Elon Musk’s Starlink is set to cement its dominance of the satellite internet market with a surge in revenues this year, but the world’s richest man’s ties to US President Donald Trump are shifting from an asset to a hindrance in its global rollout.
The billionaire’s SpaceX group is engaged in talks to rapidly bring the service to countries with 1bn potential new users, including holding negotiations with Turkey, Morocco and Bangladesh, while making progress towards regulatory approval in other vast markets such as India.
Musk’s alliance with Trump has also removed obstacles and monopoly concerns harboured by Biden-era officials, paving the way for lucrative federal contracts.
The service has been installed at the White House in recent weeks, while Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has lobbied officials to consider Starlink for the $42bn US rural Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (Bead) programme.
But the SpaceX founder’s foray into politics has begun to hamper its global expansion plans, as regulators in each country need to approve Starlink’s entry into their market and politicians weigh up whether Musk is a reliable partner.
In recent weeks, a Canadian province has torn up a Starlink contract in protest over US tariffs. Musk, meanwhile, has traded insults with European politicians who are helping to finance Starlink in Ukraine, as part of its defensive efforts against Russia, leading them to seek alternatives.
“There appears to be a potentially tectonic shift occurring in the satellite communications landscape ignited by geopolitics,” said Edison Yu, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. “Starlink is still clearly number one, but not the only one.”
Roughly half of Musk’s $314bn net worth is now tied to SpaceX — which was valued at $350bn in a recent private tender offer — while his 20 per cent stake in Tesla has dwindled to $100bn.
Morgan Stanley estimates Starlink will generate $16.3bn in revenue this year, up 74 per cent from an estimated $9.3bn in 2024, with subscribers almost doubling to 7.8mn from 4.65mn, according to a January report. By comparison, SpaceX’s rocket launch business is forecast to make $5.8bn in 2025 revenue, up 20 per cent from $4.9bn last year.
“While it all began with market-leading launch capability, we believe Starlink will be the primary driver of SpaceX’s growth and profitability,” said Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Starlink has said its more than 7,000 low-orbit satellites provide service to 118 countries and territories, with Niger the latest to be connected last week.
Industry insiders said the group was seeking a licence to operate in Turkey and was in talks with Morocco about expanding coverage into the disputed Western Sahara territory.
They said SpaceX also hoped to obtain approvals to operate in Bangladesh next month, after Musk personally spoke to the country’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, over introducing the service.
Those deals would add to progress made to enter India, after announcing tie-ups with rival tycoons Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal earlier this month, weeks after Musk spoke to Indian premier Narendra Modi in Washington DC.
The service is especially popular in less developed or remote areas not connected to fibre-optic networks. It has won contracts with major airlines including state-backed carriers Qatar Airways and Air France, shipping groups including MSC and Maersk, and cruise operators Cunard and Carnival.
About a quarter of the company’s revenues come from government contracts, however. According to US filings, SpaceX has already secured 39 different Starlink contracts across the US government worth around $3.5bn, including multiple military contracts with the Department of Defense.
It is attempting to expand under Trump having been blocked by the Federal Communications Commission in 2022 for a $900mn contract. Former FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said last year of Starlink that the “economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies”.
The Trump administration has moved to overhaul the FCC’s approach, to ease restrictions in a separate rural broadband programme that apply to Starlink, including introducing a “tech-neutral approach” to dislodge a preference for fibre-optic networks.
Evan Feinman, former director of the Bead programme said that Starlink had been singled out by Lutnick as one possible beneficiary of rule changes. “He mentioned Musk by name, he asked if we had been talking with Elon,” he told the Financial Times in a recent interview.
But as Musk’s ambitions broaden from its home market, his proximity to Trump and unfiltered social media comments have made Starlink a target.
Ontario premier Doug Ford this month ripped up a $100mn deal with Starlink in response to US tariffs, commenting that the Canadian province “won’t do business with people hell-bent on destroying our economy”.
Musk branding South African Black economic empowerment laws “openly racist” has complicated Starlink’s approval in his country of birth, while a spat in Brazil over misinformation on Musk’s social media platform X almost led to Starlink being banned.
Most recently, Musk sought an emergency meeting with Italian president Sergio Mattarella to salvage a $1.5bn deal with the Italian government, which was thrown into doubt following Trump’s suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The presidential palace has rebuffed the request, saying Starlink must deal with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, not the head of state, whose role is largely ceremonial.
Ukraine has been another flashpoint. The country has grown dependent on Starlink’s ubiquitous terminals with more than 40,000 in operation across the military, hospitals, businesses and aid organisations, according to Ukraine’s digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Although SpaceX initially covered the cost of the service, it is now picked up by Poland and the US Department of Defense.
The Pentagon holds a $537mn contract with SpaceX to provide services for Ukraine through 2027 under the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit programme. Poland, meanwhile, contributes roughly $50mn a year to deploy terminals in the country, according to the Polish digitisation ministry.
After Musk said on his social network X that Starlink was the “backbone of the Ukrainian army” and that “their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off”, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski warned that it would be “forced to look for other suppliers” if SpaceX proved to be an “unreliable provider”.
“Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink,” Musk responded on X.
The billionaire later clarified that SpaceX would “never turn off its terminals” in Ukraine. “We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip,” he said.
Masao Dahlgren, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that there was scope for European providers to make inroads in the market but that SpaceX was unlikely to be unseated as a dominant provider unless a rival could develop a more advanced product. He described Starlink as “the hub in the wheel” of the Ukrainian war effort.
But the threat by some leaders to tear up government contracts with SpaceX has not stretched to banning the service within their borders, while the service’s extensive reach means that in some countries without an official network individuals and businesses use equipment purchased abroad and imported privately.
“SpaceX is the dominant force in the market,” said Chris Quilty, an analyst at Quilty Space. “If a country banned access to Starlink, people would be at politicians with pitchforks.”
Data and visualisation by Alan Smith, Cleve Jones and Ian Bott in London.
Additional reporting by David Pilling in London, Ilya Gridneff in Toronto and Amy Kazmin in Rome.
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