Starlink has 4 million subscribers

SpaceX Satellite web network Starlink is predicted to hit a brand new customer milestone this week, company CEO Gwynne Shotwell told Texas lawmakers on Tuesday.

“By the way, we’re going to hit 4 million Starlink customers this week, which is pretty exciting,” she said while testifying before a House Appropriations Committee hearing. (The milestone was confirmed by SpaceX on Thursday.)

The milestone would mean that SpaceX has added one million latest customers because the end of May alone. This outpaces the corporate’s already impressive growth rate: Starlink began providing beta service for its product in October 2020; reached 1 million subscribers in December 2022, 2 million subscribers in September 2023 and three million in May. The constellation currently consists of virtually 6,000 satellites, and services can be found in almost 100 countries to individual users in addition to large corporate customers corresponding to major airlines and cruise lines.

The website is on the best track it should generate $6.6 billion in revenue this 12 months – up from about $1.4 billion just two years earlier, in line with research and consulting firm Quilty Space.

Starlink is critical to SpaceX’s overall plan to commercialize and ultimately explore space. While the corporate continued to lift money from investors, CEO Elon Musk he has been saying for years that revenues from broadband web service would help fund further development of the huge reusable rocket, Starship. In turn, bringing Starship online will help the corporate launch much more Starlink satellites at the next frequency.

Starlink has grow to be the undisputed giant of satellite Internet. Since the launch of the service, it has gained market share from incumbents corresponding to Viasat and SES, which operate large satellites in higher geostationary orbit. Several other constellations are currently in development, most notably Amazon’s Kuiper project, but haven’t yet entered business service.