Author: nini
If you missed the Apple supply chain in 2010, the Tesla supply chain in 2020, or even the Nvidia supply chain that made you regret these past two years...
The SpaceX supply chain is just getting started.
Of course, I think simply chasing SpaceX itself might not be cost-effective. Its IPO first-day pop was 19%, priced at $135, surging to $160, with a price-to-sales ratio approaching 100x, and the company is still heavily loss-making. The pressure is high for retail investors rushing in on the first day.
So what I'm talking about are the companies that supply to it.
History has repeatedly validated the same logic: super terminal products frantically feeding back the supply chains behind them. In 2010, when Apple made the iPhone 4, Luxshare Precision's revenue was 10 billion yuan; ten years later, it reached 92.5 billion yuan, and its stock price increased 30-fold. In 2019, when Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory started production, CATL's market cap was just over 100 billion yuan; five years later, it broke 1 trillion yuan. With Nvidia exploding over the past two years, InnoLight's market cap went from tens of billions to over a hundred billion.
Apple, Tesla, Nvidia—each time, it's the super terminal product on stage, but the ones who truly let a group of people make big money are the supply chain companies behind them.
SpaceX spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually, buying chips, materials, parts, and industrial gases. These purchase orders gradually become real revenue on the books of certain companies. After the IPO prospectus became public, this supply chain has data that can be checked for the first time.
We can first look at where SpaceX's money comes from and where it goes
Its business is mainly these three parts. The first part, Starlink. Last year's revenue was $11.3 billion, accounting for 60% of the group, with over 10 million global subscribers—this is the only consistently profitable part of SpaceX, even subsidizing all the other cash-burning ventures.
The second part, rockets. Falcon and Starship's annual R&D investment is $3 billion, resulting in the world's lowest commercial launch costs, with a plan for 100 launches in 2026 and a demand for 1500 Raptor engines. The third part, AI. Last year, it lost over $6 billion, with the Colossus supercomputer being built on the ground, stacked with 220,000 GPUs, and orbital data centers planned for space.
So, the flow of money is simple: Starlink earns money → Invests in rockets to drive down launch costs → Low-cost launches send AI hardware into space → AI computing power is rented out to earn money again. That's roughly the cycle.
This cycle scatters hundreds of billions of dollars in purchase orders annually. So whose pockets does this money go into?
Based on replaceability, suppliers can be divided into three categories.
Category 1: No one can replace them in the short term
- NVIDIA. The Colossus supercomputer's 220,000 GPUs are all from them. But Nvidia's real moat is not the hardware; it's CUDA. Worldwide AI training basically writes code using this software ecosystem. Hardware can be changed, but the migration cost of a decade's worth of code can't be recouped in a year or two. We can understand it as: as long as SpaceX keeps building supercomputers, Nvidia keeps getting paid.
- Eutelsat (Ticker: SATS). It holds the radio frequency spectrum for satellite communications. What is spectrum? Think of it as lanes in the sky. Physical laws determine there are only so many lanes; whoever occupies them first gets them. No matter how strong your technology is, you can't create a new frequency band out of thin air. Musk's Direct-to-Cell phone feature must pass through here; without paying the toll, the signals collide with other satellites. Also, SATS holds about 3% of SpaceX's shares. The day before the IPO, its stock rose 11%, and option trading volume was 11 times the usual.
- Filtronic (Ticker: FTC), listed in London (note: it's not searchable on US markets). It makes millimeter-wave signal amplifiers for Starlink satellites, allowing signals to travel farther and clearer. In 2024, it signed a £47.3 million contract, with SpaceX contributing 83% of its revenue. SpaceX also holds a warrant for up to 10% of FTC. This thing looks small, but aerospace-grade certification takes years of repeated testing in vacuum, radiation, and extreme temperature swings. Once certified, SpaceX won't easily switch because the re-certification cycle can't keep up with production rhythms. And Filtronic's stock price has nearly tripled in a year.
- Materion (Ticker: MTRN). The world's only fully integrated producer of beryllium metal from mine to finished product, controlling about 56% of global supply. Beryllium is one-third lighter than aluminum, six times stronger than steel, with a melting point near 1300°C. It's light, strong, and heat-resistant—few metals on Earth satisfy all three conditions simultaneously. It's used in the F-35 fighter jet, the James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors, and the load-bearing structure of Starship. The US Department of Defense lists beryllium as a strategic material. Materion is the exclusive certified supplier for the F-35, a certification over a decade old. This illustrates its scarcity.
- STMicroelectronics (Ticker: STM). Helps SpaceX make phased array antenna chips, having cumulatively delivered over 5 billion chips, covering over ten thousand satellites. STM itself forecasts its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite business could reach $2 billion by 2028 and $2.9 billion by 2030.
Category 2: Technically replaceable, but the cost of switching once is too high
- Honeywell (Ticker: HON). The rocket's flight control and inertial navigation systems—knowing where it is, where it's flying, and what attitude to maintain—are all controlled by them. This is built on decades of certification accumulation from Apollo to the Space Shuttle to commercial spaceflight. Changing suppliers would be like transplanting the rocket's brain; all underlying code would have to be rewritten, and new certification would have to start from scratch. With SpaceX launching hundreds of times a year, it can't halt the launch schedule to save procurement costs.
- Carpenter Technology (Ticker: CRS). Used to smelt special steel alloys for Raptor engines. Vacuum melting, repeated purification, controlling impurities to the parts-per-million level. Off by a little, and it's disaster in the combustion chamber. This material process isn't something that can be transferred just by blueprints; building a comparable production line could take decades.
- Hexcel (Ticker: HXL). Supplies aerospace-grade carbon fiber. For rockets, every extra kilogram of structure weight is one less kilogram of payload. Carbon fiber skeletons are half as light as metal without losing strength. Having collaborated with SpaceX for over a decade, the material formula and weaving processes are specifically tuned for SpaceX's needs. Switching to another company would require re-verifying the entire material system from the ground up.
- Broadcom (AVGO), responsible for terabit-level data exchange between satellites and ground. For high-speed data shunting without congestion, you need it. The Linde Group, in 2025, invested $100 million in Texas near the Starbase to build an air separation plant dedicated to supplying liquid oxygen and nitrogen, because the massive amounts of high-purity industrial gases consumed in rocket launches are cheaper the closer the source. This location itself is a moat.
Category 3: Requiring stable mass production and cost reduction to the minimum
You might not have seen a Starlink dish in person, but think about it: they aim to deploy a whopping 30 million units globally. Each unit contains thousands of components, dozens of processes, must be produced on assembly lines like smartphones, and still withstand aerospace-grade vibration and temperature swings.
At this scale, technology isn't the primary factor anymore. The most important thing is who can deliver stably and who can drive costs to the lowest.
The logic of Foxconn manufacturing for Apple applies here exactly. Wistron NeWeb Corporation (Ticker: 6285), the world's largest contract manufacturer for Starlink terminals and routers. Quality control standards were honed over years of collaboration with SpaceX, so it's not something just any factory can take on.
Moving up are several A-share listed companies. Sunway Communication (300136), the global exclusive supplier of high-frequency connectors inside Starlink terminals, with SpaceX-related orders worth about 1.05 billion yuan in 2025. Parker Advanced Materials (605123), the exclusive Chinese supplier of forged parts for the Starship airframe and engines, with orders about 680 million yuan, accounting for 35% of company revenue. Western Superconducting Technologies (002149), exclusive supplier of niobium alloy for Raptor engines, orders about 1.02 billion yuan. Yingliu Co., Ltd. (603308), core castings for Raptor turbopumps, accounting for 42% of its own revenue—SpaceX's orders are already the largest revenue source for this company.
Going smaller. Tianyin Electromechanical (analogous to the star tracker on Starlink satellites, which satellites use to look at stars to determine their attitude), with a market share exceeding 60%. Tongyu Communication, making Starlink ground antenna modules, with projected orders of 300 million yuan in 2026.
On the US stock side, there are a few others. Trimble (TRMB), it manages time. With tens of thousands of satellites flying in space, each satellite's clock must align to the same beat; a microsecond off and communications fail. Astronics (ATRO), manages rocket power distribution. CTS (CTSH), manages thermal management. These aren't black magic technologies, but they are indispensable screws in the entire system.
You might ask, these companies have always been there. Why now?
Three reasons.
- First, the purchasing volume is just starting to increase. The plan is for 100 launches in 2026. Starship testing is accelerating. AI data centers are scheduled to start deploying to orbit in 2028. The target is 30 million Starlink terminals, and there are only 10 million subscribers now. SpaceX's pace of spending money is far from its peak.
- Second, transparency is opening up for the first time. SpaceX was previously a private company, and procurement data was a black box. After the IPO prospectus, quarterly and annual reports will continuously disclose data, allowing the order growth rates of supply chain companies to be tracked and verified.
- Third, referring to the rhyme of history. The Apple supply chain took a decade from the iPhone 4 to its peak. The Tesla supply chain has been going for seven years from Model 3 mass production to now. The position of the SpaceX supply chain today is more like Tesla in 2018—mass production just starting, suppliers just solidifying, order growth just beginning to steepen. With Starship still in testing, Starlink still expanding, and AI data centers not yet built, this is its equivalent of 2018.
Finally
Buying SpaceX on its IPO first day, in my opinion, is paying for Musk's dream, and at a high price for that space dream. Of course, you could say you simply believe in Musk; that's your dream too.
But perhaps we can look from another angle.
Looking along the supply chain, we are betting on something else. Because no matter how SpaceX's stock price moves, its annual hundreds of billions in purchase orders have to be fulfilled by someone. These orders are unrelated to the stock price; they are simply monthly revenue hitting the account.
This article does not constitute investment advice. There are still issues here, such as the beryllium metal cycle, geopolitical discounts for Taiwan-listed companies, low liquidity for small companies, and certifications possibly being reshuffled due to technological iteration. Each company needs to be judged individually.
But if you didn't get an allocation for SpaceX on its IPO day,
Then you can switch strategies. Don't chase the high; let's look at those quietly supplying.
The giant has ignited. This time, the shovels are within your reach~
