Tesla isn't that profitable, but SpaceX is likely generating boatloads of cash. From what I can tell Starlink alone has a free positive cash flow of about $2 billion. I'm not sure what the launch business is worth, but it's likely a lot given the absence of domestic competition.
I have a suspicion the reason Musk wanted to combine SpaceX and X.ai is the latter gives him losses to write off against all that cash from the former plus a chance for a big AI payoff.
[flagged]
In 2024 Gwynne Shotwell said Starlink had a $600 million positive free cash flow based on $8.2 billion in revenue. Last year revenue estimates from both SpaceX and from outside people adding up new military contracts came out to about $11.8 billion. Their fixed costs haven't gone up much, so the big unknown is development costs for military contracts. I think $2 billion is a reasonable, conservative estimate.
How much of that are they sinking into Starship?
Probably some, but $2 billion a year? That seems like too much.
Hopefully all of it. If Starship succeeds, and that seems incredibly likely given the tests thus far, it will create an entire industry.
People underestimate how much ships changed the world. It will happen again, the only question is when.
There's a few ways
They're prepping for an IPO and there have been some anonymous insider reports of the figures in the press
There are industry estimates
Much of their income comes from public contracts
pointers?