SpaceX launches 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and more news from its IPO filing – GeekWire
Redmond, Wash., has been known for decades as the home of Microsoft, until the city’s name has become associated with the software giant. Maybe it’s time to rethink that, because it’s also home to one of the world’s most productive satellite industries.
SpaceX revealed in its IPO filing Wednesday that the Starlink satellite manufacturing facility in Redmond will produce an average of about 70 satellites a week from December 2025 to April 2026, or about 3,640 a year at full capacity.
By comparison, Amazon VP Rajeev Badyal said this week at the Tech Alliance event that the rival satellite company can now produce “tens of satellites a week” at its factory near Kirkland, Wash., up from one satellite a month a year ago. Amazon Leo currently has just over 300 satellites in orbit, compared to SpaceX’s nearly 9,600.
SpaceX is Exhibit A in a larger economic development plan, as regional leaders view the satellite industry as a new growth engine. More than 10,000 satellites have been built in the state, nearly two-thirds of all operational satellites, and more than $1.6 billion has been invested in Washington space startups in the past 18 months, according to data presented at the event.
To that end, the filing of the Elon Musk venture revealed the funds behind the Starlink business, which provides high-speed satellite internet to 10.3 million subscribers.
- SpaceX’s Connectivity division, operated by Starlink, generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income by 2025.
- That amounted to about 61% of SpaceX’s total revenue of $18.7 billion by 2025, and was the only of the company’s three divisions to make an operating profit.
The backstory: Musk announced SpaceX’s satellite internet plans at a private event in Seattle in January 2015, describing them at the time as a key element of his plan to colonize Mars.
SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has filed to list its Class A common stock on Nasdaq under the ticker “SPCX.” Like the original filing, the S-1 leaves blank the price and number of shares to be offered.
However, the company is looking to raise up to $80 billion or more, according to the Wall Street Journal, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history, nearly three times larger than Saudi Aramco’s record IPO in 2019.
The filing does not reveal how many of SpaceX’s 22,000 employees worldwide work at the Redmond facility, or provide employment information for the location.
Regional rivals: Competitive disclosures in the S-1 filing underscore the extent to which the Pacific Northwest has become a hub for the space, satellite and artificial intelligence industries.
- In space launch services, SpaceX names Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, as an emerging commercial competitor, in addition to established players such as United Launch Alliance and Arianespace.
- In satellite broadband connectivity, SpaceX counts Amazon’s planned Leo constellation and Blue Origin’s TeraWave among its Starlink competitors. Others include Eutelsat OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, and AST SpaceMobile.
- In AI, SpaceX names Redmond-based Microsoft among its competitors, alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The company acquired Musk’s xAI business, which includes the Grok AI model and the X social media platform, in early 2026.
Amazon has somehow avoided being charged with twinning SpaceX’s competition – it has not been listed as a competitor to xAI despite its big strides across the board in chips, platforms, models and services.
You can read the full S-1 filing on the SEC website, but make sure your Starlink connection is strong and Grok is ready to provide a summary, because it weighs more than 300 pages.
