SpaceX

Investment Highlights

Company Overview

SpaceX is a spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider, defense contractor and satellite communications company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and ultimately developing a sustainable colony on Mars. The company currently operates the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets along with the Dragon and Starship spacecraft.

The company offers internet service via its Starlink subsidary, which became the largest-ever satellite constellation in January 2020 and as of November 2023 comprised more than 5,000 small satellites in orbit.

Meanwhile, the company is developing Starship, a human-rated, fully-reusable, super heavy-lift launch system for interplanetary and orbital spaceflight. On its first flight in April 2023, it became the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. The rocket reached space on its second flight that took place in November 2023.

SpaceX is the first private company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that has reached orbit; to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft; to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station; and to send astronauts to the International Space Station. It is also the first organization of any type to achieve a vertical propulsive landing of an orbital rocket booster and the first to reuse such a booster. The company's Falcon 9 rockets have landed and reflown more than 200 times. As of December 2023, SpaceX has around $180B valuation.

Starlink
In May 2019, SpaceX launched the first large batch of 60 Starlink satellites, beginning to deploy what would become the world's largest commercial satellite constellation the following year. In 2022 most Spacex launches focused on Starlink, a consumer internet business that sends batches of internet-beaming satellites and now has over 2,200 satellites in orbit.

On 16 July 2021 SpaceX entered an agreement to acquire Swarm Technologies, a private company building a low Earth orbit satellite constellation for communications with Internet of things (IoT) devices, for $524M.

In December 2022, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved to launch up to 7,500 of SpaceX's next-generation satellites in its Starlink internet network.

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