SpaceX Wants Even More Profits Ahead of Its IPO

SpaceX has picked June 12 as its IPO date. Even before the initial public offering happens, however, SpaceX is laying the foundations for becoming the most profitable space company in history. As I reported in March, SpaceX raised the price on Falcon 9 launches for the fourth time, to $74 million, a 21% increase over the original price. That's a significant price hike, but despite what you might think, rocket launches have become a smaller and smaller part of SpaceX's business over time.

SpaceX today is much more of a Starlink company than a rocket company. And as it just so happens, SpaceX's latest round of price hikes is happening at Starlink.

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SpaceX's most important business: Starlink

In 2025, the SpaceX satellite internet service called Starlink generated roughly 61% of SpaceX's $18.7 billion in revenue. In 2026, this percentage is expected to grow. This won't happen automatically, however. SpaceX is growing its Starlink user base as one method of growing revenue. Another method is raising prices. (Note that these two actions may work at cross-purposes, though.)

We learned this last week, when PCMag.com laid out a series of six tiers of Starlink "personal" (non-business) service and their respective price increases. Ranging from $5 to $10 per tier, per month, the price hikes look modest at first glance. Percentage-wise, most prices are changing only in the mid-single digits (6.1%) to the low double digits (10%) -- with two notable exceptions.

The price for owning a Starlink terminal and keeping it in standby mode (which pauses high-speed internet service but permits download speeds of about 0.5 megabits per second (Mbps)) has doubled from $5 to $10 per month.

But the price of the 300 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) roaming service remains unchanged at $80 per month.

Data source: PCMag.

It should be noted that prices may vary by location, and that in some locations, Starlink continues to advertise prices and plan names on its website that differ significantly from those noted above.