Redmond, Wash., has been known for decades as the home of Microsoft, to the extent that the city’s name has become synonymous with the software giant. Maybe it’s time to rethink that, because it’s also home to one of the world’s most prolific satellite factories.
SpaceX revealed in its IPO filing Wednesday that its Starlink satellite manufacturing facility in Redmond produced an average of approximately 70 satellites per week from December 2025 to April 2026, or about 3,640 per year at full rate.
By comparison, Amazon VP Rajeev Badyal said this week at a Tech Alliance event that the company’s rival satellite venture can now produce “tens of satellites a week” at its factory in nearby Kirkland, Wash., up from one satellite a month just over a year ago. Amazon Leo currently has a little more than 300 satellites in orbit, versus SpaceX’s approximately 9,600.
SpaceX is Exhibit A in a larger economic development plan, as regional leaders look to the satellite industry as a new engine for growth. More than 10,000 satellites have been built in the state, about two-thirds of all operational satellites, with more than $1.6 billion in investment in Washington space startups over the past 18 months, according to data presented at the event.
To that end, the filing by the Elon Musk venture revealed the financials behind the Starlink business, which provides high-speed satellite internet to 10.3 million subscribers.
- SpaceX’s Connectivity segment, driven by Starlink, generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income in 2025.
- That amounted to about 61% of SpaceX’s overall revenue of $18.7 billion in 2025, and was the only one of the company’s three segments to turn an operating profit.
The backstory: Musk announced SpaceX’s satellite internet plans at a private event in Seattle in January 2015, describing it at the time as a key element of his plan to colonize Mars.
SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has applied to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker “SPCX.” As a preliminary filing, the S-1 leaves blank the share price and number of shares to be offered.
However, the company is looking to raise as much as $80 billion or more, according to the Wall Street Journal, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history, roughly three times larger than Saudi Aramco’s record-setting IPO in 2019. Bloomberg has reported the company could seek a valuation of more than $2 trillion.
The filing also does not disclose how many of SpaceX’s 22,000 worldwide employees work at the Redmond facility, or provide a breakdown of employment by location.
Regional rivals: Competitive disclosures in the S-1 filing do underscore the extent to which the Pacific Northwest has become a hub for space, satellite and artificial intelligence industries.
- In space launch services, SpaceX names Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, as an emerging commercial competitor, in addition to established players such as United Launch Alliance and Arianespace.
- In satellite broadband connectivity, SpaceX lists Amazon’s planned Leo constellation and Blue Origin’s TeraWave among its rivals to Starlink. Others include Eutelsat OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, and AST SpaceMobile.
- In AI, SpaceX names Redmond-based Microsoft among its competitors, alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The company acquired Musk’s xAI venture, which includes the Grok AI model and the X social media platform, in early 2026.
Amazon somehow avoided a SpaceX competitive twin-billing — it’s not listed as a competitor to xAI despite its large footprint across the field in chips, platforms, models and services.
You can read the full S-1 filing on the SEC’s website, but make sure your Starlink connection is strong and Grok is ready to provide a summary, because it weighs in at more than 300 pages.
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