05:43]We have the world's largest satellite internet network, roughly over 9,600 satellites. If you look at all the others combined and they're a fraction of what our constellation is. We're actually representing 75% of all active maneuverable satellites in orbit at this point.

[00:05:59]And our user base is significantly expanding. So, we ended 2024 with roughly 4.4 million users. End of last year, we had roughly doubled year-over-year in the number of users [music] to roughly 8.9 million. And now, as of the end of Q1, approximately 10.3 million users on our network. Over 100% year-over-year growth. Over 164 countries/territories that represents over 3 billion people being covered by our network.

[00:06:31]And as more and more companies and industries look to resiliency and reliability as critical capabilities, you're starting to see Starlink being brought in as either the primary or at least the backup solution in a lot of the fixed site as well. Aviation specifically, I have to call out cuz there's a tremendous amount of traction.

[00:06:48]You see an announcement almost every week now related to another airline talking about Starlink adoption. And then also on the government side of the business, delivering Starshield capabilities, a whole separate constellation for the US government.

[00:07:02]Again, resiliency being critical here in delivering core capabilities.

[00:07:07]And then the the other piece of our very diversified connectivity offering is direct to the handset. So, direct to device, we started out with our Gen 1 solution, which was really a proof of concept. We flew 650 satellites, turned on the service with 30 different mobile network operators around the world, the largest being T-Mobile in the United States, have coverage now for 1.9 billion people, and have proved that there's certainly a demand and excitement about having this capability.

[00:07:35]We now are in work to fly our Gen 2.

[00:07:39]This is full 5G quality to your phone. I think this will be the transformational unlock of connecting the other 3 billion people on the planet that had really been left out from the digital divide.

[00:07:49]And then lastly, our AI business. It is really exciting to talk about where we're at from an AI perspective cuz this is again following that same repeatable business model that I talked about leveraging that unrivaled launch capability. We looked at following down the same path that we had done with the other businesses and really owning the full value chain all the way to the end customer. What made the most sense is for us to have our own frontier model and be able to capture all of that value. And so that's exactly what we did. We now have the world's largest coherent supercomputer with the Colossus 2 data center that we stood up with best-in-class compute GB200 specifically from Nvidia. We have the first gigawatt scale training cluster, the first gigawatt scale megapack battery installation there as well, and first to deploy the GB200s and 300s at significant scale. And so, you know, having a gigawatt of nameplate compute draw is really compelling for us.

[00:08:45]But certainly, I want to talk about the orbital AI compute that's coming in the next couple of years because this seems to be the future of AI infrastructure, >> [music] >> and this is the clean energy solution.

[00:08:57]This is the solution that really addresses some of the [music] concerns related to AI data centers popping up.

[00:09:02]The distribution capability that others may think is a constraint related to this, we've already demonstrated with our Starlink network today. And having in essence no operating cost cuz you're leveraging the power of the sun, and cooling is radiative cooling off the satellite makes this readily available and incredibly cost-efficient. And so we are ramping up this capability right now, and in essence leveraging a ton of capability that we already have in place, whether it's the ion propulsion thrusters, whether it's the intersatellite laser links between the satellites, or the flight computer or reaction wheels. Again, a lot of technology that otherwise would be blockers to doing this in the near term, we have in place. It's why we feel like we are the only company that can do this in any meaningful time frame.

[00:09:50]And what matters related to AI infrastructure is really creating that business model where if you start at the very top and leverage that connectivity capability that we have to drive that infrastructure advantage for us. We then get to go right into the cycle of leveraging that, driving improved quality of intelligence, and lowering the cost at the same time of our token cost, monetizing that, and driving that reinvestment back into that cycle of infrastructure. We certainly demonstrated our capability to go monetize this infrastructure with key partners in the industry. For example, we signed a deal with Anthropic just recently and to give them access and and host their model on our data center while at the same time allowing us to make investments in our own model with oh, an example of that being the deal that we announced with Cursor related to improving our own coding capability on our compute resources. So, continuing down the path of monetization and leveraging our what we believe is best in class in the industry deployment of cutting edge compute and at the same time continuing to invest in our own models to even further that monetization in the future. I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the fact that we believe one of our differentiators related to our models is certainly the fact that we are designing them as advanced truth-seeking AI from the very beginning. Uh, it's certainly one of the reasons that Elon got into the AI business to begin with is to have that really truth-seeking model.

[00:11:27]We certainly are also going to leverage the X platform that we have in place now that really brings us real-time information. Real-time data is, I think, critical at all times, and I don't know that there's a better place to get real-time data than on X.

[00:11:45]So, our growth strategy starts with space, increasing our launch payloads, getting to full reusability from Starship perspective, and certainly over time opens up whole new markets in the space industry. But, what it immediately does is it enables our connectivity business to grow meaningfully, and now AI as well, where it's not just growth of our own platform on the infrastructure side. It also allows us to start hosting others and building out that piece of our AI business model. So, there's almost $6 trillion of available market that we're going after, really in three pieces. We are moving faster and cheaper than others in the industry, even related to deploying terrestrial compute, and we think over time the enter- prise AI market is massive. So, an incredibly large total addressable market that we're going after, you know, over $28 trillion.

[00:12:38]Not only are we positioned for those markets today, but I think it's exciting to talk about where some of the the future growth beyond that really is even happening. And certainly when you start talking about space, we start to talk about point-to-point transportation terrestrially, manufacturing or productivity, potentially asteroid mining in the future. And I think very exciting also is the lunar economy.

[00:13:03]The fact that we're on track in the next couple of years to put boots back on the moon, being able to build out sustainable capabilities on the moon, I think in the years to come will be a tremendous unlock for really for humanity.

[00:13:18]We feel like we've had a stellar track record already related to capital allocation and value creation. You know, if you look at even in the life of the company from a space and connectivity business, the fact that we really only raised $9 billion and have created the business that we now have today with last year alone generating $7.8 billion in positive adjusted EBITDA while also investing for the future with another $3.6 billion of R&D just last year alone. I think, you know, clearly we have a demonstrated both on the capital allocation side and the value creation that this is what we're all about.

[00:13:58]And what that means from a financial perspective on top line, revenue has continued to grow meaningfully year after year after year. In fact, in 2025 alone, over 30% growth year over year just as we were starting to ramp in essence in the connectivity business and generating that roughly $19 billion in revenue also generated almost $7 billion in positive adjusted EBITDA just last year alone. And then in the connectivity business portion, you can see [music] the significant step up where we grew roughly 50% in 2025 year over year.

[00:14:32]And then as far as building the infrastructure of the future, that typically takes capital. And so we are not alone in investing meaningfully in CapEx especially in the AI side of the business now and that's been the lion's share of the CapEx deployment for the last 2 years now that we have consolidated in our AI business into the fold here where just last year alone roughly $21 billion of CapEx, but a large percentage of that was for AI and you're already seeing us monetizing a decent amount of that with the hosting deal that we just announced on the Anthropic side.

[00:15:06]And then on the financials for Q1, we delivered roughly $5 billion of top line just in the first quarter. The connectivity segment alone was a highlight with roughly 3 billion of that revenue just in Q1. But if you look at where we think we will be in the longer term, our future model, we think that our revenue growth will be even significantly higher than that year-over-year. We think our gross margins are more like 70% and that our GAAP net income margin is more like 45% and so we're very excited about where we're ramping into related to the profitability business and yet the significant growth that we believe we're marching towards.

[00:15:45]And so lastly, why do we think we're going to win? I think it starts first and foremost with our global leadership position in orbital launch services. We have an unrivaled satellite and connectivity platform that really leverages vertical integration from design, manufacturing, deployment, and operations.

[00:16:04]And now really truth-seeking AI models enhanced by real-time data from our X platform. That extreme vertical integration really enables high velocity and superior cost efficiency at scale.

[00:16:17]And really the business models are incredibly difficult to replicate.

[00:16:22]Right? Because of the fact that at [music] the core, you first have to have that global leadership position in orbital launch. And so that unique ability to scale into new trillion-dollar markets across space, connectivity, and AI is certainly a reason that we think we're going to win and continue to be this mission-driven culture that is enabled by our world-class talent.

[00:16:47]Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

[00:17:23]>> Mhm.