Elon Musk’s SpaceX is starting a round of no-disclosure analysts’ meetings, with the first, Reuters says, scheduled for April 21 in Memphis.

Analysts will be able to visit its xAI data center there a few days later. Don’t expect any hard information about what our industry cares about most – SpaceX communications satellites. Here are the real numbers behind the hype.

By: Steven S. Ross, Broadband Communities

As Elon Musk readies SpaceX for what is being ballyhooed as the biggest public stock offering in history, the entire broadband industry supposedly stands on the edge of a competitive environment change that rivals, and even exceeds, the first large deployments of fiber-optic cable to residential customers, starting in 2005.

SpaceX is a big deal. But the hype is overblown.

So far, federal regulatory agencies most involved do seem ready to help SpaceX. The Federal Communications Commission is expected to approve increased signal strength between ground stations and the growing SpaceX satellite constellation, which now numbers about 10,000 in low-earth orbit. That makes spectrum owned or controlled by SpaceX now, and any it buys in the future, more valuable.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) did bar most of a detailed set of SpaceX changes to customer agreements that would have added a bit to user costs and installation complexity, long after NTIA has approved SpaceX to serve what could eventually be about 500,000 customers with Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) subsidies.

That certainly helps clarify (a lot) and boosts the revenue stream (a little) that SpaceX expects from its satellite services sold to non-BEAD customers, though. And that, in turn, boosts chances of massive investor interest in the public offering.

It should be noted that NTIA director Arielle Roth and her boss –Secretary of Commerce and former Wall Streeter Howard Lutnick – have also adopted a “get tough” policy on other BEAD deployers, telling them for instance that if they get into trouble with rising interest rates, labor shortages, and tangled equipment and fiber supplies, NTIA will not ride to the rescue.

In particular, SpaceX had asked to modify its customer contracts by arguing that dedicating capacity for individual locations is impractical on a shared satellite network. Lutnick said no.

On April 6, about 20 House Democrats said they held “deep concern” about SpaceX’s participation in BEAD because of the company’s rule relaxation requests. That’s nonsense.

Thus, there are a lot of uncertainties before SpaceX – and Musk – cash in on stock sales.

Where the IPO stands

SpaceX has filed a (confidential by law) preliminary public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Large offerings – and again, this one could be the largest ever, surpassing Saudi Arabia’s partial sale of Aramco to public shareholders in a 2019 initial public offering (raising $25.6 billion at a bit over $8 a share, which valued the entire company at about $1.7 trillion).

It should be noted that a second Aramco stock sale in 2024 was at a slightly lower price. Also, the Aramco stock sale was not directly regulated by the United States. Its shares trade on the Saudi national exchange.

To beat Aramco as the largest IPO in history, Musk is said to be aiming at raising about $80 billion, priced to beat the overall imputed Aramco value for the entire company.

What does SpaceX do?

SpaceX – the communications system and the rocket business – was combined with Musk’s AI business, xAI, in February. The all-stock deal valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI (the trouble-prone Grok AI service), as well as X, formerly Twitter (originally purchased for about $40 billion and evidently now a money-loser), at a total of $250 billion.

xAI operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX. This should somewhat isolate SpaceX’s core business from xAI’s debt and liabilities. The SpaceX rocket and satellite communications businesses are intertwined, with a reported revenue of $13.1 billion in 2024 and a Wall Street consensus of around $20 billion for 2025 despite the fact that Musk himself last year estimated total revenue would be under $16 billion.

Last year, the company performed about 170 orbital launches, of which 122 were for its own communications satellites. It’s easily the world’s busiest launch operator. It is said to charge itself about $25 million per launch, for the reusable Falcon 9. It reportedly charges others at least twice that. This suggests about $3 billion charged to the communications satellites last year and another $3 billion to outside users, ranging from the federal government (including as much as $6 billion in signed deals last year with almost $1 billion in launches alone), to satellite competitors.

That, in turn, suggests that the communications business earned about $10 billion in revenue in 2025 from a claimed 9 million customers worldwide by year-end, or just about $1,100 a customer.

For BEAD, SpaceX committed to serve about 476,000 locations (not counting California). That’s more than any other provider as far as locations are concerned, but BEAD grants to them total $787 million (again, before California is cleared by NTIA) or less than 5 percent of all BEAD funds committed and about $1,600 per location.

Is this major competition?

Well, yes. But it is not even close to “killer competition” that would destroy or hobble everything else in the industry.

For example, there’s a lot of talk about Musk planning space-based AI data centers. The sun never sets in space, he says. But these are not for general customer service, at least for a long while. Musk has been quoted as saying space is the lowest-cost place to train AI.

Amazon is also buying Globalstar from Apple, which uses it mainly to locate and track iPhone users. The price is more than $11 billion, but that really just reflects the spectrum Globalstar has reserved more than it does any customer fees expected. And Amazon can use it to track deliveries as well. The deal won’t close until next year, at the earliest, and faces nervousness from Apple users.

Get this news in your inbox. Subscribe to the Broadband Communities newsletter!