How to Buy Starlink Stock Before Its IPO

In 2019, the first Starlink satellite fleet was launched into orbit.

Today, Starlink's network is made up of nearly 8,000 satellites that deliver high-speed, broadband internet to more than 6 million people (and growing) all over the world.

The company's financial results have been trending at a similarly impressive rate. Annual revenue is projected to reach $11.8 billion in 2025, up 53% from last year's record revenue of $7.7 billion.

The man behind it all — Elon Musk.

While Musk mentioned back in 2020 that Starlink would spin off from SpaceX and become publicly traded once it was consistently growing revenue, he has not made any indication that it will happen soon.

Still, there are ways for investors to buy Starlink stock in 2025, well before its IPO.

Can you buy Starlink stock?

Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is a private company. There is no SpaceX or Starlink stock symbol and you can't buy it in your brokerage account.

In September 2020, Elon Musk tweeted about spinning Starlink out of SpaceX and taking it public once its business stabilized.

Based on its projected 2025 revenue of $11.7 billion and rumors of its profitability, that may be just around the corner.

However, he has not indicated a potential timeline for its IPO since then.

It's impossible for retail investors to buy Starlink stock before its IPO, but there are ways for both accredited investors and retail investors to invest in Starlink (via an investment in SpaceX, its parent company).

Here's how.

How to buy Starlink stock in 2025

If you're an accredited investor (individuals with an annual income of more than $200,000 or $300,000 for married couples, or a net worth exceeding $1,000,000 excluding your primary residence), check out the first section below.

If you're a retail investor, skip down to the 2nd section.

1. How to buy Starlink stock as an accredited investor

Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, so you will need to invest in SpaceX to get exposure to Starlink.

Accredited investors can invest in SpaceX directly through Hiive, an investment platform for private, pre-IPO companies.

As of the time of this writing, SpaceX is one of the most active securities on Hiive. There are 25 unique listings of its stock:

Hiive allows you to buy shares directly from sellers, which may include company employees, founders, venture capital funds, hedge funds, or angel investors.

Investors can place bids and negotiate with sellers or accept their asking prices. Additionally, there are no fees for investors.

Check out the listings of SpaceX available on Hiive, including asking prices and shares available:

Register for Hiive

2. How to invest in Starlink as a retail investor

While there's no way to invest directly in Starlink or SpaceX right now, there are a few options for gaining indirect exposure to it.

a) Invest in the ARK Venture Fund

At 13.25%, SpaceX is currently the largest holding in Cathie Wood's ARK Venture Fund.

The fund invests in what they believe are the most innovative companies in the world. Along with SpaceX, its top 10 holdings include Anthropic, Epic Games, and OpenAI.

While the ARK Venture Fund can invest in both public and private companies, its top 15 holdings are private companies. If you're interested in private tech investing, the ARK Venture Fund is one of the best ways to access the market.

The fund is available to both retail and accredited investors; however, due to certain regulations, retail investors have to invest in the fund via SoFi. Accredited investors can invest via the ARK website.

While the ARK Venture Fund is the best way for retail investors to gain exposure to Starlink/SpaceX, there are two other ways to gain indirect exposure to the company.

b) Invest in Starlink's investors

Two public companies have participated in SpaceX's previous funding rounds and own stakes in SpaceX and Starlink: Alphabet (Google) and Bank of America.

Alphabet (GOOGL) first invested in SpaceX in January 2015. This was a $900 million investment at a valuation of $12 billion. It invested a second time in December 2021, at a valuation of $100 billion.

Together, these investments are worth about $24.5 billion*, roughly 7% of SpaceX and Starlink.

*In December 2024, SpaceX closed a secondary share sale, which valued the company at $350 billion.

While this is a sizable stake, Alphabet is a $2 trillion company, so its $24.5 billion stake in SpaceX represents just 1.2% of its total business. So if you don't like the other 98.8% of the business, I wouldn't recommend buying shares for Starlink exposure alone.

Bank of America (BAC) invested $250 million at a valuation of ~$30 billion in November 2018. At today's valuation, this investment is likely worth around $2.9 billion.

Again, this stake in SpaceX and Starlink represents just 0.8% of Bank of America's total market capitalization, so I wouldn't recommend buying shares solely for its investment in Starlink.

If you like Google and/or Bank of America and want to invest in their stock anyway, simultaneously getting exposure to Starlink is a nice bonus.

c) Invest in Starlink's partners and competitors

SpaceX, like all Musk-run companies, develops the vast majority of its parts internally.

There are, however, a handful of companies that SpaceX does business with and who may directly benefit from any future success the company has:

• Velo3D (VLD)
• Tesla (TSLA)
• Garmin (GRMN)
• Iridium Communications (IRDM)

That said, I'm not sure which of these companies (if any) are supplying parts for Starlink, specifically.

The most direct Starlink partnership came in 2021 when Shift4 Payments (FOUR) announced a 5-year partnership with Starlink to process its customer payments.

You could also consider investing in Starlink's competitors. 

While Starlink is the world's first and largest satellite-based broadband provider, there are several other players in the space. Here are a few of the biggest ones:

1. Kuiper Systems: This Amazon (AMZN) project aims to compete directly with Starlink. The project successfully launched its first satellites into Earth's low orbit in April 2025 and then launched another batch in June 2025. Kuiper was first announced in 2019 and plans to launch a total of 3,236 satellites.

2. HughesNet: This satellite internet provider is owned by EchoStar (SATS). However, due to inferior technology, its subscriber base has shrunk to less than 1 million — though still accounts for ~10% of EchoStar's $15 billion in annual revenue.

3. Viasat: Viasat (VSAT), a competitor of HughesNet, has a subscriber base of 257,000 customers — a big decline from the 603,000 subscribers it had in September 2020 when Starlink became widely available. After peaking at $5.3 billion in 2019, and despite still generating $4.5 billion in annual revenue, Viasat's market capitalization has fallen to under $2 billion today.

4. Telesat: Telesat (TSAT) provides satellite internet services to corporate, telecom, and government customers and generates around $372 million per year. It also will likely have a hard time competing with Starlink.

Beyond Starlink and Project Kuiper, OneWeb (a private company) is the only other real player in the LEO (low-earth orbit) satellite industry.

Does SpaceX own Starlink?

Yes, SpaceX currently owns and operates Starlink, but Starlink is expected to become its own company in the near future.

Even after that happens, Starlink will likely contract with SpaceX to use its rockets for launches (as do many of Starlink's current competitors).

In June 2023, Musk commented that Starlink's valuation “will be at least half of SpaceX's private net worth.”

SpaceX's current valuation on the secondary market is $350 billion. If Starlink is still worth half of SpaceX's value, that would mean its value is around $175 billion on its own.

Worth noting, Musk owns 42% of SpaceX and controls almost 79% of its voting power.

How to buy the Starlink IPO

In September 2020, Elon Musk tweeted, “We will probably IPO Starlink but only several years in the future when revenue growth is smooth & predictable.”

Five years later, the company has seemingly reached that milestone.

However, other than an offhand comment in June 2022 about Starlink's IPO still being 3–4 years away, Musk has not said anything about a potential public offering.

When it does go public, you'll need a brokerage account to buy shares.

If you don't have a brokerage account, we recommend Public. On Public, you can invest in stocks, ETFs, Treasuries, and cryptocurrencies, all on one of the most well-designed investing platforms.

SpaceX valuation chart

Starlink is currently a subsidiary of SpaceX and, according to Musk, may be responsible for up to half of SpaceX's valuation.

In December 2024, SpaceX completed a secondary market transaction — which gave current shareholders the option to sell some or all of their shares — that valued the company at $350 billion.

This was up 67% from the $210 billion it received in a similar transaction just six months earlier, in June 2024.

Here's how SpaceX's valuation has changed over time:

As stated above, Elon Musk believed Starlink made up about 50% of SpaceX's valuation. If that were still the case, Starlink would be worth $175 billion as a standalone company.