Who knows, but the question is more of unit economics than company profitability. Falcon could be profitable on a per-launch basis, and all the profit gets shuttled back into R&D.

It's private, so we have no way of knowing.

Not the company overall, but the Falcon 9 + Falcon Heavy platforms themselves are vastly profitable.

"Our widgets are profitable, but all of the R&D, sales people, back-office people, etc. etc. required to actually run a business makes us unprofitable"

So ummm who's gonna pay all of those people to make sure the robots and people make the widgets every day?

The other expense is the novel Starship R&D program. It's not "back-office people". You're either very uninformed or just sniping in bad faith.

> either very uninformed

And you provided no source and narrowly scoped profitability to singular projects. This is so myopic when it comes to how a business is run.

OK, if you want sources, just look at the numbers here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio....

SpaceX has the vast majority of the worldwide private launch market. It's the only company with a reusable first-stage booster. The cost-per-KG is 10-20% of the competition.

This isn't me speculating wildly, everyone with even passing familiarity with the industry knows this.

> This isn't me speculating wildly, everyone with even passing familiarity with the industry knows this.

I never questioned their market dominance, I questioned their overall company profitability. The cost of building a rocket can be easily fudged to create whatever financial picture you want. Not to mention Elon Musk is notorious for doing this. Unless you have access to their financial statements, all of this conjecture.

> The cost-per-KG is 10-20% of the competition.

Uhh might wanna check your source, from Wikipedia: "These varying cost and requirements makes market analysis imprecise."...

if they are ever in financial distress, the US would never let this company get sold to questionable third party or any foreign power.

probably some contract that will give them stability will appear from somewhere, at least until the ISS is decommissioned.

SpaceX really seems to be "betting the farm" on Starlink being a massive moneymaker. I don't see it longterm though.

Elon Musk said in his Twitter Space interview right after Starship test launch that SpaceX doesn't need to raise money for a while, other than letting employees cashing out some shares twice a year.

Not that I disagree, but what Elon Musk says about financials of his companies, is 100% driven but the picture of it he wants to paint, and can have 0% relation to the reality.

I’m confused why this is even in doubt? It’s a twenty year old company with over ten thousand employees. How could it not be profitable?