Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year. That's up from $222 million in 2021, but $11 billion less than the original forecast, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Interestingly, according to CNBC, on the same day as the Wall Street Journal report, SpaceX executive Jonathan Hofeller said at a conference that the company would no longer incur losses from the production of Starlink satellite antennas. Profitability took a hit in 2022, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, but a report by the outlet last month said SpaceX was profitable in the first quarter of 2023.
In a 2015 presentation to investors, the company founded by Elon Musk initially forecast Starlink would achieve operating profits of $12 billion and $7 billion in 2022. SpaceX also expects the unit to have 20 million users by the end of 2022, the presentation showed. By contrast, Starlink had just over 1 million active users at the end of last year. As of May 2023, the company reported that it had about 1.5 million users; however, CNBC reported that Hofler said that mark was now "well exceeded."
In October 2022, Musk said on Twitter that Starlink was losing about $20 million a month to maintain its service, and then said: "While Starlink is still losing money and other companies receive billions of taxpayer dollars, we will continue to provide funds to the Ukrainian government for free."
In Walter Isaacson's upcoming book (an excerpt from which was published by The Washington Post), Isaacson quotes SpaceX President Gwen Shotwell as saying that before Musk changed his stance, "the Pentagon was ready to hand me a check for $145 million. Then Elon gave in to the nonsense on Twitter and the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story." However, Isaacson claims that government agencies eventually started paying for increased Starlink service in Ukraine.