What are the biggest rocket companies?

SpaceX dominates the industry by any commercial measure. Its Falcon 9 flew more than 150 times in 2025, most of them carrying its own Starlink satellites, and it is the only company that routinely lands and reuses orbital boosters. United Launch Alliance, the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture, serves mainly the US government with the Vulcan rocket, which replaced Atlas V and Delta IV. Blue Origin, funded by Jeff Bezos, entered the orbital market in January 2025 with New Glenn and builds the BE-4 engines that power Vulcan. Rocket Lab is the leading small-launch company with Electron and is developing the medium-lift Neutron. Northrop Grumman builds solid motors and the Antares and Minotaur rockets.

In Europe, ArianeGroup (Airbus and Safran) builds Ariane 6, marketed by Arianespace, while Avio in Italy builds Vega C. Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries produces the H3 for JAXA, and India's ISRO operates PSLV, GSLV and LVM3, with the government-owned NewSpace India handling commercial sales.

The largest organisations by workforce are state-owned. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation builds the Long March family and flew more launches in 2025 than any entity except SpaceX; a growing group of Chinese firms such as LandSpace and Galactic Energy compete beside it. Russia's Roscosmos concentrates production of Soyuz and Angara in its Energia and Khrunichev centres, though its launch rate has fallen sharply. Rankings by revenue are opaque because most of these companies are private or state-held, so launch counts remain the most reliable yardstick (data as of May 2026).