this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
164 points (95.1% liked)
Technology
79985 readers
3695 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Government contracts used to be their biggest revenue source, but it's Starlink now.
They still need the profits from government contracts though to help fund the capital expenditures to try and get starship working, but they aren't reliant on them like they used to be.
Yeah but Starlink isn't sustainable, it's burning VC just like all of those AI companies. Not as big as a rate like the AI companies, but still. And Starlink gets government contracts as well.
I think the only reason they ever got started with Starlink is to prop up SpaceX. SpaceX got their launch costs down by reusability and scaling in production. But there really wasn't enough demand for those costs to really matter all that much. So they got started with Starlink which requires a lot of launches and is one of the few things that keeps on requiring a lot of launches forever. But the revenue isn't enough to cover the launches, construction, maintenance, ground stations etc. And the only reason the service is even a little bit competitive is because of the terrible state of US infrastructure. With 5G networks being rolled out everywhere and fiber continuing to expand, the market for satellite internet is shrinking all the time. The terrestrial based services have the advantage their infrastructure doesn't fall from the sky every four years.
So as the government contracts are under pressure at SpaceX and the Starlink VC money isn't infinite, Musks empire could collapse. By pivoting to AI and rolling everything into that, he can keep the grift going for years to come.