--- title: "Starlink Is Falling Way Short of Projections on Revenue and Users" description: "Starlink is over $10 billion short of the revenue it projected to have back in 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal." date: "2023-09-16" modified: "2023-09-16" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/starlink-way-short-projections-revenue-users" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "SpaceX" - "starlink" - "the digest" --- # Starlink Is Falling Way Short of Projections on Revenue and Users ![Starlink is over $10 billion short of the revenue it projected to have back in 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal.]() *CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - 2023/03/24: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a batch of 56 Starlink internet satellites launches from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first stage booster landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) \Image: Getty Images\* ## Missing the Mark With its impressive constellation of satellites, Starlink has become somewhat of a household name in spite of its relatively niche market. That hasn't saved it, however, from its numbers coming up drastically short of internal projections, [the *Wall Street Journal* reports](). Starlink, a division of Elon Musk's SpaceX, reported a revenue of $1.4 billion for 2022. That's respectable on its own, but a far cry from what the company expected to be raking in by now. According to a 2015 presentation obtained by the *WSJ*, SpaceX projected that Starlink would generate nearly $12 billion in revenue and $7 billion in profit in 2022. By 2025, it hoped to clear $30 billion — which now seems laughable. Similarly, the actual size of its user base pales in comparison to its early projections. The plan in 2015 was that Starlink would have 20 million subscribers to its satellite based internet service by the end of last year, but in reality it only hit one million. Whether those massive discrepancies are simply a symptom of Musk's signature overly ambitious timelines rather than the performance actually being *that bad* is up for debate, but clearly the company isn't anywhere near where it'd hoped to be by now. ## Costly Upkeep Currently, the division's exact profitability remains unclear, and was not disclosed in the obtained documents. On the upside, Starlink reported marginal profits for the first three months of 2022, the *WSJ* reported. A small victory, nonetheless, amidst an overall loss for the year. A big reason for why profits remain elusive is that SpaceX is blowing hefty chunks of change in upkeep, spending $3.2 billion in capital expenditures that year, according to the documents. That spending, paired with day-to-day operating costs, is sure to be a huge dent in anyone's wallet, let alone for a company that is over 18 million short in expected customers. Recent bad press is certainly no boon going forward, either, with Musk admitting last week that he [manipulated Starlink to sabotage a Ukraine military attack]() on Russia's naval fleet in Crimea. ## King of the Competition At the very least, Starlink's revenue still enjoyed a healthy climb last year, up $222 million from the year before, and recently announced that it's [no longer losing money on producing its satellite antennas](). Furthermore, the Musk-led venture can safely say that it's head and shoulders above its competitors like Amazon, who are still scrambling to deploy its own low Earth orbit satellites. This is where SpaceX [enjoys a considerable advantage](): as the world's foremost launch provider, it has plenty of rockets available to send up its own satellites as often as it wants, without having to depend on third parties. Even that advantage has a caveat, though: in a [leaked email two years ago](), Musk warned that if SpaceX can't get Starship off the ground as a next-gen launch vehicle for future Starlink satellites, it could put the entirety of SpaceX in danger of bankruptcy. **More on SpaceX:** *[Elon Musk Secretly Manipulated Starlink to Hamstring Ukrainian Attack Against Russia]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()