Tech
Starship’s path to reusability looks murky after SpaceX’s S-1
SpaceX’s recent IPO and Starship rocket test flight delivered two big data points that offer a realistic vision for the coming years — and one that may disappoint both the company’s boosters and its critics.
Hidden behind the fantastic expectations for AI enterprise profits and plans for a moon base is a more grounded reality: An expendable Starship could keep SpaceX in business, but doesn’t achieve the cost reductions — or frontier business models — Elon Musk is betting on.
SpaceX is many businesses, but right now only one is producing significant revenue. Starlink, its satellite communications network, is the tent pole of the firm’s public offering. The top line is fairly incredible; SpaceX’s connectivity business generated $11.4 billion in revenue last year, the bulk of the company’s earnings.
But underneath, you can see the capital expenditure treadmill that scared previous entrepreneurs away from this model. SpaceX needs to replace about a fifth of its satellites every year just to maintain its current level of service. It has invested more in its satellite business ($11.4 billion) since the beginning of 2023 than it has building Starship and its launch infrastructure ($8.4 billion).
SpaceX’s S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission predicts costs will continue growing, but expects that improvements to its technology will allow it to reduce them as a percentage of its revenue.
Musk has said that Starship is the key to keeping Starlink’s costs under control, even saying that SpaceX could go bankrupt without the vehicle’s ability to replace those satellites cheaply. In that context, a note that stood out in SpaceX’s S-1 was the first acknowledgment that full reusability of Starship isn’t necessary to launch the new generation of Starlink satellites. But without full reusability, the cost will go up, making the business less attractive.
“If this reusability is not achieved then the cost of launch on Starship may not be much lower than Falcon 9, even if the full 100 ton capability is realized (which is by no means a foregone conclusion),” satellite market analyst Tim Farrar wrote in a note to clients last week. “The cost per launch may be as much as $100M (i.e. $1000 per kg) while tempo remains constrained by the rate at which second stages can be manufactured and first stages can be refurbished.”
Last week’s test flight of the third version of Starship and its booster bore those concerns out. The newest rocket’s maiden flight saw issues with a key capability for reusability — relighting the Raptor rocket engines on both the booster and Starship in order to make a controlled return to Earth. Starship did, however, deploy a set of dummy satellites and two test vehicles in space.
That helps square SpaceX’s prediction that it will begin launching a new generation of higher-throughput Starlink satellites 60 at a time, a twentyfold increase in capacity compared to a single Falcon 9 launch, later this year. At first glance a classic example of Musk’s timelines, it may actually be an expectation that initial launches will expend the Starship. If so, SpaceX might not be able to count on as much free satellite cash as expected, and its plans to launch space data centers will become untenable until the rocket is reusable.
Starlink growth slows
At the same time, SpaceX’s S-1 shows that Starlink’s growth is slowing.
SpaceX’s total addressable market calculation is based on its ability to offer service to every fixed-broadband subscriber or mobile handset in the world. That’s unlikely, though, because Starlink isn’t competing on price with terrestrial fiber. The rest of the document suggests SpaceX continues to see direct-to-device as a complement, rather than a replacement, for terrestrial mobile providers.
Starlink has just over 10 million subscribers, more than any other satellite communications network. But Farrar notes the rate of user growth fell over the course of the first quarter of 2026. Quilty Space, a space consulting firm, projected earlier this year that SpaceX would end the year with 16.8 million subscribers. That would require the company’s quarterly growth rate to roughly double from where it is now, which may be difficult after recent price increases.
Growth matters for SpaceX because its new Starlink users are paying less than previous ones. Starlink’s average revenue per user has fallen from $99 in 2023 to $66 in the first quarter of 2026 — a change propelled by its expansion into new international markets where it can’t charge as much as it does in developed economies. Without a fast-growing user base, each new satellite launched is making less money.
Increased competition also threatens Starlink. Amazon’s Leo network is approaching the scale required to put pressure on SpaceX, although it is waiting for the Federal Communications Commission to extend a deadline that requires it to launch 1,600 internet satellites by July.
Data in the SpaceX filing presents a gloomy growth forecast for the company as well as rivals like Blue Origin. Farrar says that if SpaceX — much further ahead than any other company — is seeing slowing demand, that may signal the market for space broadband is smaller than the players anticipated.
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Tech
Repeat founder Ryan Williams raises $10M seed for an AI startup for private credit managers
Ellis AI announced Thursday its emergence from stealth with $10 million in seed funding from investors including First Round Capital, 645 Ventures, Harlem Capital, Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, Slow Capital, Kearny Jackson, and Ariel Alternatives CEO Mellody Hobson.
Ellis uses AI agents to tackle the fragmented workflow private credit managers deal with, including managing documents, spreadsheets, and correspondence. The company was founded by Ryan Williams, best known for co-creating the real estate investment platform Cadre alongside Josh and Jared Kushner back in 2014. That company raised more than $160 million in funding and, at its peak, was valued at $800 million before being sold for an undisclosed sum to the alternative investment company Yieldstreet in 2024.
“At Cadre, I saw the next major constraint,” Williams said. “Even as the front end of private markets became more modern and accessible, the operating infrastructure underneath it remained fragmented.”
He started working on Ellis last year. The company seeks to connect and centralize all the scattered software, accounting information, and documents a private credit firm would use into one easily accessible platform. The system can flag discrepancies in the data and uses AI agents to help perform tasks like portfolio monitoring and preparing reports.
For example, Williams promises the agents can help close a fund’s books at the end of the month.
“A team may have to download files from several systems, reformat the data, compare balances, investigate discrepancies, and re-enter information by hand. In many firms, Excel becomes the operating system,” he continued. “Ellis connects to the systems and documents a firm already uses rather than forcing it to rip everything out and start over.”
It keeps a human in the loop, too, he says. “Material decisions and actions remain with the human experts,” he said.
“I expect the human loop to become narrower, but not disappear,” he continued, when asked if he sees a day when the AI works fully autonomously. “Our goal is not to replace human judgment; it’s to help people cut through the noise and make educated decisions faster.”
This piece was updated to add an investor.
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Tech
Tesla reportedly might sell its China business ahead of a SpaceX merger
Tesla is reportedly considering cleaving off its entire business in China to grease the wheels of a merger with SpaceX, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper reports that “some Tesla executives have been told to prepare for a separation of the China business,” which could include a “spinoff, sale or closure,” citing unnamed sources. The company reportedly would be able to do this fairly quickly because CEO Elon Musk had already tasked executives to prepare for a split in the event that Beijing invades Taiwan.
Separating China from Tesla’s global operations could make it easier to integrate the company into SpaceX, which is a defense contractor that has to follow strict rules around citizenship and national security. That would also be a major concession. China has grown to dominate Tesla’s business, not only as a market for its vehicles, but as a production hub that serves Asia more broadly, and also Europe.
Tech
WhatsApp is testing a new folder for messages from large businesses
During Meta’s Q2 2026 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that other revenue in the family of apps segment crossed $1 billion, largely thanks to WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions.
As more businesses use WhatsApp to reach consumers, users’ inboxes often get cluttered, making it hard to find personal and group messages. Meta is now trying out a new feature where it will place messages from larger businesses like banks or airlines in a separate folder, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
When a user receives a message from a large business, WhatsApp will automatically move that message to a new “Offers & Updates” folder after a set number of hours. The company said it is testing different durations, up to 24 hours, to move messages to a new folder.
Users who prefer their messages to be on the timeline can turn this setting off. However, they don’t control when messages are moved automatically.
Meta said that with this feature, messages like discount codes and delivery updates are out of the inbox in a few hours, and the main chat timeline feels less cluttered. For businesses, this means that users can look for their messages in a specific folder rather than getting lost in all chats.
WhatsApp is starting to test this feature with select partners using its WhatsApp Business Platform, and will look to expand based on observations. At the moment, small businesses and individual accounts using WhatsApp Business are exempt from this feature. WhatsApp said it could explore moving business messages from small businesses to the new “Offers & Updates” folder in the future.
In the last few years, WhatsApp has taken steps to reduce business message spam. In 2024, it started allowing users to unsubscribe from marketing messages from brands. Last year, it put a curb on the number of broadcast messages businesses and individuals can send in a time frame. In October 2025, it went one step further and limited the number of messages businesses could send without getting a response from users. The company has fully rolled out the first two features while it is still iterating on the third feature.
Despite these steps, the WhatsApp inbox can feel chaotic. From my own experience, there have been days when I have cleared unread messages at the start of the day only to end with more than 30-40 unread messages. Even at the time of writing, more than half of my unread messages were business communications. I am not alone in feeling this.
The new feature might reduce the clutter a little, but it won’t be effective until users have control over filtering out messages from the main inbox.
WhatsApp made its AI business agents available globally in June, with more than 1 million businesses already using them. During the earnings call, Zuckerberg mentioned Brazil’s car rental company Movida and said that it has seen an uptick in conversions and customer support issue handling through AI agents. In the coming months, we could see more businesses use AI within WhatsApp for sales, marketing, and support use cases. A chat app with over 3 billion users must strike a balance between personal and business messages before it becomes a vehicle for AI spam.
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