SpaceX's supply chain and key suppliers in 2026

Author: nini

If you missed the Apple supply chain in 2010, the Tesla supply chain in 2020, or even the NVIDIA supply chain that left you regretful these past two years

SpaceX's supply chain has just begun.

Of course, I think chasing SpaceX itself doesn't seem particularly worthwhile. It rose 19% on its IPO day, pricing at $135 and spiking to $160, with a price-to-sales ratio nearing 100x, while the company is still posting massive losses. Retail investors jumping in on the first day of trading are facing considerable pressure.

So what I mean are the companies that supply it.

History has repeatedly confirmed the same logic: super terminals fiercely backfeed the industries behind them. In 2010, Apple launched the iPhone 4; Luxshare Precision’s revenue that year was 1 billion RMB, and a decade later it reached 92.5 billion RMB, with its stock price rising 30-fold. In 2019, Tesla’s Shanghai factory began production; CATL’s market cap was just over 100 billion RMB, and five years later it surpassed 1 trillion RMB. In the past two years, NVIDIA has surged in popularity, and InnoLight’s market cap has grown from billions to over hundreds of billions RMB.

Apple, Tesla, NVIDIA—each time it’s the end products that take center stage, but it’s the companies behind their supply chains that truly enable a generation to make substantial profits.

SpaceX spends tens of billions of dollars annually on chips, materials, components, and industrial gases. These procurement orders gradually become real revenue on the books of certain companies. After the prospectus was made public, this supply chain had verifiable data for the first time.

Its business primarily consists of three areas. First, Starlink. Last year, it generated $11.3 billion in revenue, accounting for 60% of the group’s total, with over 10 million subscribers worldwide—this is the only stable profit-making segment for SpaceX, and arguably funds all its other costly ventures.

The second segment: rockets. With an annual R&D investment of $3 billion in Falcon and Starship, SpaceX has achieved the lowest commercial launch costs globally, with plans for 100 launches in 2026 and a requirement of 1,500 Raptor engines. The third segment: AI. Last year, the company incurred losses of over $6 billion; on the ground, the Colossus supercomputer is under construction with 220,000 GPUs, while orbital data centers are planned in space.

So the flow of money is straightforward: the money earned by Starlink → invested in rockets to reduce launch costs → low-cost launches put AI hardware into space → AI computing power is rented out to generate revenue. It’s roughly this kind of cycle.

This cycle pumps out tens of billions of dollars in purchase orders each year—so who’s pocketing that money?

Suppliers are categorized into three types based on whether they are replaceable.

1. NVIDIA supplied all 220,000 GPUs for the Colossus supercomputer. But NVIDIA’s true moat isn’t hardware—it’s CUDA, the software ecosystem used to write nearly all AI training code worldwide. You can switch hardware, but migrating a decade’s worth of code isn’t something you can make up in a year or two. We can think of it this way: as long as SpaceX keeps building supercomputers, NVIDIA keeps collecting revenue.
2. Eutelsat, ticker SATS, holds the radio spectrum for satellite communications. What is spectrum? Think of it as lanes in the sky—physical laws limit how many exist, and whoever claims them first owns them; no amount of technological prowess can create new ones out of thin air. Musk’s direct-to-satellite phone feature must pass through SATS’s spectrum—without paying toll fees, signals would collide with those from other satellites. Moreover, SATS holds approximately 3% of SpaceX’s shares. The day before its IPO, its stock rose 11%, and options trading volume surged to 11 times its normal level.
3. Filtronic, ticker FTC, listed in London—note that it cannot be found on U.S. stock exchanges. TA manufactures millimeter-wave signal amplifiers for Starlink satellites, enabling signals to travel farther and clearer. In 2024, it signed contracts worth £47.3 million, with SpaceX accounting for 83% of its revenue and granting Filtronic up to a 10% subscription right. Although the product appears small, achieving aerospace-grade certification requires years of rigorous testing under vacuum, radiation, and extreme temperature variations. Once certified, SpaceX rarely switches suppliers, as the re-certification cycle cannot keep pace with production scaling. Additionally, Filtronic’s stock price has nearly doubled over the past year.
4. Materion, ticker MTRN. The world’s only integrated producer of beryllium metal, from ore to finished product, controlling approximately 56% of global supply. Beryllium is one-third lighter than aluminum, six times stronger than steel, and has a melting point near 1,300 degrees Celsius—making it exceptionally light, strong, and heat-resistant, a rare combination among metals. It is used in the F-35 fighter jet, the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the structural components of Starship. The U.S. Department of Defense classifies beryllium as a strategic material, and Materion is the exclusive certified supplier for the F-35, with certification spanning over a decade—highlighting its scarcity.
5. STMicroelectronics, ticker STM, has supplied over five billion phased array antenna chips for SpaceX, covering more than ten thousand satellites. STM forecasts that its low Earth orbit satellite business will reach $2 billion by 2028 and $2.9 billion by 2030.

1. Honeywell, ticker HON. It controls the rocket’s flight control and inertial navigation systems—determining where the rocket is, where it’s going, and how it maintains its attitude. Decades of certification have built up from Apollo to the Space Shuttle to commercial spaceflight. Switching suppliers would be like transplanting a new brain into the rocket—requiring a complete rewrite of the underlying code and restarting the entire certification process. With SpaceX launching hundreds of times per year, it’s impossible to halt launch schedules just to save on procurement costs.
2. Carpenter Technology, ticker CRS. Produces specialty steel alloys for the Raptor engine. Vacuum melting and repeated purification reduce impurities to parts per million levels. Slight deviations could lead to disaster in the combustion chamber. This material technology cannot be transmitted merely through blueprints; building an equivalent production line may take decades or more.
3. Hexcel, ticker HXL. Supplies carbon fiber for aerospace; every additional kilogram of payload reduces rocket capacity by one kilogram. Carbon fiber frames are half the weight of metal without sacrificing strength. Has partnered with SpaceX for over a decade, with material formulations and weaving techniques specifically tailored to SpaceX’s requirements. Switching suppliers would require full revalidation of the entire material system.
4. Broadcom AVGO enables terabit-level data exchange between stars and Earth. To ensure high-speed data flow without congestion, it’s essential. Linde Group invested $100 million in 2025 to build an air separation plant near the Starport in Texas, specifically producing liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen—critical high-purity industrial gases consumed in large quantities during rocket launches. Proximity reduces costs, making this location itself a moat.

You may not have seen a Starlink terminal in person, but consider this: it plans to deploy 30 million units worldwide. Each unit contains thousands of components and requires dozens of manufacturing steps—produced on assembly lines like smartphones—while withstanding aerospace-grade vibration and temperature extremes.

At this scale, technology is no longer the primary factor; what matters most is who can consistently liquidate and who can drive costs down to the lowest level.

The logic of Foxconn manufacturing for Apple applies exactly here. Qisda, stock code 6285, is the world’s largest contract manufacturer for Starlink terminals and routers. Its quality control standards have been refined over years of collaboration with SpaceX, so it’s not something just any factory can handle.

Moving upward are several A-share companies. Xinwei Communications, 300136, is the exclusive global supplier of high-frequency connectors for Starlink terminals, with approximately RMB 1.05 billion in related SpaceX orders in 2025. Paik New Materials, 605123, is the sole Chinese supplier of forgings for Starship airframes and engines, with orders totaling about RMB 680 million, accounting for 35% of the company’s revenue. Western Materials, 002149, is the exclusive supplier of niobium alloys for the Raptor engine, with orders of approximately RMB 1.02 billion. Yingli Shares, 603308, supplies the core castings for the Raptor turbine pump, which account for 42% of its own revenue—SpaceX orders have become this company’s largest source of income.

Make it even smaller. Tianyin Electromechanical can be likened to the star tracker on Starlink satellites—used by satellites to determine their orientation by observing stars—with a market share exceeding 60%. Tongyu Communications produces ground antenna modules for Starlink, with projected orders of 300 million yuan by 2026.

There are a few more in the U.S. stock market. Trimble, ticker TRMB, handles timing—thousands of satellites flying in space, each requiring their clocks to be perfectly synchronized; a one-microsecond error can disrupt communication. Astronics, ticker ATRO, manages power distribution for rockets. CTS, ticker CTSH, handles thermal management. These aren’t cutting-edge technologies, but they’re essential components—tiny screws holding the entire system together.

Three reasons.

• First, procurement volumes have only just begun to increase. With 100 launches planned for 2026, Starship is still accelerating its testing, and AI data centers won’t begin deployment into space until 2028. Starlink’s target is 30 million terminals, but there are currently only 10 million subscribers. SpaceX’s rate of spending is still far from its peak.
• Second, transparency has been opened for the first time. Previously, SpaceX was a private company, and procurement data was a black box. After the prospectus was published, quarterly and annual reports will continuously disclose information, allowing the order growth rates of supply chain companies to be tracked and verified.
• Third, look at historical parallels. The Apple supply chain took ten years to evolve from the iPhone 4 to its peak. The Tesla supply chain has taken seven years since Model 3 entered mass production. Today, the SpaceX supply chain resembles Tesla in 2018—mass production has just begun, suppliers have only recently been finalized, and order growth is just starting to steepen. Meanwhile, Starship is still in testing, Starlink is gradually expanding, and AI data centers have yet to be built—this is equivalent to its 2018 stage.

Buying SpaceX on its first day of listing, I think you're paying a high price for Musk's dream—and it's certainly a lofty space dream. Of course, you could also say you simply believe in Musk, and that’s your own dream.

But perhaps we can look at it from a different angle,

Looking along the supply chain, we’re betting on something else entirely, because no matter how SpaceX’s stock price moves, someone still has to fulfill its billions of dollars in annual procurement orders. These orders are unrelated to the stock price—they’re simply recurring revenue that arrives on schedule every month.

This is not investment advice. There are still some issues here, such as beryllium metal having a cycle, Taiwanese manufacturers facing geopolitical discounts, small companies lacking liquidity, and certifications potentially being reshuffled due to technological advancements. Each company needs to be evaluated individually.

But if you didn't get allocated shares on the day SpaceX goes public,

Then we can try a different approach—avoid chasing highs, and let’s look at those quietly supplying.

The giant has ignited—this time, the shovel is within your reach~