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Giant kyber crystals have been at the heart of every superweapon in the war between the Jedi and the Sith during the Old Republic, before the Galactic Republic, according to Yoda. It is also at the heart of the Death Stars.
Is it the same for Starkiller Base?
The planet was chosen due to having “crystalline deposits.”
The First Order selected the icy world for its unique energy transmitting crystalline deposits.
The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary
This would be pretty persuasive on its own, given the history of Dark Side superweapons and kyber crystals. But, to remove any doubt, this tweet from the official Star Wars Twitter account explicitly confirms that Starkiller Base was built on a planet with plentiful kyber crystal deposits:
Presumably these are the same “energy-transmitting crystalline deposits” for which the First Order selected the planet, which all but guarantees that they used them in their superweapon.
The text of the tweet is even more explicit:
The Empire’s hidden resource became the First Order’s ultimate weapon.
Not from a Jedi in current canon.
While we can't preclude it from being retconned to have one later, it doesn't right now.
Novelization by Alan Dean Foster has a detailed explanation of how it works, and doesn't mention any Kyber crystals
Which makes sense - the point of a Kyber crystal is to focus the energy into a beam.
Whereas Starkiller works by taking Dark Energy, collecting it, and then firing it through some sort of sub-hyperspace route at the target
There doesn't seem to be any need to focus which is the point of a Kyber crystal. It's not a turbo/super laser.
Please note that the absence of mention is meaningful because Kyber crystals are fully New Disney canon, as one is in the middle (as expected) of Kylo Ren's lightsaber as per TFA Visual Dictionary.
Starkiller base and the superweapon contained within did indeed make use kyber crystals, specifically to store the 'dark energy' (harvested from whatever star it was in orbit of) ready to be converted into a destructive beam capable of penetrating hyperspace.
Ilum was extensively mined by the Empire in the search for kyber crystals for the Death Stars’ superlasers; its deeply scarred surface and hollowed-out crust made it a perfect candidate for conversion into a superweapon. Charging the Starkiller’s dark-energy cannon required it to consume the energy of an entire star, which was then stored in the planet’s crystalline interior, regulated by a thermal oscillator until ready to fire.
