Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.
Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir (PLTR.O), and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector’s burgeoning base of defense startups.
In his January 27 executive order, Trump cited a missile attack as “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”
All three companies were founded by entrepreneurs who have been major political supporters of Trump. Musk has donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and now serves as a special adviser to the president working to cut government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.
Despite the Pentagon’s positive signals to the SpaceX group, some sources stressed the decision process for Trump’s Golden Dome is in its early stages. Its ultimate structure and who is selected to work on it could change dramatically in the coming months.
The three companies met with top officials in the Trump administration and the Pentagon in recent weeks to pitch their plan, which would build and launch 400 to more than 1,000 satellites circling the globe to sense missiles and track their movement, sources said.
A separate fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers would then bring enemy missiles down, three of the sources said. The SpaceX group is not expected to be involved in the weaponization of satellites, these sources said.
One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as “a departure from the usual acquisition process. There’s an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government.”
SpaceX and Musk have declined to comment on whether Musk is involved in any of the discussions or negotiations involving federal contracts with his businesses.
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The Pentagon has received interest from more than 180 companies keen to help develop and build the Golden Dome, according to a U.S. official, including defense startups like Epirus, Ursa Major and Armada. Members of the White House’s National Security Council were briefed by a handful of companies about their capabilities, four sources said.
The Pentagon’s number two, former private equity investor Steve Feinberg, will be a key decision-maker for Golden Dome, two U.S. defense officials said.
Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management which has invested in the cutting-edge hypersonic missiles industry but not in SpaceX. Feinberg, who did not respond to a request for comment, has said he would divest of all his interests in Cerberus when he joined the administration.
Some experts believe the overall cost for Golden Dome could reach hundreds of billions of dollars. The Pentagon established several timelines for capabilities to be delivered starting with early 2026 to those delivered after 2030.
Laura Grego, research director at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, questioned the feasibility of such a defense system given that multiple studies have concluded it is a “bad idea, expensive and vulnerable.”
“Such a system could be overwhelmed by launching multiple weapons at the same time, pushing the required size of the defense to very large numbers – potentially in the tens of thousands of satellites,” Grego said.
SpaceX is pitching for the part of the Golden Dome initiative called the “custody layer,” a constellation of satellites that would detect missiles, track their trajectory, and determine if they are heading toward the U.S., according to two sources familiar with SpaceX’s goals.
SpaceX has estimated the preliminary engineering and design work for the custody layer of satellites would cost between $6 billion and $10 billion, two of the sources said. In the last five years, SpaceX has launched hundreds of operational spy satellites and more recently several prototypes, which could be retrofitted to be used for the project, the sources said.
Reuters reviewed an internal Pentagon memo from Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth issued shortly before a February 28 deadline to senior Pentagon leadership asking them for initial Golden Dome proposals and calling for the “acceleration of the deployment” of constellations of satellites.
The time frame could give SpaceX an advantage because of its fleet of rockets, including the Falcon 9, and existing satellites that could be repurposed for the missile defense shield, the people familiar with the plan said.
Despite these advantages, some of those familiar with the discussions said it was uncertain whether the SpaceX group would be able to efficiently set up a system with new technology in a cost-effective way that can protect the United States from attack.
“It remains to be seen whether SpaceX and these tech companies will be able to pull any of this off,” said one of the sources. “They’ve never had to deliver on an entire system that the nation will need to rely on for its defense.”
Separately, some Democrats in Congress expressed concern about Musk’s bidding on federal contracts while serving in the White House.
“When the richest man in the world can become a Special Government Employee and exert influence over the flow of billions of dollars of taxpayer money in government contracts to his companies, that’s a serious problem,” said U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee.
