Synopsis
In China, the initial public offering was watched as a benchmark for a younger industry eager to go public. But the frenzy masks a fundamental gap, with firms going public ahead of meaningful revenue and without the proven technology that underpins SpaceX's economics, a mismatch analysts say will cap valuations.Listen to this article in summarized format
In China, the initial public offering was watched as a benchmark for a younger industry eager to go public. But the frenzy masks a fundamental gap, with firms going public ahead of meaningful revenue and without the proven technology that underpins SpaceX's economics, a mismatch analysts say will cap valuations.
Yet the excitement is palpable. Huang Yan, co-founder of Shanghai-based Lantern Capital, said his decade-old investment in LandSpace is generating returns of roughly 100 times as the company moves toward a public listing.
Huang, who bought into LandSpace in 2016, said he ignored early scepticism, betting instead on the industry's "technological moat and strategic value" over the long term.
At least seven Chinese rocket and satellite companies including LandSpace and CAS Space are currently advancing IPO or pre-IPO plans, although financial details of those deals are not immediately known. Soochow Securities forecasts that by 2030 China's commercial space market could surpass $1 trillion.
Unlike SpaceX, which is heading to market on the back of reusable rockets, its Starlink broadband network and ambitions spanning direct-to-device links and orbital AI infrastructure, Chinese peers have yet to successfully launch reusable rockets.
"Everything SpaceX does is a bellwether for China's space industry... I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a strong uptick in Chinese commercial-space listings and funding," said Ellis Scherer of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
He said China's lack of a mission-ready reusable rocket remains "the biggest barrier" to catching up with the U.S. in space.
LandSpace, widely regarded as China's closest private-sector challenger to SpaceX, had the maiden test of its Zhuque-3 rocket in December but the booster failed to complete a controlled landing and was not recovered.
The ability to return, refurbish and re-fly boosters, key to slashing launch costs for satellites, remains unproven among Chinese firms.
'Larger gap'
Limited revenue highlights how far China's commercial space sector still has to go. LandSpace reported 36.4 million yuan ($5.2 million) in first-half 2025 revenue, while SpaceX's revenue rose by a third to nearly $19 billion in 2025, roughly three-fifths of it from Starlink.
If LandSpace or another Chinese firm makes a breakthrough in booster recovery, it could relieve pressure on China's two main Starlink-style projects, said Gabriel Deville, manager at consultancy Novaspace.
The two projects - Guowang and Qianfan, known internationally as Spacesail - have a combined few hundred satellites in orbit, against Starlink's roughly 10,400.
A Chinese space-company executive, who declined to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to media, said the most optimistic scenario would see China match Starlink's current scale around 2033, though that target is moving.
But successful deployment of Starship, SpaceX's next-generation heavy rocket that can launch three times as many satellites in one launch as Falcon 9, could widen the gap between Starlink and its Chinese challengers "exponentially", the executive said.
Fragmentation
SpaceX's vertical model, where Starlink generates demand for its own launches, has no clear equivalent in China. The sector is fragmented, leaving startups dependent on orders from state-backed constellation operators whose procurement and deployment schedules sit outside their control.
"The big move of SpaceX was to move revenue generation away from launch and to broadband constellations," said Novaspace's Deville.
Still, Deville said Chinese startups have a clearer demand argument than many Western challengers, since they can pitch themselves as essential to deploying China's sovereign constellations.
The domestic opportunity would likely be more state-led and enterprise-focused than Starlink's mass-market model, with demand from mobility, maritime, remote industrial sites, emergency response and Belt and Road markets, he added.
But dominance by state-owned enterprises may limit the emergence of a Chinese private-sector Starlink equivalent, experts said.
"If you want to be a telco in China, there are no private telcos in China," said Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting.
