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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is eyeing a major upgrade for Starlink, scaling it from 10,000 to 100,000 satellites.
"We are going to put in orbit, probably...over 100,000 satellites just for communications,” he said in a talk with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon as part of SpaceX’s roadshow to pitch the company’s upcoming IPO to investors.
In a follow-up tweet on Thursday, Musk also wrote about a tenfold increase for the Starlink constellation involving SpaceX's next-gen V3 satellites.
In speaking with Dimon, Musk said SpaceX is embarking on a "significant growth phase” that’ll require more capital. This includes launching orbiting data centers, which could span up to 1 million satellites, dwarfing the 15,000+ active sats currently in orbit. In addition, Musk also mentioned upgrades to Starlink using the upcoming V3 satellites, slated to start flying up later this year on the company’s heavy-lift Starship rocket.
"These will be the version 3 [satellites] and beyond, versus version 2 and version 1 that are currently in orbit,” Musk said. “Version 3 is, depending on how you count it, 10 to 20 times more capable than the version 2 satellite.”
It’s already known that the V3 satellites have been designed to offer gigabit internet speeds. But Musk also mentioned how the next-gen design contains three chips that are “far beyond state of the art.” The resulting constellation promises to offer “100 times” more bandwidth than before while halving latency due to lower satellite orbits, he added.
“I think it will actually be the highest bandwidth, lowest latency means of communicating,” Musk later said of the next-generation V3 Starlink system. “The future of AI and robots is actually going to require a lot more bandwidth than we currently use.”
It's unclear whether the 100,000 figure also includes satellites for Starlink Mobile, the company's satellite-to-phone service. But last year, SpaceX filed an FCC application to launch and operate 15,000 satellites focused on phone connectivity. The current count of direct-to-cell Starlink satellites is about 650.
(Credit: SpaceX)The 100,000-satellite goal is a bit surprising since SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Time Magazine in March, “I don't think we'll have more than 15 or 20,000 Starlink satellites,” indicating the satellite internet constellation might plateau at some point. “But, you know, keep in mind, we have a lot of different technologies,” she added.
Starlink is also a major revenue driver for SpaceX, which will face pressure to deliver strong financial results once it becomes a publicly traded company. Starlink-related business accounted for 60% of SpaceX's $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, according to a regulatory filing. A 10x expansion of the Starlink constellation could exponentially increase its capacity, enabling it to serve more users worldwide. During the talk, JP Morgan’s CEO even mentioned the possibility that Starlink could replace the need for undersea internet cables.
(Credit: SpaceX)SpaceX's roadshow presentation projects Starlink could face a $1.6 trillion total addressable market “split across Starlink Broadband ($870B) and Starlink Mobile ($740B)." On Thursday, the company also reported that the number of “active” Starlink customers had crossed 12 million, although total paid subscriptions were pegged at 10.3 million in Q1.
Still, SpaceX’s plans to expand Starlink have faced complaints and protests from environmental groups, astronomers, and concerned citizens about the satellites creating light pollution and possibly harming the ozone layer.
In January, the FCC largely approved SpaceX’s plan to upgrade Starlink with gigabit speeds. But to launch and operate 100,000 satellites, the company will need to secure further approval from the US regulator, which has currently capped Starlink at 19,400 satellites. In the meantime, the FCC is reviewing SpaceX’s application to operate up to 1 million orbiting data center satellites, which has also faced plenty of opposition.