The company will need to raise a lot of debt in order to fund its ambitions, according to an analyst
SpaceX has envisioned a sprawling spaceport in Vermilion Parish, La., shown here in an illustration, which it said could be capable of launching thousands of Starship rockets each year.
SpaceX's plan to develop a sprawling spaceport in Louisiana is reviving questions around how the company will get the cash it needs to fuel its ambitions.
Through 2035, the company plans to spend $100 billion on the project. While that is a large figure, it represents just 2% of what Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas thinks SpaceX (SPCX) will actually spend on its various initiatives over that period, as the company will likely incur hefty capital expenditures for artificial-intelligence projects.
Jonas expects that SpaceX will need to issue an average of $80 billion in net debt annually through 2035. Shortly after raising $85.7 billion in its initial public offering, the company issued $25 billion worth of debt.
The planned spaceport "[b]rings attention to a key investor debate: how are they funding this?" Jonas wrote in a client note on Wednesday. "Large capex numbers are easy to announce on paper, but the growth needs to materialize for SpaceX and the debt markets to continue to justify it."
SpaceX's plan is characteristically bold. The company plans to begin working in 2027 on what will become Starbase, LA, a massive spaceport located near Vermilion Parish's Pecan Island, and to carry out the first launch of its Starship megarocket from the site in 2029. SpaceX said this will be the largest spaceport in the world, featuring five launch complexes, 10 launchpads and related infrastructure.
Eventually, SpaceX plans to be able to launch thousands of rockets each year. The company has spent at least $15 billion developing Starship, which Evercore ISI analysts have labeled the "keystone dependency" for SpaceX's growth.
Scaling the rocket is critical for most of SpaceX's major plans, including establishing a base on the moon and putting advanced Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit. Evercore analysts said the move will also allow SpaceX to put data centers into orbit, potentially dodging the growing backlash in the U.S. against artificial-intelligence cloud operators.
"I don't see any way around doing this," Micah Walter-Range, the president of space-consulting firm Caelus Partners and a contributor to the index behind the Procure Space exchange-traded fund UFO, told MarketWatch regarding Starbase, LA.
He added that the spaceport will help SpaceX move much faster and meet its targets. SpaceX currently has just one launchpad in operation, with another four in various stages of construction.
Most of the work on the spaceport and surrounding infrastructure will be funded by SpaceX, although the state of Louisiana may share some costs with the company. On its website, the state's economic development agency singled out costs associated with improving local transportation routes, such as Louisiana's Highway 82.
The state offered SpaceX a "competitive incentives package on the condition of capital investment, job creation" and a donation to a local charity. Instead of paying taxes, SpaceX will make annual payments over the next 25 years to Vermilion Parish that will generate an estimated $820 million at least.
Federal funding also "seems more plausible," according to Kimberly Siversen Burke, an analyst and head of government affairs for the research firm Quilty Space, after President Donald Trump signed a new memorandum last week calling for the U.S. to be capable of supporting more than 1,000 rocket launches and re-entries annually by 2030. The U.S. was responsible for just 217 commercial space launches in 2025. In May, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink told Congress that the U.S. "probably" needs a new launch facility capable of supporting heavy- and superheavy-lift rockets, citing constraints at existing spaceports.
The Space Force budget request for fiscal 2027 included $2.2 billion to invest in launch infrastructure. The Federal Aviation Administration is also seeking input from the space industry on funding mechanisms for new spaceports and the "potential utility" of public-private partnerships.
Burke said in a report that the Pentagon could designate Starbase, LA as the country's third heavy-lift site, making it a part of the national-security infrastructure. That status "justifies range instrumentation, tracking and communications, road and utility work" and cost-sharing partnerships like those the FAA is looking into, Burke wrote.
-William Gavin
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