Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab has flown Electron 92 times, and launch is now the smaller half of the company. Space Systems builds satellite buses, solar arrays, star trackers, reaction wheels, separation systems, laser terminals and lately whole constellations, and accounts for roughly sixty per cent of a $2.36 billion backlog. In late 2025 it won an $816 million contract to build eighteen missile-warning satellites as prime contractor, the first time a launch company has been handed an entire constellation, and in 2026 another $397 million for a Space Force moving-target programme.

Peter Beck's strategy has been to own every layer rather than the thinnest one, and the acquisitions follow it literally: Mynaric for laser terminals, Motiv for robotics, SolAero for solar, Geost for payloads, and in June 2026 an agreement to buy Iridium for about $8 billion, which would add an operating network and recurring service revenue to a company that not long ago only sold rides.

Neutron is the unresolved piece. The reusable medium-lift rocket has moved from 2024 to 2025 to early 2026 and now to no earlier than the last quarter of 2026, after a first-stage tank failed a hydrostatic pressure test in January, and independent reporting in August 2026 described the remaining window as narrowing. That matters more than an ordinary slip, because the Space Force satellite award, the first commercial Neutron booking and the whole reusable medium-lift thesis all depend on it flying. The company is also still losing money at record revenue, with a $49.3 million quarterly loss and gross margins guided downward as the lower-margin satellite business grows. And Iridium is a large, unusual bet: a mature, slow-growing, cash-generating network bought partly for cash by a company that does not yet generate any, and not closing before mid-2027.