- SpaceX has reportedly raised over $1 billion in funding since the beginning of the year
- The funding was essential to drive the deployment of the Starlink satellites last week
Aerospace manufacturing company SpaceX has reportedly raised over $1 billion in funding since the beginning of the year, according to a filing reviewed by CNBC. This funding was essential as SpaceX recently launched the first successful mission of launching 60 Starlink satellites last week.
SpaceX’s overall goal is to set up a “constellation” of 11,943 satellites in low Earth orbit — which could beam high-speed Internet to anywhere on the planet. For the funding round, SpaceX was seeking equity rounds of $500 million in January and $400 million in April. Those rounds ended up oversubscribed.
The filing that CNBC reviewed was an amendment to the April filing that showed SpaceX raised more funding than expected. In actuality, SpaceX raised $1.02 billion since the beginning of the year.
Who participated in these rounds of funding? Gigafund — which is led by Luke Nosek and Stephen Oskoui — joined this round of funding according to the filing. However, other investors were not revealed.
Starlink is expected to generate revenue for SpaceX that could be used for developing more advanced rockets and spaceships including Starship point-to-point transport system — which could transport dozens of passengers anywhere on Earth within 30-60 minutes.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is estimating that the company’s launch revenue is peaking at about $3 billion per year, but the Internet service revenue could potentially drive growth to $30 billion per year. This is based on Internet connectivity revenue in the world hitting about $1 trillion and SpaceX could potentially access 3% of that market with Starlink.
Earlier this month, Musk’s electric car company Tesla Motors raised $2.7 billion in a stock and bond offering. However, Tesla is reportedly having delivery bottlenecks. The company is targeting 400,000 deliveries this year and Musk asked Tesla workers to focus on cost-cutting and delivering vehicles in order to hit an all-time record for Q2. For the first quarter, Tesla posted a $702 million loss and is expecting another loss in Q2 before potentially returning to profitability in Q3.
