STMicroelectronics Targets Over $3bn in Space Revenue
May 4, 2026 – 6:32 pm
The Geneva-based chipmaker has shipped over 5 billion RF antenna chips to Starlink and now expects its low-Earth-orbit business alone to deliver more than $3bn in cumulative revenue between 2026 and 2028. Orbital data centers are an option for later.
When STMicroelectronics first qualified its chips for the European Space Agency in 1977, the satellite business was a different beast. Programs were government-led, hardware bespoke, and the semiconductor market that flew to orbit was structured for one-off missions, not commodity supply.
Almost half a century later, STMicro is experiencing an unprecedented growth spurt in its space business, as described in its own road map. On Monday, it shared its ambitious plans with investors, reporting (according to a Reuters report via TradingView) expected cumulative revenue of over $3bn from its space semiconductor division between 2026 and 2028.
ST’s low-Earth-orbit revenue, broken out separately, was around $175m in 2021, reaching roughly $600m by 2025. By the end of 2026, it projects close to $1bn. The $3bn cumulative target appears more like a continuation of momentum than a stretch goal.
Where the Revenue Comes From:
The primary driver is the shift from government-led space programs to commercial constellation operators. SpaceX’s Starlink dominates this customer concentration, with ST having shipped over 5 billion RF antenna chips to Starlink user terminals in around a decade—a figure expected to double to 10 billion by 2027 as constellation expansion accelerates. Other commercial operators, including Amazon’s Kuiper and OneWeb, follow behind Starlink.
ST also highlighted contracts on the European side with varying revenue models but significant strategic value. They include supplying components for inter-satellite laser communication links on future SpaceX platforms and working with Thales and Eutelsat on the European Union’s planned Iris² sovereign satellite constellation—a project central to European technological sovereignty policy.
As TNW has previously reported, the broader European satellite race is intense, with Iris²’s expected activation towards the end of the decade making ST one of the operationally indispensable suppliers in the program. The same engineering capability that wins it Starlink volume also qualifies it for Iris².
Beyond its prominent customers, ST’s space business encompasses a broader product portfolio: radiation-hardened logic, voltage regulators, mixed-signal ASICs, and rad-hard discrete components for satellite platforms.