Elon Musks growing SpaceX empire sends AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile shares plunging
Elon Musk’s plan for SpaceX to “become a major mobile carrier in the U.S.” sent shares of the nation’s big three wireless carriers sliding by double digits Friday, wiping out more than $50 billion in market value before lunch.“Once we receive final FCC approval, Starlink Mobile will deploy a flexible architecture combining our satellite-to-mobile constellation in space with an advanced terrestrial deployment that can seamlessly connect devices everywhere,” the company said late Thursday.It also announced that the Federal Communications Commission had approved the launch of 15,000 new satellites, also under Starlink Mobile, which is a subsidiary of SpaceX.Shares of AT&T and Verizon both dropped 10% on Friday morning, while T-Mobile US stock plunged 14%.
Shares of Charter and of Comcast, the parent company of NBC News, also fell throughout the day Friday.Both companies sell wireless services under their own brands using Verizon’s infrastructure.Musk’s empire expandsThe announcement from SpaceX marked Musk’s latest step to expand his global tech empire.
The world’s richest man and its first-ever trillionaire, Musk’s net worth as of Thursday was about $990 billion.Musk’s constellation of companies already includes electric vehicle maker Tesla, the social media site X and xAI, which builds data centers and develops artificial intelligence.SpaceX includes multiple lines of business, too.Starlink sells high-speed internet to companies and consumers worldwide, while Starshield does the same, but to governments.But the major money maker for SpaceX is Starlink, which was worth $2.2 trillion as of Friday.
With more than 12 million paying subscribers, Starlink is also the only profitable part of SpaceX’s business, according to its latest earnings report.The acquisition of spectrum was “the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America,” Musk wrote on n X.SpaceX is also a massive U....