SpaceX included five key business metrics in its IPO registration (S-1) statement with the SEC. The space segment, which includes the development and launch of vehicles to carry cargo and people into space reported on mass-to-orbit and launches. The connectivity segment, which includes Starlink’s broadband and satellite-to-mobile services, reported on subscriber count and ARPU. The AI segment, which includes the X.com social platform and x.AI Grok compute infrastructure, reported on nameplate compute draw, a measure of the installed power capacity in its facilities.
With SpaceX set to debut on the NASDAQ later today in what is the largest IPO in history, the company’s S-1 is arguably the most highly studied investor disclosure in history as well. In this article, we will review the revenue model for each of the three SpaceX reporting segments and analyze the associated operating metrics. We will also compare the definitions SpaceX provides for metrics such as launches, subscribers, and ARPU to how its peers in the industry calculate these same KPIs.
Space Revenue and Products
SpaceX’s Space segment is the company’s launch and mission-services business. It generated $4.1 billion of revenue in 2025, and its revenue comes mainly from fixed-price contracts with commercial customers and government agencies. The core offerings are launch services for customer payloads using Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, plus launch-and-development and mission services using Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship, and Dragon. These services cover missions to low, medium, and geosynchronous Earth orbit, lunar and interplanetary trajectories, and the International Space Station.
For most customer launches, SpaceX recognizes revenue when the payload is launched or deployed; for some government development work, it recognizes revenue over time as work is performed. Importantly, SpaceX does not book internal Starlink launches as Space segment revenue; those costs are capitalized in the Connectivity segment, which means reported Space revenue reflects third-party customer launches and other customer activity rather than the full strategic value of the launch system.
SpaceX’s Space Segment – Metrics
SpaceX shared a long list of operating metric data in its S-1, including:
- Lifetime mass-to-orbit
- Lifetime mission success rate
- Missions and success rates by vehicle type (Falcon, Starship)
- Number of booster launches
- Booster recovery success rate
- Average launch cost per kilogram
However, there are only two KPIs that it defined and included in the Key Business Metrics section of the S-1.
Mass-to-Orbit Metric
The first Space segment metric SpaceX reports on is “mass to orbit,” which it defined as:
“Mass to orbit is the total kilograms of payload that we deploy to orbit in a given period, and is a key indicator of SpaceX’s capacity and scalability that supports Space revenue and drives expansion across our Connectivity and AI segments. We calculate this metric by summing verified mass, including Starlink satellites, customer payloads, and development cargo, from all successful orbital and flight tests. This measure excludes failed or scrubbed attempts.”
The company delivered over 2200 metric tons of payload into space in 2025, a notable jump from the almost 1700 metric tons it transported the year before. Over its lifetime, SpaceX has delivered 7,400 metric tons with an over 99% mission success rate.
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
It is difficult to compare SpaceX’s mass-to-orbit metric to other company’s definitions, because there aren’t any publicly traded aerospace or defense players that report on a similar KPI. And for good reason. SpaceX has dominated the market carrying 80% of the volume since 2023.
Another way to think about the payload metric is to compare to more traditional types of supply chain such as ocean, rail, air, and ground freight. Many of the publicly traded companies in these terrestrial transport modes do report on payload volumes. Examples include:
- Rail cargo operators like Union Pacific and CSX report on metrics like revenue ton-miles and gross ton-miles
- Ocean cargo carriers like ZIM and Matson report on TEUs (twenty foot equivalents) carried and container volumes
- Ground transportation carriers like XPO and Old Dominion report on tonnage and pounds per day
Launch Metric
The second key business metric the company reports on it for its Space segment is the number of launches it performed. It defines launches as:
Total Launches
“Launches are a key measure of our operational scale, which in turn supports our revenue growth and mission to expand humanity’s presence in space. Launches in a period represent the sum of all successful orbital and flight tests across our rockets, including internal Starlink deployments, development tests, and launches for our third-party customers, and excluding any cancellations or scrubs that occurred in that period.”
SpaceX had 170 launches in 2025, up from 138 in 2024. Over its lifetime, SpaceX has completed 650 orbital space launches starting as far back as 2008.
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
In addition to the total launch metrics, the company also breaks down each category of vehicle – Falcon vs Starship as you can see in the bar chart above. It also distinguishes between launches for customers versus launches that support its other product lines such as Starlink. SpaceX provided the following explanations on how it counts total and customer launches.
Customer Launches
“We allocate a significant amount of launch capacity to our Connectivity segment, and expect to allocate a significant amount to our AI segment in the future. Our Space segment revenue only reflects our customer launches and customer activities.
We designate a launch as a “customer launch” if an external customer payload constitutes the primary payload (i.e., where the principal objective is to deliver the customer payload) and the mission parameters (e.g., launch window, orbital parameters, mission profile) are designed around the primary payload’s requirements. To date, all Starship launches have been classified as internal.”
Launch Metrics Compared to Peer Group
There are a handful of other publicly traded aerospace and defense companies that are targeting similar markets to SpaceX which also report on launch counts. Two examples include:
Rocket Lab is one of SpaceX’s peers in the space segment. Rocket Lab not only shares the number of launches but it also shares the number of launch vehicles it builds each period. The company also shares its revenue per launch and its cost per launch, two metrics not included in SpaceX’s filing.
Firefly Aerospace is another publicly traded launch and spacecraft company focused on deploying commercial and government payloads to various orbits, trajectories, and the Moon. Firefly did not list “launches” as a Key Business Metric, but it does report on the number of successful missions it had performed historically and offered details on customer contracts for future missions.
Connectivity – Revenue and Products
The Connectivity segment is built around Starlink and is the company’s largest reported business, with $11.4 billion of revenue in 2025. SpaceX sells consumer broadband through monthly subscriptions, with pricing that varies by market and service level, and it typically also charges an upfront cost for the Starlink terminal kit. It also sells enterprise connectivity to customers in industries such as aviation, maritime, agriculture, construction, retail, hospitality, and telecom through contracts based on subscriptions, data usage, capacity, or other customer-specific pricing models. Government connectivity revenue comes through services such as Starshield, a secure satellite network for U.S. government and national security use, generally under long-term contracts. Starlink Mobile adds another revenue stream through partnerships with mobile network operators, where SpaceX charges fixed fees or per-user fees that carriers can pass through to end customers as an add-on service.
Starlink Subscriber Metrics
SpaceX has 10.3 million Starlink Subscribers. Starlink’s business is growing quickly with a 50% year-over-year increase in subscribers in the fiscal year prior to its filing.
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
The company provided the following definition for a subscriber in its S-1:
“We define a Starlink Subscriber as a unique Service Line that is directly assigned to a Starlink.com account registered to a person or entity that does not have a direct, negotiated agreement with the Starlink sales team. A Service Line is an individual instance of Starlink broadband internet service provisioned under a subscription plan, generally associated with a specific Starlink terminal or group of terminals, and billed according to Starlink’s service plans and terms of service. The number of Service Lines is distinct from the number of unique devices, account holders, end users or physical persons. An individual, household, or business may share a single Service Line among multiple end-users. Likewise, an individual, household, or business may maintain multiple service lines (e.g., both a Residential Service Line and a separate Roam Service Line, which would be defined as two separate Service Lines and therefore two Starlink Subscribers).
We use this measure to assess the adoption of Starlink as we expand within and across geographies and business segments. Starlink Subscribers includes both Personal (e.g., Residential and Roam) and Business (e.g., Local Priority and Global Priority) subscription plans, but does not include managed enterprise and government customers with contracts in domains including aviation, maritime, land mobility, fixed sites and government entities. We calculate Starlink Subscribers for a period as the number of unique Service Lines at the end of the period.”
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
The key variables for Starlink’s subscriber metrics are outlined below:
- Payor – Not specified
- Acquisition Channel – Not specified
- Customer Segments – Personal and Business included but not Managed Enterprise or Government
- Devices – One or many terminal hardware devices
- Users – Can be shared by multiple end-users who could be individual, household or businesses
- Products – Personal (Residential and Roam) and Business (Local Priority and Global Priority)
- Contract Types – Excludes agreements negotiated with sales team
- Timing – End of period
Comparing Starlink’s Subscriber Metrics to Other Satellite Broadband Providers
Although there are many publicly traded satellite-based communications providers, only a few report on subscribers as a key business metric. EchoStar’s HughesNet (which competes with Starlink but also recently licensed spectrum to them) reports on broadband subscribers:
“Broadband subscribers include domestic and international customers that subscribe to our HughesNet service, through retail, wholesale and small/medium enterprise service channels.”
The definition does not list any exclusions. HughesNet includes customers acquired through all of its channels around the world as subscribers.
Source: EchoStar Q1 2026 Earnings Presentation
Comparing Starlink to Satellite TV and Radio Subscriber Metrics
More interesting comparisons can be made by analyzing other types of satellite-based services such as TV providers such as DISH Network (recently acquired by EchoStar) and radio broadcasts providers such as SiriusXM. There are a lot of similarities between how all three of these providers track subscribers. Much like Starlink, neither SiriusXM or DISH Network tie subscriber counts to associated hardware such as in-car radios, set top boxes, or satellite dishes. Additionally, all three combine subscribers from both business and residential accounts into a single metric.
The primary difference relates to how end-users are counted. Starlink does not tie its subscriber to a specific end-user. There could be multiple individuals within a household or business using a single subscription (service line). With SiriusXM, each registered user is considered a distinct subscriber. DISH TV subscribers include both residential and commercial accounts, but the company is not able to uniquely identify each of the commercial users. It uses an estimating technique to arrive at subscriber numbers for these business accounts.
Starlink ARPU Metric
The Starlink ARPU metric is relatively straightforward as compared to other satellite providers. SpaceX defines ARPU as:
“We calculate ARPU as service revenue generated from Starlink Subscribers during the period divided by (i) the average number of Starlink Subscribers during the period and by (ii) the number of months in the period.”
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
Comparing Starlink ARPUs to Satellite TV and Radio ARPUs
Starlink does not specify how they calculate “average.” SiriusXM has a similar definition, but uses the “daily weighted average number of subscribers in the period.” DISH Network also uses averages for both revenue and subscriber count in its Pay-TV ARPU calculations.
SiriusXM ARPU
“ARPU is derived from total earned SiriusXM subscriber revenue (excluding revenue derived from our connected vehicle services) and net advertising revenue, divided by the number of months in the period, divided by the daily weighted average number of subscribers for the period.”
DISH Network Pay-TV average monthly revenue per subscriber (“Pay-TV ARPU”).
“We calculate Pay-TV average monthly revenue per Pay-TV subscriber, or Pay-TV ARPU, by dividing average monthly Pay-TV segment “Service revenue,” excluding revenue from broadband services, for the period by our average number of Pay-TV subscribers for the period. The average number of Pay-TV subscribers is calculated for the period by adding the average number of Pay-TV subscribers for each month and dividing by the number of months in the period.”
Also note that both SiriusXM and DISH exclude certain product line revenues from the ARPU calculation. SiriusXM excludes connected vehicle services and DISH excluded broadband services.
AI – Revenue and Products
The AI segment is built around xAI, Grok, X, and SpaceX’s AI compute infrastructure, and it generated $3.2 billion of revenue in 2025 while still operating at a significant loss as the company invests in compute capacity and product development. The segment makes money from advertising products on X, premium subscriptions on X and Grok, data licensing arrangements, and API access to Grok models. For enterprise customers, SpaceX also offers Grok Business and Grok Enterprise, with tailored deployments sold under license-, consumption-, or outcome-based pricing models. In addition, the filing describes a compute-infrastructure revenue model: SpaceX can sell access to select COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II capacity to third parties, including a May 2026 cloud services agreement with Anthropic for access to approximately 325,000 NVIDIA GPUs at $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, subject to ramp-up terms and termination rights.
Data Center Metrics
SpaceX included only one formal key business metric for its AI segment in the company’s S-1 – nameplate computer draw, a power capacity metric which it defines as:
Nameplate Compute Draw
“We calculate Nameplate Compute Draw for a period as the number of GPUs installed in our data centers at the end of the period multiplied by their respective all-in power draw. Nameplate Compute Draw reflects installed capacity and does not represent actual power consumption or utilization. It does not include power we install and use for our supporting infrastructure such as cooling systems, power distribution losses, lighting, security systems, or facility-level overhead. Our Nameplate Compute Draw increased to 1.0 gigawatt as of March 31, 2026 as we brought COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II online. We use this metric to assess our ability to deploy and scale compute capacity. “
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
Once again, SpaceX is pioneering new metrics with nameplate computer draw, making it challenging to compare its definitions to those of other companies. None of the hyperscalers or data center REITs report on a similar operating metric.
Digital Realty reported on Total Energy Consumed by Portfolio Area Grid electricity consumption as a % of with Data Coverage (MWh), which measures the amount of energy consumed versus the total capacity. Digital Realty provided the following definition: “The scope of energy includes energy purchased from sources external to the Company and its customers; energy produced by the Company and its customers (i.e., self-generated); and energy from other sources, including direct fuel usage.”
In addition to the nameplate compute draw, SpaceX also shared a number of interesting data points in its S-1 about its data center capacity and AI infrastructure including:
- Time to Market for its COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II data centers
- GPU count per facility
- Power capacity per facility
For example, the company shared details about its COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II data center projects:
“In just a few years, we have demonstrated an ability to build coherent compute at scale and rapid speed with lower cost. COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II collectively provide approximately 1.0 gigawatt of compute power, with additional power capacity available for data center operations. We believe speed is a competitive advantage. In order to bring compute clusters online as fast as possible, we employ a vertically integrated, nimble approach to construction. At COLOSSUS, we brought online the first cluster of approximately 100,000 H100 processors, approximately 130 megawatts of compute power, in just 122 days, repurposing the shell of an existing factory. At COLOSSUS II, we brought online the first cluster of approximately 110,000 GB200 processors, approximately 210 megawatts of compute power, even faster in 91 days. As an illustrative comparison, an industry benchmark to bring online a 100 megawatt greenfield data center is approximately two years. Furthermore, in the case of COLOSSUS II, following the initial cluster, we brought online the second cluster of 110,000 GB300 processors and 220 megawatts of compute power in 64 days, demonstrating our ability to rapidly scale our facilities once built. We expect that once fully operational, the next phase of expansion at COLOSSUS II will bring online at least 220,000 additional GB300 processors and over 400 additional megawatts of compute power. We also demonstrated a significant improvement in cost efficiency, achieving data center construction costs for COLOSSUS II that are considerably lower than industry benchmarks on a per megawatt basis.”
These are indicators of the types of additional metrics we might expect to see in quarterly earnings reports and investor day presentations in the coming years.
Source: SpaceX S-1 SEC IPO registration statement – June 2026
Paid Subscriber Metrics
SpaceX did share its subscriber counts for the AI segment in its S-1. However, subscriber count was not listed as a “key business metric” for the AI segment as it was in the Connectivity segment. The conversion of free to paid users on both X.com and Grok is a key growth strategy for the company. In total the company has 6.3 million active paid subscribers. Most of the subscribers (4.4 million) are for the X premium offerings. The other 1.9 million are paying customers of the various SuperGrok branded plans.
SpaceX did not provide a definition for “paid subscriber,” but we can infer from the surrounding context that it includes any registered user paying for one of the five products mentioned: 1) X Premium, 2) Premium+, 3) SuperGrok Lite, 4) SuperGrok, or 5) SuperGrok Heavy.
Monthly Active Users (MAUs) Metric
SpaceX did not list active users as a “key business metric” that it will regularly report on, but it did provide a current view into user metrics for its AI products – X and Grok. In the S-1 SpaceX provided statistics for:
- Total Yearly Active Users (YAUs)
- Total Monthly Active Users (MAUs) for Grok and X
- MAUs for Grok AI only
They also provided a definition for how they calculated active users on a monthly basis.
How SpaceX Defines Monthly Active Users (MAUs) for Grok and X
“MAU” (or monthly active users) refers to the total number of users who have interacted with Grok or X through web browsers or mobile applications at least once during the 30-day period ending on the date of measurement (“active users”). In presenting combined MAUs across the two platforms, we seek to identify and account for users who access both Grok and X based on sign-in traffic so that such users are not double-counted when measuring MAU. Furthermore, only users who have registered for an X or Grok account are included. While we believe our methodologies provide a reasonable approximation of MAU based on the number of unique users, they may not fully capture all instances of duplication, and our reported MAU should be viewed as an estimate of unique users across our Grok and X platforms for the applicable period. We track the subset of users who used Grok’s AI features and those who have not based on the source of their server requests.”
Key Details of how SpaceX counts MAUs:
- Timeframe – Month/30 Days
- Channel – Website or App
- User Types – Only registered users
- Double Counting – Unique users on Grok and X
Monthly Active Users is a Top Metric
Active users is one of the most commonly reported business metrics amongst companies in the AI, social media, gaming, streaming, fintech, and crypto sectors. OpenAI, Meta, Roblox, Spotify, Block, and Coinbase all report on an active user metric. Let’s compare how X reports MAUs to its direct competitors in the social media and AI space as the methodologies for counting vary amongst platforms.
SpaceX Metrics Compared to Social Media Platforms
Time frames amongst for measurement vary among social media platforms. For example, Reddit reports on both daily and weekly active users. Meta and Snap only report on daily active users. Pinterest reports on weekly and monthly users. SpaceX reports on MAUs as well as “Yearly Active Users (YAUs). However, SpaceX does not use the YAU terminology. It references “over 1.3 billion supported accounts active in the last twelve months.”
Another interesting aspect of the definition is how each social platform defines a user. Meta and Snap only count those registered and logged in as active users. Pinterest counts “authenticated” users. SpaceX is only counting registered users in its metrics reporting. However, Reddit counts both registered and non-registered users (from search engines and AI chatbots).
Tracking users gets more complicated when you have multiple products. Meta counts active persons accessing any of its family of applications – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
SpaceX combined its MAUs across its X.ai social platform and the Grok AI chatbot.
Regardless of the specific methodologies used, all of the “active user” metrics are presented as best estimates. With current privacy and technology limitations it is impossible to get a truly accurate count. Some users share accounts. Others create multiple accounts, especially on free services. The same user can login on multiple desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices. And then there are bots, crawlers, and automated testing tools that need to be filtered out of the reporting. Each of the social media platforms provide details on the measures used to uniquely identify users. SpaceX states “we seek to identify and account for users who access both Grok and X based on sign-in traffic so that such users are not double-counted when measuring MAUs.”
SpaceX Metrics Compared to AI Platforms
Comparing SpaceX metrics to other AI companies is challenging as most of their direct competitors are not publicly traded SEC filers. As a result, there are no investor metrics to compare. Various third parties have estimated monthly active users for ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity by analyzing website traffic and payment transactions, but those aren’t official numbers.
OpenAI reported on ChatGPT’s weekly active users in an economic research study in 2025. Claude reported user count in a funding release, but the counts become quickly outdated with the explosive growth those platforms are experiencing. We will likely need to wait a few more months until Anthropic and OpenAI go IPO before we get official statistics and a definition.
