By Brett Winton, Chief Futurist, ARK Invest
Originally published on the ARK DISRUPT newsletter on June 15, 2026. Information may have updated since.
In its heavily anticipated initial public offering (IPO), SpaceX issued $75 billion worth of new shares the largest IPO of all time. Appreciating to more than $2 trillion in equity market cap, a lofty valuation relative to backward-looking financials, investors have focused on its out-of-this-world prospective return on capital.
Based on its steep improvement in costs-to-launch, SpaceXAI is positioned to deploy 10s of thousands of Starlink satellites into orbit over the next few years. Each Starship equipped with v3 Starlink satellites should deliver ~20x the bandwidth that the Falcon 9 currently lofts. Based on our research, 200-300 Starship launches per year could transform internet connectivity globally and generate hundreds of billion dollars in gross profit by 2030, as shown below.
Note: “COGS” is Cost of Goods Sold. ARK Investment Management LLC, 2026, based on data from SpaceXAI’s IPO prospectus and ARK Invest’s analysis as of June 15, 2026. For informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Forecasts are inherently limited and cannot be relied upon.
Through the first hundred launches, performance should improve as costs decline, thanks to rocket ship re-usability, larger rockets, satellite manufacturing productivity, and customer acquisition efficiencies, all of which should overwhelm the revenue decay they experience as marginally more bandwidth proves more difficult to monetize. For 100+ Starship Starlink satellite launches, pre-tax cash-on-cash returns could exceed 10x, as shown below.
Note: “ROIC” is Return on Invested Capital and “Tbps” is a unit of data transfer speed, meaning 1 trillion bits per second ARK Investment Management LLC, 2026, based on data from SpaceXAI’s IPO prospectus and ARK Invest’s analysis as of June 15, 2026. For informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Forecasts are inherently limited and cannot be relied upon.
Blended across all launches required to saturate just the Starlink market by 2035, our work suggests that SpaceXAI will generate annual revenue and pre-tax earnings of ~$550 billion and ~$400 billion, respectively, from connectivity. Over that time frame cumulative free cash flow could exceed $1 trillion, as shown below…without any AI revenue from SpaceXAI!
Note: “R&D” is Research and Development. “CAC” is Customer Acquisition Cost. “SG&A” is Selling, General, and Administrative. “EBIT” is Earnings before Interest and Taxes. ARK Investment Management LLC, 2026, based on data from SpaceXAI’s IPO prospectus and ARK Invest’s analysis as of June 15, 2026. For informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Forecasts are inherently limited and cannot be relied upon.
Recent news suggests that SpaceXAI’s AI segment could become profitable much sooner than anticipated thanks to infrastructure-as-a-service contracts signed with Anthropic and Google, which could be subject to change and therefore temporary. On a blended average basis, SpaceXAI spent $26 billion per gigawatt (GW) building the portions of its Colossus I and Colossus II datacenter that Anthropic rented for an annualized $34 billion per GW, as shown below. While SpaceXAI is likely to increase spending on a per GW basis, Google has agreed to pay $54 billion per GW to access SpaceXAI’s compute.
Note: Revenue calculations are based on the terms of the agreements, which may change or expire. ARK Investment Management LLC, 2026, based on data from SpaceXAI’s IPO prospectus and ARK Invest’s analysis as of June 15, 2026. For informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Forecasts are inherently limited and cannot be relied upon.
While many are skeptical about its ability to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI for AI software revenues, these deals suggest that SpaceXAI will be able to monetize its infrastructure as it pushes toward AI’s competitive frontier. Ultimately, the compute capacity from orbital AI servers, and their lower costs, should differentiate SpaceXAI from its earth-centric competitors.
In our view, SpaceXAI’s listing launched one of the most important and fascinating equity opportunities in the universe!
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