If you missed out on the Apple supply chain in 2010, overlooked the Tesla supply chain in 2020, or even regretted not jumping into the NVIDIA supply chain in the past couple of years,
SpaceX's supply chain is just getting started now.
Of course, I think purely chasing after SpaceX itself doesn't seem to be worth it. It surged 19% on its IPO day, priced at 135 and shot up to 160, with a P/S ratio close to 100x, and the company is still in huge losses. Retail investors rushing in on the listing day face considerable pressure.
So what I want to talk about is those companies that supply to SpaceX.
History has repeatedly proven the same logic: the frenzy of the super terminal feeds back to the entire supply chain. In 2010, when Apple released the iPhone 4, Luxshare Precision had annual revenue of 1 billion that year, and ten years later, it soared to 92.5 billion, with its stock price increasing 30 times. In 2019, when Tesla's Shanghai factory started production, CATL had a market cap just over 100 billion, and five years later, it exceeded a trillion. NVIDIA has been on fire in recent years, and JCET went from a market cap of only tens of billions to over a trillion.
Apple, Tesla, NVIDIA—each time, the super terminal is in the spotlight, but the ones who truly make a lot of money are the companies in their supply chain.
SpaceX spends billions of dollars each year, buying chips, materials, parts, and industrial gases. These purchase orders gradually translate into real revenue in certain companies' accounts. After the IPO prospectus was released, this supply chain finally had tangible data that can be accessed.
Let's first take a look at where SpaceX's money comes from and where it goes
Its business mainly consists of these three parts. The first part is Starlink. With revenue of $11.3 billion last year, accounting for 60% of the group, and over 10 million global subscribers—this is the only part of SpaceX that steadily makes money, and it can even be said that all the money-burning areas behind it rely on its support.
The second part is Rockets. $3 billion is invested annually in the development of Falcon and Starship, resulting in the world's lowest commercial launch cost. The plan is to launch 100 times by 2026, with a demand for 1500 Raptor engines. The third part is AI. It lost over $6 billion last year, is currently building the Colossus supercomputer on the ground, stacked with 220,000 GPUs, and plans to orbit data centers in the sky.
So, the flow of money is quite simple: Money earned from Starlink → Invested in Rockets to lower launch costs → Low-cost launches put AI hardware into space → AI computing power leased out to generate more revenue. It's roughly this kind of cycle.
This cycle pours out billions of dollars in annual procurement orders, so who pockets this money?
Suppliers are divided into three categories based on replaceability.
Category One: Those who cannot be replaced in the short term
1. NVIDIA, with its Colossus supercomputer consisting of 220,000 GPUs. However, NVIDIA's true moat is not hardware but CUDA. Almost all AI training worldwide is done using this software ecosystem. While hardware can be replaced, the migration cost of a decade-old codebase cannot be recouped in one or two years. In essence, as long as SpaceX is still building supercomputers, NVIDIA is raking in the cash.
2. Eutelsat, with the SATS code. It holds the radio frequency spectrum for satellite communications. What is spectrum? Think of it as lanes in the sky; the laws of physics dictate there are only a few, and whoever occupies them first owns them. No matter how strong your technology is, you cannot magically create a segment.
Musk's satellite-direct-to-phone feature must pass through Eutelsat; without paying the toll, the signal will collide with other satellites. Furthermore, SATS holds about 3% of SpaceX's shares. Its price surged 11% the day before going public, with options trading volume 11 times higher than usual.
3. Filtronic, with the code FTC, listed on the London Stock Exchange (not available on US exchanges). It makes millimeter-wave signal amplifiers for Starlink satellites, enhancing signal transmission range and clarity. In 2024, it signed a £47.3 million contract, with SpaceX contributing 83% of its revenue and holding the highest 10% of underwriting rights.
Although this may seem small, achieving space-grade certification takes several years of rigorous testing under vacuum, radiation, and extreme temperature differentials. Once certified, SpaceX is unlikely to switch easily because the re-certification cycle cannot keep up with the production pace. Additionally, Filtronic's stock price nearly doubled in a year.
4. Materion, with the code MTRN. It is the world's only fully integrated producer of beryllium metal, controlling approximately 56% of global supply. Beryllium is one of the few metals on Earth that is one-third lighter than aluminum, six times stronger than steel, with a melting point close to 1300 degrees Celsius, lightweight, hard, and high-temperature resistant; there are few metals that meet all three criteria simultaneously.
It is used in the F-35 fighter jet, the James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors, and the Starship's load-bearing structure. The US Department of Defense classifies beryllium as a strategic material, and Materion is the exclusive certified supplier for the F-35, a certification lasting over a decade. This underscores its scarcity.
5. STMicroelectronics, with the code STM. It produces phased-array antenna chips for SpaceX, delivering over 5 billion chips, covering over 10,000 satellites. STM itself predicts that its low Earth orbit satellite business could reach $2 billion by 2028 and $2.9 billion by 2030.
Category 2: Technically Feasible to Replace, but the Cost of Replacement is Prohibitive
1. Honeywell, stock symbol HON. Provides rocket's flight control and inertial navigation system—enabling the rocket to know its position, trajectory, and orientation. This technology has been accumulated over decades from Apollo to the Space Shuttle to commercial spaceflight. Switching suppliers would require a complete reimplementation of the rocket's brain, rewriting the underlying code from scratch, and reinitiating the certification process. SpaceX launches over a hundred times a year; it is infeasible to disrupt the launch schedule merely to save on procurement costs.
2. Carpenter Technology, stock symbol CRS. Produces special steel alloys used in the Raptors' engines. The alloy is refined through vacuum melting and meticulous purification, controlling impurities at the parts per million level. A slight deviation would lead to catastrophic failure in the combustion chamber. This material production process cannot be easily shared through blueprints alone, and replicating an equivalent production line could take decades.
3. Hexcel, stock symbol HXL. Supplies aerospace-grade carbon fiber, where every kilogram reduction in the rocket's structure results in an additional kilogram of payload. Carbon fiber skeleton is half the weight of metal with no compromise in strength. Having collaborated with SpaceX for over a decade, the material composition and weaving process have been tailored specifically to SpaceX's requirements. Switching suppliers would necessitate the complete revalidation of the entire material system.
4. Broadcom, stock symbol AVGO, facilitates multi-terabit data exchanges between space and ground. To enable high-speed data routing without congestion, it is indispensable. The Lindsay Corporation invested one billion dollars in 2025 to establish an air separation plant near the Texas Spaceport solely dedicated to supplying liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. The proximity of this plant to the rocket launch site significantly reduces costs, creating a natural moat.
Category 3: Requires Stable Mass Production and Cost Optimization
You may not have seen a Starlink antenna in person, but consider this, they need to deploy a whopping 30 million units globally. Each unit consists of thousands of components and dozens of manufacturing processes. These antennas need to be manufactured on an assembly line akin to producing smartphones while enduring aerospace-level vibrations and temperature differentials.
At this scale, technology is no longer the primary factor; the crucial aspects are who can consistently deliver, and who can minimize costs.
The logic of Foxconn's Apple assembly is directly applicable here. Qisda Corporation, stock symbol 6285, the world's largest Starlink terminal and router contract manufacturer. Their quality control standards have been honed over several years of collaboration with SpaceX, indicating that not just any factory can take on this role.
Moving up are several A-share companies. Suntak Technology, stock number 300136, exclusively supplies the high-frequency connectors in Starlink terminals globally, with approximately $1.05 billion in SpaceX-related orders expected in 2025. PacSci EMC, stock number 605123, the sole Chinese supplier of forged parts for the Starship rocket body and engines, with orders totaling about $680 million, representing 35% of the company's revenue. Western Superconducting Technologies, stock number 002149, the exclusive provider of niobium alloy for the Raptor engine, with orders of around $1.02 billion. AEROTECH, stock number 603308, manufactures the core castings for the Raptor turbopump, constituting 42% of its own revenue—SpaceX's orders are already this company's most significant income source.
Shrink it further. Tianyin Electromechanical, can be metaphorically likened to the star sensor on a Starlink satellite. The satellite relies on it to observe the stars to determine its own orientation, and its market share exceeds 60%. Tongyu Communication, which produces Starlink ground antenna modules, is expected to receive orders worth $300 million by 2026.
On the U.S. stock market, there are a few other companies. Trimble, with the ticker symbol TRMB, is responsible for time management. With tens of thousands of satellites orbiting in space, each satellite's clock must be synchronized to the same beat, as a one-microsecond difference can lead to communication errors. Astronics, with the ticker symbol ATRO, is in charge of rocket power distribution. CTS, with the ticker symbol CTSH, handles thermal management. These are not cutting-edge technologies, but they are all indispensable screws in the entire system.
You might ask, these companies have always been around, so why now?
Three reasons.
· First, the procurement volume has just begun to increase. There are plans for 100 launches in 2026, Starship is still undergoing rapid testing, and AI data centers are scheduled to be deployed in space starting in 2028. The Starlink terminal target is 30 million units, but currently there are only 10 million subscribers. The rate at which SpaceX is spending money is far from reaching its peak.
· Second, transparency has finally been achieved. Previously, SpaceX was a private company, and procurement data was a black box. After the IPO, quarterly and annual reports will continue to disclose information, allowing the growth rate of supply chain companies' orders to be tracked and verified.
· Third, following historical patterns. The Apple supply chain took ten years from the iPhone 4 to its peak. The Tesla supply chain took seven years from the mass production of the Model 3 to the present. The position of the SpaceX supply chain today is more akin to Tesla in 2018, just at the beginning of mass production, with suppliers just getting established, and the order growth rate starting to accelerate. The Starship is still in testing, Starlink is expanding gradually, and the AI data centers have not yet been constructed—currently equivalent to the state of Tesla in 2018.
Finally
Buying SpaceX on its first day of trading, in my opinion, is investing in Musk's dream and essentially paying a high-priced ticket for the space dream. Of course, you could also say you believe in Musk, and that's your dream too.
However, perhaps we can look at it from a different perspective,
By following the supply chain, what we are betting on is actually something else. Regardless of how SpaceX's stock price performs, someone has to fulfill its annual tens of billions of dollars in procurement orders. These orders are unrelated to stock prices; they are just revenue that arrives on time every month.
This article is not investment advice. There are still some issues here, such as beryllium metal's cyclical nature, foundry geolocation discounts, insufficient liquidity of small companies, and certifications that may need to be restructured due to technological iteration. Each company needs to be evaluated individually.
But if you didn't get allocated shares on the day SpaceX goes public,
you can approach it differently, don't chase the price up, let's go check out those who quietly stock up.
The rocket has already ignited, and this time, the shovel is within your reach~
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