If they wanted to raise money without it becoming public, they could do so easily - for example using directors loans.
A better way to guess their expenses is to look at how many employees they have. Lets call it 15,000. Lets put average pay at $150k/year after overheads and taxes. 96 launches in 2023. That puts the salary cost per launch at $23M/launch.
It's a very rough figure because obviously some rocket parts are purchased, there are other overheads, and there are other revenues and costs from starlink etc.
Most people at SpaceX work on development programs and in manufacturing not launch. SpaceX manufactures many different things. Launch by now isn't even close to a majority of revenue anymore. SpaceX is not just a launch company, not even close. They are a full space company doing everything from ground infrastructure, commercial and military sats, human and cargo space flight to LEO and the moon. And they are doing development and operations of all of that.
What matters is marginal cost of every other launch of Falcon 9. Most analysts put the number somewhere between 10 million $ and 25 million $. I think very few people would guess more then 20 million $, specially now as launch rate has gone up. My guess is that 15 million $ is more reasonable.
SpaceX pretty consistently ramped up their money raising along with their development programs. And they were pretty transparent about all of that. Not a single company who analyses SpaceX has ever suggest that SpaceX might somehow have raised much more money. Maybe a few 10s of million. But its hard to raise billions without anybody knowing.
And I'm just rather believing people who spend a lot of resources trying to understand SpaceX rather then somebody in an internet form saying 'maybe they have raised billions without anybody knowing'. Because only if its actually billions would it change anything about my argument.
What is numbers actually suggest is that SpaceX Falcon 9 operation are highly profitable. They are selling launch way above cost. Numbers and information we have suggest that SpaceX bids very aggressively on their development contracts for NASA, and they are like no making a profit on those, maybe a loss. In case of Starship, a big loss. But likely they get that back with continued operation beyond the initial orders (or that has been the reality so far). Numbers suggest that SpaceX is making a killing on DoD contracts, they knew they were the only viable competitor so they bid very high on those. I think just one that stuff, SpaceX would be a highly profitable company.
If this was not true, then there simply is no way they could have sustained the massive investment in Starship and Starlink.
So unless somebody shows me prove or anything close to a credible source, showing that SpaceX raised multiple billion additional $, I'm just not gone believe the SpaceX is losing money on everything narrative.
Frankly given how insanely expensive something like Starship is, its crazy how little money they have actually raised. Its basically a drop in the bucket to compare it to SLS.
If they wanted to raise money without it becoming public, they could do so easily - for example using directors loans.
A better way to guess their expenses is to look at how many employees they have. Lets call it 15,000. Lets put average pay at $150k/year after overheads and taxes. 96 launches in 2023. That puts the salary cost per launch at $23M/launch.
It's a very rough figure because obviously some rocket parts are purchased, there are other overheads, and there are other revenues and costs from starlink etc.