{"id":725532,"date":"2026-05-04T22:15:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:15:58","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-05-04T22:15:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:15:58","slug":"stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space\/","title":{"rendered":"STMicroelectronics targets more than $3bn from space"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2ee396d6dac\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2ee396d6dac\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space\/#Where_the_revenue_actually_comes_from\" >Where the revenue actually comes from<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space\/#New_Space_in_plain_English\" >New Space, in plain English<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space\/#Orbital_data_centres_on_the_optionality_list\" >Orbital data centres, on the optionality list<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space\/#The_risks_behind_the_target\" >The risks behind the target<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stmicroelectronics-targets-more-than-3bn-from-space\/#Where_the_trajectory_points\" >Where the trajectory points<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/2026\/05\/STMicroelectronics.avif\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-main-content\">\n<p><em>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 centres are an option for later.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When STMicroelectronics first qualified its chips for the European Space Agency in 1977, the satellite business was a different category of operation. Programmes were government-led, hardware was bespoke, and the small fraction of the semiconductor market that flew to orbit was structured for one-off missions, not commodity supply. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Almost half a century later, the Geneva-based chipmaker is now running <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.st.com\/media-center\/press-item.html\/c3296.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">what its own road map describes as a phase of unprecedented growth<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in that business. On Monday, it told investors how unprecedented.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">STMicro is targeting more than $3bn in cumulative revenue from its space semiconductor business between 2026 and 2028, <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tradingview.com\/news\/reuters.com,2026:newsml_L8N41H1DO:0-stmicro-targets-more-than-3-billion-in-space-chip-revenue-as-demand-grows\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">according to a Reuters report wired through TradingView<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from the company\u2019s dedicated investor call. The trajectory the figure implies is unusually steep. <\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"inarticle-wrapper channel-cta\">\n<div class=\"ica-text\">\n<p class=\"ica-text__title\">TNW City Coworking space &#8211; Where your best work h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ens<\/p>\n<p>A workspace designed for growth, collaboration, and endless networking opportunities in the heart of tech.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST\u2019s low-Earth-orbit revenue, the line the company breaks out separately, was around $175m in 2021. By 2025 it had reached roughly $600m. By the end of 2026, on the company\u2019s own forecast, it is expected to be close to $1bn. The $3bn cumulative ask, in that context, looks more like a continuation of momentum than a stretch goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Where_the_revenue_actually_comes_from\"><\/span>Where the revenue actually comes from<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The driver, as ST executives have described it, is the structural shift from government-led space programmes to commercial constellation operators. SpaceX\u2019s Starlink dominates the customer concentration. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST has shipped more than five billion RF antenna chips to Starlink user terminals in roughly a decade, with its executives publicly forecasting that figure could double to roughly 10 billion by 2027 as constellation expansion accelerates. Other commercial operators, including Amazon\u2019s Kuiper and OneWeb, sit behind Starlink in the queue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The company also flagged contracts on the European side that pay differently but matter strategically. ST is supplying components for inter-satellite laser communication links on future SpaceX platforms, and is working with Thales and Eutelsat on the European Union\u2019s planned <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iris\u00b2 sovereign satellite constellation<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a project that has been one of the principal vehicles for European technological-sovereignty policy. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TNW has covered the broader European satellite race<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in detail, and Iris\u00b2\u2019s expected switch-on, currently scheduled towards the end of the decade, makes ST one of the operationally indispensable suppliers in the European programme. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same engineering capability that wins it Starlink volume also wins it Iris\u00b2 qualifications.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond the headline customers, ST\u2019s space business spans a wider product portfolio than the public conversation around the company tends to register. Radiation-hardened logic, voltage regulators, mixed-signal ASICs, and rad-hard discrete components for satellite platforms are all part of the existing line. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The economics of those products differ across the customer base, but the underlying engineering, building chips that will function reliably in vacuum, in extreme thermal cycles, and under sustained radiation, is one of the higher-margin specialisations in semiconductor manufacturing.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"New_Space_in_plain_English\"><\/span>New Space, in plain English<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What changed the maths, in ST\u2019s framing, was the arrival of New Space. Until roughly 2018, the standard radiation-hardened chip for a satellite was a custom part priced for a customer that intended to build a single, $200m geosynchronous bird. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Constellation operators, building hundreds or thousands of identical low-cost satellites, needed something different: rad-hard parts that came in plastic packages, in volume, at prices that did not destroy the unit economics of a 1,200-spacecraft constellation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST released its first economical rad-hard line for New Space in 2022<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, in cost-effective plastic packaging across power, analog, and logic categories. Four years later, that early commitment looks unusually well-timed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The wider market context fits the trajectory. <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fortunebusinessinsights.com\/space-semiconductor-market-105223\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Independent market sizings of the space semiconductor sector<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> put global revenues somewhere between $5bn and $7bn currently, with mid-single-digit annual growth across most forecasts. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST\u2019s own LEO revenue trajectory implies it is capturing a disproportionate share of that growth. The $3bn cumulative target, divided across three years, is consistent with the company holding around a quarter of global space-semiconductor revenue at peak.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Orbital_data_centres_on_the_optionality_list\"><\/span>Orbital data centres, on the optionality list<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST executives also identified orbital data centres as a possible future market, but, importantly, said they had not included any related revenue in the current 2026\u20132028 target. The hedging is sensible. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TNW reported earlier this year on SpaceX\u2019s own pre-IPO disclosures<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, in which the company warned investors that orbital AI data centres rely on \u201cunproven technologies\u201d and may never achieve commercial viability. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SpaceX\u2019s S-1 framing was startlingly candid for a company that had previously promoted orbital compute as a near-inevitability. The thermal economics, in particular, remain unforgiving: radiating one megawatt of heat at 20\u00b0C in orbit requires roughly 1,200 square metres of radiator surface, the area of four tennis courts. The technical premise of the business model is, in 2026, an open question.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST\u2019s posture, including orbital data centres in the conversation but excluding them from the revenue model, is the right one for an established public company. Investors want to know the optionality exists. They do not, on the current evidence, want it priced. STMicro has chosen to disclose the upside without booking it. That is, on this category of bet, the more credible position.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Monday announcement comes against a wider backdrop in which Europe has been struggling to articulate a coherent commercial space strategy. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TNW has covered Europe\u2019s broader spacetech difficulties<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> consistently, with the dominant story being one of fragmented funding, slow procurement, and dependence on US launch infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Inside that frame, ST\u2019s announcement is a counter-data point. A European semiconductor company, headquartered in Geneva and listed in Paris and Milan, is now one of the most consequential commercial suppliers to Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink and to Europe\u2019s own sovereign constellation programme simultaneously. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That is the kind of dual-track win European tech-sovereignty policy has been asking for, and not consistently getting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also matters at the level of the company itself. <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.st.com\/media-center\/press-item.html\/c3296.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">STMicro is in the middle of a difficult guidance reset<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, having pushed its $20bn+ revenue ambition out from an earlier target to 2030. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $3.10bn, beating consensus, but the broader auto-and-industrial cycle has been less generous than the company once expected. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ST\u2019s separate \u20ac5bn Italian EV-chip fab investment, which TNW has tracked<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is the company\u2019s bet on the next phase of automotive electrification. The space business, in that context, is one of the rare lines that is unambiguously growing and unambiguously high-margin.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_risks_behind_the_target\"><\/span>The risks behind the target<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The space business is not without exposure. The first risk is customer concentration. With more than five billion chips already shipped to a single Starlink programme and another five billion projected by 2027, ST\u2019s space revenue depends to an unusual degree on SpaceX\u2019s continued constellation expansion, on the durability of Starlink\u2019s commercial economics, and on SpaceX\u2019s willingness to keep a single supplier at this scale of dependence. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TNW has reported on Europe\u2019s small but growing low-Earth-orbit ecosystem<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but the alternative customer set, even taken together, does not match Starlink\u2019s chip demand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second is qualification timelines. New Space rad-hard products move faster than legacy government programmes, but they still require flight heritage, certification with launch and operator partners, and acceptance into bills of materials that take quarters to update. Slippage anywhere in that chain compresses the achievable run-rate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The third is geopolitical. STMicro\u2019s European listing and Geneva headquarters insulate it, in part, from the US-China semiconductor export-control regime, but a meaningful share of its supply chain and customer base sits inside that regime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Any tightening that affects rad-hard or RF antenna components specifically would change the trajectory. The company\u2019s exposure is manageable but not zero.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Where_the_trajectory_points\"><\/span>Where the trajectory points<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Three indicators will signal whether the $3bn target lands or slips. The first is Starlink shipment volumes through 2026 and 2027, which ST will disclose at quarterly checkpoints. <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/stmicroelectronics-says-starlink-chip-shipments-113833753.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yahoo Finance flagged the doubling-of-Starlink-deliveries detail<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> when ST first signalled the trajectory, and the slope of the line will be visible quarter by quarter. The second is the cadence of Iris\u00b2 procurement: when contracts firm up and shipments begin, the European side of ST\u2019s space business moves from optionality to revenue. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The third is whether the orbital-data-centre market, on which ST is publicly noncommittal, develops a customer base that justifies retroactively pulling it into the revenue model. By the company\u2019s own framing, three years is the soonest meaningful orbital-compute deployment becomes a real conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What was confirmed on Monday is that one of Europe\u2019s largest semiconductor companies has decided that LEO is no longer a hobby line. <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/news\/4584912-stmicroelectronics-targets-3b-in-revenue-from-space-by-2028\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seeking Alpha framed the targets as a commitment to the 2028 milestone<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and the company\u2019s road map has, on the available evidence, the engineering and customer relationships to support that commitment. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The wider question, whether a satellite-constellation boom can support multiple chip suppliers at this scale or whether Starlink\u2019s near-monopoly customer position makes ST\u2019s lead difficult for any rival to displace, is the one investors will be asking through the rest of the year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For now, the figures speak. From $175m in 2021 to nearly $1bn in 2026, with a $3bn cumulative target through 2028, and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">an investor call hosted to detail the strategy<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. A 49-year-old space-chip business, in other words, is suddenly one of the most interesting growth lines in European semiconductors.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/news\/stmicro-3-billion-space-chip-revenue-target\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 centres are an option for later. When STMicroelectronics first qualified its chips for the European Space Agency in 1977, the satellite&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}