🏠 > [[Interviews]] > December 26 2025 **Insider**: [[Adam Spice]] **Source**: [CNBC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEGQ1cGT7xY) **Date**: December 26 2025  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEGQ1cGT7xY ## Transcript ### Rocket Lab stock surge and 2025 launch cadence (0:00) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** Joining us now in an exclusive interview is Adam Spice, Rocket Lab CFO. Adam, welcome to the show. **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (0:13):** Thanks, Morgan. Thanks for having me. **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** It was a big year for Rocket Lab. Certainly. You broke records with your launch cadence this year. How does all of this set you up for 2026? **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (0:24):** I think it sets us up really well for 2026. I mean, 2025 is a great year. We targeted launching 21 times this year. We managed to achieve that with 100% mission success. So I think we’ve got great momentum with our customers. They love working with Rocket Lab, and they just seem to want more and more of what we have to offer. ### Neutron timeline and what it unlocks (0:43) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** Is Neutron still set to come online in the first half of 2026, and if so, what does that unlock in terms of more potential for Rocket Lab? **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (0:52):** Neutron is an incredibly important thing for us, and yes, we’re maintaining our first-half-of-2026 schedule. As we talked about on our last earnings call, the more tactical goal here is to get the rocket to the pad in Q1, and then after that, get all the checkouts done and, assuming everything checks out and goes well — which, again, it's a rocket program, so you can never count on everything going perfectly — our plans right now have us getting a rocket to the pad at the end of Q1 (or in Q1), and then hopefully getting a launch off shortly thereafter. ### SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer award and Rocket Lab’s “end-to-end” strategy (1:23) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** I just referenced it before, but the Space Development Agency Tranche 3 Tracking Layer award — you’re one of four companies awarded a chunk of change for this. How meaningful is it for Rocket Lab, and specifically for your other business, the Space Systems business which is building all kinds of spacecraft for on-orbit experiences? **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (1:44):** This contract was a huge thing for us. I think it cements us as a very strategic partner with our U.S. government customers, and we felt incredibly honored to be included in the group of other awardees for this Tranche 3 Tracking Layer. This was one where you really didn’t see up-and-comers or new entrants — it was the established players. If you look at the other awardees: L3Harris, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman. So to have Rocket Lab included, that’s a huge endorsement for us, and a good harbinger of things to come. It’s all about building this end-to-end space vision that really is our goal. We started off with a small dedicated launcher that’s becoming incredibly efficient and a great value-add to the market. Then we started putting together all the pieces to build a Space Systems platform, which ultimately will drive us to having our own applications on orbit. Really, what this does is continue to expand what is already two-thirds of our business today: Space Systems. A lot of people think of us as a rocket company, and that’s completely understandable — you know when you showed those two launches at the beginning of the clip, I never get tired and I think a lot of people don’t get tired of watching a rocket launch. But at the end of the day, the Space Systems is a much larger opportunity for us now. Neutron helps balance that back out: it opens up a much much larger TAM, where we’ll have Neutron competing head-to-head with Falcon 9 in that medium-lift launch category. ### Data centers in space (3:08) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** I’d say it should be on everybody’s bucket list to go see at least one rocket launch in their lifetimes. We were just talking about it with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. But data centers in space — is there an opportunity here for Rocket Lab? **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (3:21):** We’re strong believers that the people that control access to space will have a great ability to influence what goes on in orbit obviously. It’s still early days — people are getting very excited about this, and there are some very credible people talking about data centers in space. If you think about what’s great for a business like ours is: if you’ve got to put a lot of mass on orbit in a quick timeframe and in a very cost-effective way, owning that launch vehicle and owning the end-to-end ability to build spacecraft (and having space heritage), it's absolutely key. So I’m very hopeful this ends up being a meaningful strategic opportunity — and if it is, we’ll be in a great position to exploit it. ### “Golden Dome” contract awards (3:59) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** I’ve been talking about this all year — asking companies, Space and defense companies, all year about it. I’m going to ask you again right now: and that is “Golden Dome” contract awards. Do you think we’re going to start to see a flurry of those come out sometime soon? **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (4:13):** I think we will. We’re already seeing a lot of activity going on in the background. It’s a pretty bold set of initiatives that have come out, and it took a while for the people responsible for developing those longer-term strategies to really pull everything together and put a bow on it. But I think we’re very close. We’re very excited about it. We think it could be a huge set of new opportunities. So yes — I think we should start seeing more activity in the new year, and we’re very much looking forward to that. ### International spend and “picks and shovels” growth (4:43) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** We’re seeing spending on space increase — not just here in the U.S., but internationally as well. What do those opportunities look like for the company, especially as you have been acquisitive? **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (4:52):** I think that’s one of the most underappreciated growth opportunities in this market. When I look back and see how space spending over the last few decades, the vast majority of the spend was concentrated in the United States and with the U.S. government. With some of the changes now that we see in geopolitics, I think that really could usher in an era of more prolific spend — in some ways less efficient, because now you’re having people do the same thing in multiple geographies. But for somebody who sells the picks and shovels to those people, it’s a great opportunity for us. I do think investors probably haven’t really kind of fully caught on to what that could look like over the next ten years — but it’s a very big, underestimated future growth leg for people who are well positioned to exploit it. ### Wrap-up and podcast plug (5:39) **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** Okay. Adam Spice, CFO of Rocket Lab, thanks for joining me. **Adam Spice (Rocket Lab CFO) (5:42):** Thank you. **Morgan Brennan (CNBC):** For more on all things space, in case you haven’t had enough this hour, be sure to check out my podcast, *Manifest Space*. Today’s episode features Hawkeye 360 CEO and founder John Serafini.