SpaceX

Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in El Segundo, California, with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars.

After three failed launches, Falcon 1 Flight 4 successfully reached orbit, making SpaceX the first privately-funded company to launch a liquid-fueled rocket into orbit. This saved the company from bankruptcy.

SpaceX launched the first Falcon 9 rocket on its maiden flight from Cape Canaveral on June 4, 2010. The rocket successfully reached low Earth orbit, carrying a Dragon capsule qualification unit. This marked the beginning of the Falcon 9 program that would revolutionize space launch with reusable rocket technology.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule completed its first orbital spaceflight on December 8, 2010, launching atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The capsule orbited Earth twice, reentered the atmosphere, and was recovered from the Pacific Ocean. This was the first orbital flight of the Dragon spacecraft and a critical demonstration for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to dock with the International Space Station, delivering cargo under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program.

Falcon 9's first stage successfully landed at Cape Canaveral after delivering 11 satellites to orbit, achieving the first-ever orbital-class rocket landing and proving reusable rocket technology viable.

SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful operational rocket, on its maiden flight from Kennedy Space Center. The launch carried Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster into a heliocentric orbit. Falcon Heavy consists of three Falcon 9 first-stage boosters and can lift nearly 64 metric tons to low Earth orbit, making it the most capable rocket since the Saturn V.

SpaceX began launching batches of Starlink satellites, building a low-Earth orbit constellation to provide global broadband internet access. By 2026, Starlink had tens of thousands of subscribers worldwide.

SpaceX launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS aboard Crew Dragon, marking the first crewed orbital spaceflight by a private company and restoring US crew launch capability.

Starship Flight 4 completed a full-duration ascent and Super Heavy booster performed a controlled splashdown, marking a major milestone toward the fully reusable Starship system designed for Moon and Mars missions.

SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history, debuting on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX at a ~$1.77 trillion valuation and raising about $75 billion. Elon Musk retained ~82% voting control.

Just days after its record-breaking IPO, SpaceX announces the all-stock acquisition of Anysphere/Cursor for $60 billion, one of the largest AI startup acquisitions in history. The deal signals SpaceX's major push into AI software development through its Grok/xAI division, positioning it to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic in AI coding tools.

SpaceX's Starship V3 completed its most successful test flight to date, Flight 13, achieving the vehicle's "softest splashdown," deploying 20 Starlink test satellites, and validating the upgraded V3 design. The milestone flight marked a critical step toward NASA's 2028 lunar landing goal and demonstrated significant progress in Starship's heat shield, engine reliability, and controlled landing capabilities.

Tesla and SpaceX announced the Terafab advanced semiconductor fabrication facility in Grimes County, Texas, with an initial investment of USD 16.8 billion. The 100 million+ square foot facility will produce chips for Tesla's Optimus robots and Cybercabs, as well as high-power chips for SpaceX's space-based data centers. Intel is also contributing to the project, which could ultimately cost up to USD 119 billion across multiple phases.

SpaceX successfully recovered the upper stage (Ship 40) of its Starship rocket from the Indian Ocean on August 18, 2026, after it spent 24 days adrift following the Flight 13 launch on July 24. The 171-foot spacecraft was towed to Christmas Island, an Australian territory, after SpaceX teams overcame rough seas that had led CEO Elon Musk to declare recovery unlikely. The recovered vehicle was to be returned to SpaceX Starbase in Texas for engineering analysis to improve future Starship designs. The recovery marked the first time SpaceX retrieved an intact Starship upper stage from the ocean, a critical step toward demonstrating full vehicle reusability.

Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX is building a hot-section turbine-blade and vane foundry near its Starlink plant in Bastrop, Texas, after roughly 830 acres of land purchases and job postings documented between March and June. Only a handful of foundries worldwide can cast blades that survive 3,000-plus-degree service, and supplier order books run into 2030; Musk said in-house casting could bring natural-gas turbines online up to 18 months faster for AI campuses, with the same castings feeding Raptor turbopumps.

SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen confirmed a signed AI compute hosting contract worth 1.11 billion dollars per month -- roughly 13.3 billion dollars annually -- with billings beginning December 1, 2026. The counterparty was not disclosed, making it the fourth major AI infrastructure contract SpaceX has closed in under a year. The deal pushes SpaceXAI projected compute revenue above 41 billion dollars annually and underpins the company target of 100 billion dollars in annual recurring revenue by year-end.

A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral on September 13, 2026, carrying the final three O3b mPOWER satellites for SES, Luxembourg, making it the 700th flight of the Falcon rocket family. The mission completed SES's medium Earth orbit broadband constellation and underscored the reusability-driven launch cadence that has made Falcon the most-flown orbital rocket in history, roughly 16 years after its 2010 debut.