Gwynne Shotwell Rides SpaceX To Billion-Dollar Fortune
Tesla's share price may be cratering as billionaire CEO Elon Musk pursues his side-hustle of chain-sawing the federal workforce, but investors still believe in his rocket company SpaceX. That's made Gwynne Shotwell a billionaire.
Musk's longtime lieutenant at SpaceX holds a 0.3% stake in the company, Forbes estimates, based on accounts of her stock compensation from investors and early employees. That stake is worth $1.2 billion after the private company's valuation hit $350 billion in December in a sale of insider shares. Shotwell declined to comment on Forbes' estimates
For Shotwell, 61, it's a rich reward for the gamble she took when she joined SpaceX in 2002 as employee No. 11, tasked with leading sales of Musk's as-yet unbuilt rocket. At the time the Northwestern-trained mechanical engineer was going through a divorce, with two young children to care for, and she hesitated to leave a safe position at a small rocket maker.
But Musk had pumped $100 million into SpaceX from his proceeds from the sale of PayPal, and after thinking it over for a month, Shotwell bought into his vision of creating reusable rockets that could offer low-cost access to space. 'I called him on the phone and I said, 'I'm a bleeping idiot,' ' Shotwell recounted in a talk at Stanford University in 2022. 'And he laughed and he said, 'Welcome to the team.' '
In 2008, Musk promoted her to running the team as president and chief operating officer. With Musk's attention split between Tesla and his other ventures, she's kept the ambitious space company delivering on a breakneck development schedule—and helped make it the dominant rocket company on Earth.
SpaceX has scaled from eight launches of its Falcon rocket in 2016 to a staggering 134 in 2024. The next closest, China's state-owned CASC, managed just 48. SpaceX carried 83% of all satellites put into orbit worldwide last year, according to a report from the consultancy BryceTech.
Most of those were SpaceX's own communications satellites, which are the main reason investors are excited about the company.
SpaceX has built up a constellation of 6,800 satellites in low-Earth orbit that as of year-end were providing broadband internet service to 4.6 million subscribers, up 90% from 2023. SpaceX doesn't share financials but in November, Shotwell said Starlink was going to turn a profit for the year.
'The company is incredibly valuable, I think, right now because of Starlink,' she said at the Baron Investment Conference. 'Starlink will add a zero, probably, at least as we continue to grow the Starlink system.'
Got a tip on SpaceX? Contact Jeremy Bogaisky at jbogaisky@forbes.com or on Signal at jeremy.26.
Morgan Stanley estimates Starlink achieved an operating profit of $900 million in 2024 on $9.3 billion in revenue. But any cash from operations was likely cancelled out by high spending to build out the Starlink constellation and develop SpaceX's giant Starship rocket. With roughly four times the payload capacity of Falcon 9, Starship is the linchpin in SpaceX's plans to dramatically increase the Starlink constellation's coverage and performance, and realize Musk's vision of reaching Mars. Not to mention, boost SpaceX's valuation even more.
'Ultimately, I think Starship will be the thing that takes us over the top as one of the most valuable companies,' Shotwell said at the Baron conference. 'We can't even envision what Starship is going to do to humanity and humans' lives, and I think that will be the most valuable part of SpaceX.'
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