Starlink Reaches 8 Million Users as STMicroelectronics and SpaceX Mark 10-Year Partnership

STMicroelectronics and SpaceX announced a decade-long collaboration on December 15, 2025, from Starbase, Texas, and Geneva, Switzerland. The partnership involves co-design of custom-made components for satellite communication, contributing to Starlink's broadband connectivity via low Earth orbit satellites.

Starlink products are co-designed with ST engineers in France and Italy, with manufacturing in facilities in France and packaging and testing in Malaysia and Malta. ST's BiCMOS chip technology supports Starlink's phased-array antennas, providing service to over 8 million customers in more than 150 countries.

The collaboration has resulted in billions of co-designed products incorporated into millions of Starlink user terminals and over 10,000 satellites, including the V3 satellite with more than 1 Tbps of fronthaul throughput.

The Starlink user terminal uses a phased-array antenna for connection to satellites in low Earth orbit. Setup requires plugging in the device and pointing it at the sky. Starlink produces over 20,000 terminals per day for customers in more than 150 countries.

The partnership includes development of a new manufacturing process using panel level packaging (PLP) technology for BiCMOS, with ST scaling operations to a delivery run rate of...