Liftoff: SpaceX's valuation just keeps soaring

6/27/23 7:00PM

Liftoff‍

‍SpaceX is reportedly looking to sell insider shares at $80 apiece — a price point that would propel the valuation of the company to an astonishing $150bn, making it the second most valuable startup in the world, second only to TikTok owner Bytedance.

Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, SpaceX was created to revolutionize space transportation, with a longer term goal of one day colonizing Mars. However, the venture — perhaps unsurprisingly — quickly proved to be an expensive undertaking. After initially looking to reuse old Russian rockets, the SpaceX team realized they might be able to make the rockets cheaper themselves. Various failed launch attempts (and flirtation with bankruptcy) ensued before the company started to prove itself. External funding came in waves, and every milestone from reusable rockets to crewed missions saw SpaceX’s credibility, and its valuation, grow.

‍The wifi frontier

‍The company has significantly increased the number of satellites and rockets it launches into space, becoming the busiest rocket launcher globally. Such expertise has enabled SpaceX to build out its network of Starlink satellites, which aim to provide global internet access. There are now more than 4,000 satellites in its “Wifi constellation” — and the company has reported having 1.5 million subscribers.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”