News
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet gains 750,000 subscribers in nine months
SpaceX says its Starlink satellite internet service has surpassed one million active subscribers just two years after its first limited beta release.
SpaceX began launching operational Starlink satellites in November 2019. A little over three years later, the company has successfully launched more than 3600 Starlink satellites, of which some 3000 are operational and ready to serve customers. That network expansion – unprecedented in the history of spaceflight and producing a satellite constellation a magnitude larger than the next largest – has also allowed SpaceX to significantly increase the number of active users it can serve.
In June 2022, CEO Elon Musk reported in an all-hands meeting that SpaceX’s Starlink internet had “nearly” 500,000 users. Just six months later, SpaceX says that figure has doubled to “more than 1,000,000 active subscribers,” indicating an average of roughly 2600 new subscribers per day throughout the second half of 2022. In the relatively tiny world of satellite broadband internet service, a million subscribers makes SpaceX directly comparable to companies that have been serving satellite internet for decades just two years after its first offering entered beta.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
In the US, Hughes Network is SpaceX’s largest competitor and currently has a bit less than 1.3 million subscribers in the Americas. Cloudflare data suggests that only half of Starlink’s far more international customer base is located in the United States, indicating that SpaceX has secured almost 40% as many subscribers after offering its competing service for just two years. That growth – roughly 250,000 new subscribers per quarter since March 2022 – is the exact opposite of what virtually every other satellite internet provider has been experiencing for the last several years, most of which are slowly losing subscribers instead of gaining them.
Comments from CEO Elon Musk and actions made by SpaceX indicate that the company is unlikely to drastically slow that growth anytime soon. In 2021, Musk noted that SpaceX would only truly struggle with congestion once Starlink had “several million” subscribers. In late 2020, SpaceX also applied for FCC permission to operate up to five million user terminals (dishes that connect to Starlink) just in the United States.
Starlink’s design makes prioritizing a country or region essentially impossible. Instead of the large geostationary satellites most competitors operate tens of thousands of kilometers above Earth’s surface, where they more or less hover above a region of choice, Starlink satellites operate just 550 kilometers (~340 mi) up. At that altitude, each satellite orbits the Earth every 95 minutes and only spends a few minutes (or even seconds) over any given country. That strongly encourages SpaceX to serve customers in as many countries as possible, each of which has its own painful market entrance process for a new communications provider.
After years of work, SpaceX’s government relations team has secured permission to operate Starlink in roughly a quarter of all countries on Earth. Combined, those countries represent more than 1.5 billion people, 19% of the global population.
But Starlink likely only needs to convert a minuscule fraction of those people into customers to be a worthwhile and financially sustainable pursuit for SpaceX. The total capacity of the first 4405-satellite Starlink constellation can only be guessed at, but roughly estimating SpaceX’s total Starlink revenue is much easier. The cost of a subscription varies widely from country to country but Cloudflare indicates that the vast majority of subscribers live in countries where it costs around $100-110 per month and around $600 for a subsidized dish. Even accounting for SpaceX footing some of the bill for Starlink service in Ukraine, the network is almost certainly already generating more than a billion dollars of revenue per year
While the FCC is making it far from easy, SpaceX is already preparing to begin building a second-generation Starlink Gen2 constellation with nearly 30,000 satellites, each of which could launch with almost a magnitude more usable bandwidth than Gen 1 satellites. If SpaceX can continue to find new customers around the world, a million subscribers using Starlink Gen1 while the network is less than 70% complete imply that the most capable version of Starlink Gen2 could serve roughly 10-12 million subscribers at minimum. Assuming SpaceX does not substantially lower its revenue, the recurring revenue from 12 million Gen2 subscribers could be $14.5 billion per year.
Reaching Starlink profitability will be an even bigger challenge – and one that CEO Elon Musk has (perhaps overzealously) indicated could bankrupt SpaceX if the company attempts to do so with its Gen1 design. But securing a million active subscribers in two years and some 750,000 in the last nine months arguably indicates that SpaceX is on a good path and should allow the company to either decrease its fundraising burden or increase the reach of future spending on R&D and expansion.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by Elon Musk
