SpaceX has spent more than $15 billion developing its next-generation Starship rocket. This huge sum, revealed in the company’s IPO registration reviewed by Reuters, far exceeds the cost of its workhorse Falcon rocket. Elon Musk’s space company is nearing a decade of trying to perfect a fully reusable launch system.
The future of SpaceX’s most profitable businesses, as it quickly moves towards public markets with a $1.75 trillion valuation, largely depends on Starship. This towering two-stage rocket system is central to Musk’s big plans: launching larger groups of Starlink satellites, carrying humans to the moon and Mars, and eventually deploying thousands of artificial intelligence computing satellites as an alternative to energy-hungry data centers on Earth.
The $15 billion figure, which hasn’t been reported before, is much higher than the roughly $400 million SpaceX spent developing Falcon 9, the world’s most frequently flown rocket. The Falcon 9 has been key to SpaceX’s commercial success, allowing quick Starlink deployments and giving the company a big lead over other launch rivals.
“We have continued to invest significantly in further increasing our lead by pursuing full and rapid reusability at scale, including investing over $15 billion in our next-generation rocket, Starship,” SpaceX stated in its confidential IPO registration.
The company plans to start launching its latest generation of Starlink satellites, known as V3, in the second half of 2026, according to the filing. This will likely happen on Starship, whose cargo area was designed specifically for the upgraded satellites and can hold up to 60 of them in a single flight, SpaceX said in the filing.
This is a huge increase from the two dozen smaller Starlinks typically launched on Falcon. It shows how closely Starship’s success is tied to the financial success of Starlink. Starship now takes up most of the company’s development spending.
SpaceX spent $3 billion on research and development for its space segment in 2025. All of this went to the Starship program, the filing shows. This is a sharp jump from the $1.8 billion spent in that segment the year before. This surge highlights how fundamentally different Starship is from Falcon and from any rocket that came before it.
Since 2023, SpaceX has conducted 11 Starship test flights, resulting in both dramatic failures and impressive progress. One major achievement was catching the rocket’s massive Super Heavy booster upon its return to Earth using huge mechanical arms. This maneuver is designed to drastically speed up reusability.
