The Billion-Chip Partnership: How a European Tech Giant is Powering Starlink’s Satellite Revolution
If you’ve ever marveled at the speed of a Starlink dish or the sheer scale of the low-Earth orbit constellation, you’re seeing a European technology powerhouse at work. Behind the scenes of Elon Musk’s global internet project, the unsung hero is STMicroelectronics, and the numbers they are putting up are staggering.
The chipmaker, often abbreviated as STMicro, recently revealed a monumental achievement: it has shipped over five billion radio-frequency antenna chips to SpaceX for the Starlink network. That’s a volume of specialized components so enormous it’s hard to visualize. These components, known as front-end modules, are the heart of the Starlink user terminals. They are what enable the iconic “Dishy” to connect to thousands of fast-moving satellites high above, delivering reliable, high-speed broadband to approximately eight million users across more than 150 countries and markets globally.
What’s truly remarkable is that this massive figure, accumulated over a decade-long collaboration that began around 2015, is only the beginning. Senior executives at STMicro anticipate that the volume of chips delivered to Starlink could actually double over the next two years alone, pushing the total well past the 10-billion mark by 2027. This acceleration highlights the phenomenal growth trajectory of satellite internet and Starlink’s aggressive deployment strategy, including the rollout of its next-generation V3 satellites.
This isn’t just a simple supplier contract; it’s a deep technical partnership. The specialized radio-frequency antenna chips are based on STMicro’s proprietary BiCMOS technology and were co-designed by engineers working in France and Italy. They are critical to the system’s phased-array antennas, which allow the user terminal to electronically steer its beam to follow satellites without any moving mechanical parts.
The collaboration’s impact also extends from the ground-based user terminals all the way into space. STMicro is supplying much more than just the antenna elements. The company provides a range of components, including GNSS chips, secure elements, and its popular STM32 microcontrollers, which are essential for everything from the ground infrastructure to the satellites themselves.
Looking ahead, STMicro is positioned to power Starlink’s next giant leap: inter-satellite laser links. These laser connections are crucial for the future speed and capacity of the network, and SpaceX has selected STMicro’s newly launched, high-performance STM32V8 microcontroller to manage the mini-laser systems within the satellites. This chip is built using cutting-edge 18nm FD-SOI technology, offering the power efficiency and radiation resilience needed for the harsh Low Earth Orbit environment.
For STMicroelectronics, a leader in semiconductors primarily known for its strength in the industrial and automotive sectors, this partnership has turned into a major growth engine for its specialized chip business. While Starlink is its highest-profile customer in the space sector, the technology developed for SpaceX is also being leveraged for other emerging low-orbit satellite constellations, including projects with European players like Eutelsat and the European Union’s planned Iris 2 constellation. The partnership between the European chip giant and the world’s leading satellite network is a clear sign that the commercial space race is creating a massive and specialized new market for microelectronics.