Elon Musk's Starlink achieves breakeven cash flow, says system is on all active satellites

Tech billionaire and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said on Thursday the rocket company's satellite internet unit, Starlink, had achieved cash flow breakeven. Musk made this announcement on microblogging platform X, erstwhile Twitter.

He wrote, “Excited to announce that @SpaceX @Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow! Excellent work by a great team.”

The tech billionaire also added that the system is now on all active satellites.

"Starlink is also now a majority of all active satellites and will have launched a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by next year," he wrote in his post.

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX. The company provides coverage to over 60 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023. SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019.

Starlink financials

The company SpaceX is valued at about $150 billion and is one of the most valuable private companies in the world. In 2021, Musk said SpaceX would spin off and take Starlink public once its cash flow was reasonably predictable.

Starlink posted a more than six-fold growth in revenue last year. It came in at $1.4 billion, but fell short of targets set by Musk, the Wall Street Journal reported in September, citing documents.

Elon Musk has sought to establish the Starlink business unit as an important revenue source to fund SpaceX's more capital-intensive projects such as its next-generation Starship. Starship is a giant reusable rocket the company intends to fly to the moon for NASA within the next decade.

Since 2019, the satellite company has grown its network in low-Earth orbit to roughly 5,000 satellites.

Starlink's role in conflict zones

Starlink has been in the spotlight since last year after it helped provide Ukraine with satellite communications key to its war efforts against Russia.

Moreover, Elon Musk said Starlink will support communication links in Gaza with "internationally recognized aid organisations." This happened after a telecom and internet blackout isolated people in the Gaza Strip from the world and from each other.