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SpaceX closes out 2021 with $1.85 billion in new funding
On the eve of the last day of 2021, SEC filings show that SpaceX has secured another $337 million, bringing the total funding the company has raised this year to approximately $1.85 billion.
While there’s evidence that SpaceX’s Falcon and Dragon launch business is easily profitable on its own, the company has been simultaneously developing a next-generation rocket (Starship) and an unprecedentedly ambitious internet satellite constellation (Starlink) for at least the last 5-6 years. Additionally, SpaceX developed Falcon booster reusability and Falcon Heavy entirely on its own at a total cost of at least $1-2 billion. In short, rocket development is incredibly expensive, and adding a far more ambitious rocket and an immense satellite constellation into the mix has created an insatiable demand for fresh capital.
Investors have been more than eager to satisfy that demand, practically chomping at the bit to buy SpaceX equity or debt over the last six years. Since 2015, SpaceX has raised an average of more than $1B per year for the last seven years.
That funding has accomplished a great deal. As of the end of 2021, SpaceX has built and launched 1869 operational Starlink satellites in 25 months, more than 1750 of which are still in orbit and working. SpaceX has also built hundreds of thousands of ‘user terminals’ – dishes and WiFi routers that currently connect more than 150,000 subscribers to the internet even while the service remains in beta.
Starship, while somewhat behind its CEO’s optimistic schedules, continues to march towards its first spaceflight and orbital-velocity launch attempt – possibly in the first half of 2022. With help from its Hawthorne, CA headquarters, SpaceX’s Starbase factory continues to churn out Starship, Super Heavy booster, and test tank prototypes and appears to be ramping back up after six or so months of relative quiet. Having produced approximately 150 Raptor 1 and Raptor 1.5 engines in the last two years, Hawthorne is now focused on ramping up production of Raptor 2 – an upgraded engine variant capable of producing up to 25% more thrust while, in theory, being far cheaper to produce.
In about 12 months, SpaceX has also built – from nothing – an orbital launch site on the verge of being ready to support the first test flights of the largest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever built. To accommodate the massive vehicle, SpaceX has also nearly completed the largest cryogenic tank farm ever built for a launch site and partially filled at least four or five of its seven cryogenic storage tanks. Alongside that tank farm, the company has more or less completed a skyscraper-sized launch tower and outfitted it with three giant, moving arms – two of which are designed to stack Starship on Super Heavy and, maybe one day, catch ships and boosters out of mid-air.
According to a company-wide email CEO Elon Musk recently wrote but subsequently downplayed on Twitter, SpaceX’s financial health could be heavily dependent on the successful start and expansion of Raptor 2 production to enable Starship to begin launching new and much-improved Starlink V2.0 satellites. Those satellites are several times larger than V1.0 or V1.5 spacecraft, apparently making it hard or impossible for Falcon 9 to cost-effectively launch them.
On top of building and activating new factories capable of producing millions of Starlink user terminals per year, completing the first phase of orbital Starship development, ramping up Raptor 2 production, starting to build a fleet of operational Starships and Super Heavy boosters, continuing Falcon 9 Starlink V1.5 launches, and simultaneously building or completing no less than three orbital Starship launch sites in Florida and Texas, SpaceX thus also apparently needs to complete Starlink V2.0 satellite development and effectively build one or several entirely new production lines to start producing the substantially different spacecraft.
A large portion of SpaceX’s 2021 funding – especially the ~$337M raised in the last two weeks – will likely help support a portion of all those development efforts next year.
Elon Musk
Why automakers keep turning down Elon Musk’s Tesla Full Self-Driving offer
Elon Musk confirms no automaker has ever accepted Tesla’s offer to license Full Self-Driving software.
Elon Musk gave a brief answer on X Monday that confirmed that Tesla’s standing offer to license Full Self-Driving to other automakers still has zero takers. Sawyer Merritt wrote that “Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted,” responding to a prediction from Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl that Tesla would eventually open FSD the way it opened its Supercharger network to rival brands. Musk’s reply to Merritt was one word: “Exactly.”
It is not the first time Musk has made this point. He said something similar in November, when he called legacy automakers reluctance to adopt FSD “crazy,” and Tesla has floated the offer publicly since at least 2021. Scholl’s prediction touches on something real. Once NACS became the de facto charging standard, adoption from Ford, GM, Rivian and others followed within about a year. FSD licensing was supposed to work the same way once Tesla built enough of a lead that switching made sense for everyone.
Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted. https://t.co/kgz4idpoUM
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 22, 2026
The case for licensing now is stronger than it was two years ago. Waymo and Zoox are logging hundreds of thousands of unsupervised autonomous miles, along with Tesla’s own Robotaxi fleet. Every automaker still selling driver assist systems that lag FSD has given the robotaxi conversation to Tesla, Waymo and Zoox by default. Licensing FSD would let a GM or a Ford compete on the same field without spending a decade and billions of dollars building a stack from scratch, the same argument Tesla made when it opened the Supercharger network to bring more EVs onto its chargers.
But FSD is not a connector standard. As one reply to Musk’s post pointed out, licensing FSD is not a software license the way NACS was a plug spec. It requires adopting Tesla’s eight camera layout and its onboard compute architecture, meaning a licensee’s cars would effectively become Tesla hardware wearing someone else’s badge. That is the visible obstacle. The less visible one is data. A licensed FSD stack would report back the same telemetry Tesla collects from its own fleet, giving Tesla a continuous read on how a competitor’s cars are actually driven, where they struggle, and how often drivers intervene. For an automaker trying to build its own autonomy program, or simply trying to keep its build quality and safety record private, handing Tesla that visibility could be a bigger cost than the hardware bill. It is the reason the Supercharger comparison only goes so far. Opening a charging plug cost Tesla very little. Opening FSD would cost a rival something it cannot get back.
Tesla has reopened reservations for its long-delayed next-generation Roadster, asking buyers for a $50,000 deposit just days before an October 1 reveal event in Waco, Texas. The move revives a reservation process first launched in 2017 and later paused when Tesla pulled pricing from its website in 2021.
The reservation page requires an immediate $5,000 credit-card payment, described as fully refundable, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days, which is identical to what was expected previously. Reservations are not considered final until the wire clears.
The structure matches the 2017 terms Tesla used when it first collected deposits after unveiling a prototype. Tesla has not published a confirmed retail price or production start date on the order page.
Go buy a Roadster pic.twitter.com/n7rhouAmIS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 21, 2026
The October 1 event is scheduled in Waco, about 90 minutes north of Tesla’s Austin headquarters and near SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site. Tesla sent invitations to existing reservation holders and posted a “Go for launch” teaser on September 12.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) established a temporary flight restriction over the McGregor area from September 18 through October 2, consistent with plans for a demonstration involving SpaceX-designed cold-gas thrusters. Elon Musk has previously described the optional package as enabling extreme acceleration or brief hovering. Tesla has said the event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets.
The second-generation Roadster was first shown in November 2017 during Tesla’s Semi launch. Musk promised production in 2020, with claimed performance of 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, more than 250 mph top speed, and roughly 620 miles of range.
Those targets have slipped repeatedly.
Tesla later pointed to 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025-2026 before indicating production would not begin until 2027 or 2028 at Gigafactory Texas. Design work has continued, with reports of a sharper, Cybertruck-influenced look replacing the original curvy prototype.
Original reservation holders who paid $50,000 in 2017, or $250,000 for the Founders Series, have waited nearly nine years without a production car. Some high-profile customers canceled. Tesla’s decision to reopen orders now, after previously shutting them down, tests whether new buyers will commit substantial funds before seeing a finalized production vehicle. The October 1 event is intended to answer remaining questions about what those buyers will actually receive and when.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is heading to Czechia after the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the Dutch RDW’s provisional type approval, making the country the seventh EU member state to clear the system for public roads. Tesla Europe announced on 21 September 2026 that “FSD Supervised is now approved in Czechia” and that rollout “will begin soon.”
The decision marks a notable reversal. Earlier in 2026, Prague had declined to automatically recognise the Netherlands’ April approval, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, traffic-sign recognition and driver-attention monitoring, and arguing that a coordinated EU approach was preferable. Officials said months of expert review, talks with Tesla and other member states, and real-world data from countries already using the system resolved those issues.
🚨 Tesla FSD heading to Czechia 🇨🇿 pic.twitter.com/mkzlM9QjrB
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 21, 2026
“Safety remains the top priority,” the ministry stated.
FSD Supervised remains a Level 2 driver-assistance system: the driver must stay engaged and is legally responsible. Eligible vehicles need AI4, the company’s most up-to-date hardware version. Tesla is expected to push the feature over the air in the coming days, following the pattern seen after earlier national approvals.
Europe’s rollout began when Dutch regulator RDW issued a provisional EU type approval on 10 April 2026 after extensive testing. Mutual recognition then produced a rapid cascade: Lithuania (20 May), Estonia (29 May), Denmark (9 June), Belgium (10 June) and Slovenia (7 September). Czechia now completes that list of seven.
The approvals cover only a modest share of the EU population, but they add political weight ahead of a 6 October vote by the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles. A qualified majority, at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population, could open the remaining markets, including large ones such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain that have so far preferred to wait for a bloc-wide decision.
For Czech Tesla owners, the immediate prize is access to the same supervised highway and city driving already available in the other six countries. For Tesla, each new market generates additional European driving data and strengthens the case that FSD Supervised can operate safely under the continent’s varied road rules. The Czech approval is therefore both a local milestone and another incremental step toward a wider European launch.
Why automakers keep turning down Elon Musk’s Tesla Full Self-Driving offer
Tesla Roadster is available for order once again following brief hold
