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Early investors who bet on SpaceX ahead of its initial public offering are drawing attention for the extraordinary wealth they have accumulated.
Among them, Antonio Gracias, 55 — Elon Musk's closest friend of two decades — has emerged as the company's second-largest shareholder, gaining both fortune and fame.
According to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners, has secured a 6.7% stake in Class A shares worth approximately $68 billion (about 103 trillion won), making him the largest shareholder after Musk.
Gracias grew up in Detroit. Born to an Indian father and a Spanish mother, he got his first taste of investing in middle school, when he spent $300 on Apple shares while helping out at his mother's lingerie shop in a shopping mall.
After studying diplomacy at Georgetown University, he founded his first firm, MG Capital — specializing in acquiring and operating distressed companies — in 1995 while attending the University of Chicago Law School. Around that time he met Musk and invested in the predecessor to PayPal, which eBay acquired in 2002 for $1.5 billion (about 2.28 trillion won).
That same year, Gracias launched Valor's first private equity fund at $100 million (about 151.8 billion won).
The firm's early business centered on acquiring and reselling ski resorts and fast-food franchise operations — a foundation that eventually allowed him to extend his bets all the way to outer space.
In 2006, he invested $2 million in Tesla, and in 2008 he moved into SpaceX as well. By the time Tesla went public in 2010, his 5.25% stake had grown to $83.5 million.
Gracias and Valor went on to back nearly every venture Musk has led since — Neuralink, The Boring Company, the acquisition of Twitter (now X), and xAI.
That original $2 million Tesla bet has grown into a $68 billion stake over 20 years.
Musk recently wrote on X: "Antonio's shares reflect his absolute support and 20 years of investment from when SpaceX looked like it would fail. There is no better friend than him."
SpaceX sets IPO price at $135 per share
Meanwhile, SpaceX set its IPO price at $135 per share, confirming the preliminary offering price it had announced earlier, according to Reuters.
While companies preparing to go public typically present a range for their preliminary offering price, SpaceX took the unusual step of locking in a single figure of $135 per share from the outset.
At that price, SpaceX will sell 555.56 million shares to raise $75 billion (about 113.8 trillion won).
The offering is expected to become the largest IPO in history, surpassing the $29.4 billion record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Based on the offering price, SpaceX's market value stands at $1.77 trillion, which would place it among the top 10 listed companies globally.
Musk is the largest shareholder. Through dual-class shares and other mechanisms, he will hold 84 percent of voting rights after the IPO.
Valor Equity Partners ranks as the second-largest shareholder, with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen also listed among major shareholders.
SpaceX is set to list on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas on Friday.
yul@heraldcorp.com
