[arthurofbabylon]

It’s surprising just how low the revenue is for SpaceX. There are some 700+ companies with larger revenue figures, and yet just a small handful exceed SpaceX’s proposed valuation.

In 2026 one gets the impression that SpaceX is a huge company, among the largest in the world. It’s wild to see that its business volume is smaller than Northrop, smaller than Apple’s peripherals alone, smaller than Avnet (heard of ‘em?).

[dmix]

Uber had about $11B revenue when it went public

SpaceX is at $18.7B

[darkwizard42]

Just to keep things in perspective, Uber IPO-ed for 82.4B. SpaceX is IPOing for over 10x more.

[dmix]

Plus Uber's only increased their revenue 11->14B in the last 5yrs. SpaceX has added +$4B since 2024 and have fanciful plans in multiple markets that only a gambler like Musk would risk proposing.

[urams]

> Plus Uber's only increased their revenue 11->14B in the last 5yrs.

This is just incredibly off. A brief look at Yahoo Finance shows revenue has grown from $31.9B in 2022 -> $53.7B in trailing 12mos.

[dmix]

you're right, looks I mixed up some numbers while googling. their revenue went from 11->53b in 6yrs which was very off from my original comment

Which honestly surprises me, Uber was called a VC pump and dump scheme for years on HN before their IPO. Maybe that's the better lesson here (dont take financial advice from HN comments)

[darkwizard42]

Uber WAS a pump and dump. Insiders used the public for exit liquidity and any public shareholders got stuck with a pretty crap stock. Uber went up 100% from IPO to mid 2025, Google went up 400% in that time period (and I picked 2025 to avoid the huge AI runup we have seen).

It was hemorrhaging in many cities using extremely profitable cities like London and NYC to keep their global competitiveness.

Uber was able to pivot and become financially sound with two moves: - Uber Eats becoming first party delivery to restaurants (it started as a limited selection of items from some restaurants and quickly evolved into a Doordash-esque competitor) - Uber launching a 1B+ RR Ads business - margins on this are obviously incredible

Both of those combined with discipline in their ridesharing business (exiting the China market with a sale + stake, dumping their self-driving business when it became a money sink) have led to a recovery in their stock price, but it is FAR from the crazy expectations set up for VCs. I expect those in the last round didn't get a great return, but obviously folk like Benchmark exited like kings.

[eightysixfour]

Personally, I always underestimate how much exploitation consumers are willing to experience before leaving a brand. I thought Facebook was reaching the peak of its ability to shove ads into its products in like 2011, boy was I wrong.

Uber successfully displaced most of the alternatives, slowly raised rates, and maintained operating margin while their fixed costs didn't have to scale as much. Post Travis they've, financially, nailed it.

[bottlepalm]

SpaceX easily has 10x the potential of Uber. SpaceX has its hands in so many up and coming industries.

[danny_codes]

Aside from satellite internet, I can't think of anything realistic.

[bottlepalm]

Have you heard of AI? It's up and coming and bringing in a lot of money.. even more than satellite internet.

[gnabgib]

ISS resupply, ISS re-crew missions, and commercial satellite launches don't count as realistic? (Theoretical Moon and Mars launches?)

[protocolture]

SpaceX has the baggage of a bunch of elon brainfarts.

[neosat]

Revenue is not the right metric when you compare space trips to trips inside a city. The more relevant numbers are EBITDA, Operating cash flow, Profits.

[throw0101a]

> SpaceX is at $18.7B

And profits?

If SpaceX was a space services company (launch, ISP) the numbers involved may be nice; but with all the AI garbage rolled in, it's hemorrhaging money.

[throw0101a]

> It’s surprising just how low the revenue is for SpaceX. There are some 700+ companies with larger revenue figures, and yet just a small handful exceed SpaceX’s proposed valuation.

As Patrick Boyle points out in this video "SpaceX IPO: Nice Try Though" (6m40s):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD8BDFYyGI

SpaceX has about the same revenue as breakfast cereal maker Kellogg's, but Kellogg's is more profitable.